‘It’s not a nice way of living’: Kelly Holmes on her struggle with menopause insomnia

Dame Kelly Holmes’s experience is reflected in data that shows 39-47% of women have sleep disturbance during perimenopause. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

For the Olympic gold medal-winning athlete Kelly Holmes, one of the first warning signs that something had changed was struggling to sleep.

Throughout her career as an athlete, good sleep had always been a priority – and easy to obtain. But a couple of years ago, then aged 51, she started struggling to fall asleep, and waking around 3am. It was only when a doctor told her this was a symptom of the perimenopause that she realised what was happening.