Halle Berry told how doctors twice misdiagnosed her — and almost put her on hormones for life

The actress admitted that her menopause symptom was initially mistaken for a rare autoimmune disease. One doctor suggested lifelong use of steroids. The correct diagnosis came only on the second attempt — and Berry is now sure that if she had not insisted on her own, she would have been treating the wrong disease.

It all started with dry mouth, xrust reports. It’s a small thing that not everyone will go to a gynecologist or see a therapist for. But it didn’t work out for Halle Berry, and the actress went to find out. The first doctor she saw diagnosed her with Sjogren's syndrome, an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its own glands that produce saliva and tears. The treatment was supposed to last for the rest of his life: steroid drugs that suppress the immune system and have an impressive list of side effects.

Berry did not agree right away. I turned to a second specialist — and there was a different explanation: not an autoimmune disease, but perimenopause. The same hormonal changes that most people associate with hot flashes and night sweats, but in fact affects the body much more widely.

Sjögren's syndrome is neither a fiction nor a rarity: it is a real autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the salivary and tear glands, and in its early stages, symptoms can actually resemble hormonal dry mucous membranes. The difference is in the nature of the process and, accordingly, in the treatment: where with an autoimmune disease long-term immunosuppression is often needed, with menopausal changes much more gentle regimens are often sufficient — from hormone replacement therapy to local agents. It turns out to be frustratingly easy to confuse one with the other at an appointment where ten to fifteen minutes are allotted for differential diagnosis.

“Dryness in everything” is a symptom that is silent about

In an interview with Hoda Kotb's Making Space podcast, released July 15, Berry uttered a phrase that went viral on social media: one of the main signs of menopause is “dryness all over.” Not only hot flashes and mood swings, but also dry mucous membranes throughout the body — from the eyes and mouth to the intimate area. It was this set of symptoms that led the diagnosis astray: it looks too much like an autoimmune disease, too rarely do doctors even think about a hormonal cause.

The actress admitted: if she had relied only on the first opinion, she would have treated the wrong disease — with drugs with serious side effects, for years, unnecessarily. Her conclusion is simple and harsh: women should double-check diagnoses and not be afraid of appearing intrusive in front of a doctor.

Why is this not an isolated case

Berry's story is not a curiosity, but a symptom of a much broader problem. A new scientific study published in July in the journal Menopause found that millions of women in the United States are still confused about the symptoms of perimenopause, and doctors receive grossly inadequate training on the topic during their training. Each year, approximately two million American women begin perimenopause, a phase that lasts four to eight years, and 59 to 65% of women experience hot flashes, psychological or urogenital symptoms that significantly interfere with daily life.

The problem is systemic: clinical recognition of symptoms remains inconsistent, and the lack of information in the public field is compensated by myths from social networks — which, as practice shows, only complicates making a correct diagnosis.

Berry's case is far from the most exotic example of how hormonal changes can be mistaken for something else. Palpitations and rapid pulse are easy to attribute to heart problems. Sudden mood swings indicate depression or anxiety disorder. Insomnia and chronic fatigue are due to overwork or vitamin deficiency. Joint pain is due to age-related arthritis. In each of these cases, the doctor, without menopausal alertness, will follow a completely logical, but erroneous path: he will prescribe an antidepressant instead of hormonal correction, and send him to a rheumatologist instead of a gynecologist-endocrinologist. Formally, no one made a mistake — just no one asked the right question.

Not the first star to talk about this out loud

Berry isn't the only celebrity to publicly discuss perimenopause in recent months. Penelope Cruz and Olivia Wilde, in an interview with Allure, said that the transition period can last ten to twelve years and begin as early as forty — and that almost no one warns about this duration in advance. Oprah Winfrey recalled that she did not have hot flashes or night sweats, but she did have palpitations, which she did not immediately learn about the connection with menopause. And presenter Jenna Bush Hager admitted that the topic was not raised at all in her family: her mother never told her what to expect.

Cruz separately mentioned that she is still faced with recurrent ovarian cysts — and believes that women should prepare for such “side” manifestations in advance, and not learn about them after the fact from the doctor. After her words, a discussion broke out on social networks: one of the users wrote that her months-long shoulder stiffness turned out to be associated precisely with perimenopause — and that she learned about this from the actress much earlier than from her own doctors, whom she had been seeing for years.

The common theme in all these stories is the same: women face symptoms blindly, because neither their family nor (more tellingly) the health care system prepares them for this in advance. And the fact that over the past year several major Hollywood names — not media activists, but working actresses in the midst of their careers — have chosen this particular topic for public conversation is in itself indicative: the request for normalization is clearly ripe not only among spectators, but also among the celebrities themselves.

What is behind Berry's frankness

For Berry, 60, talking publicly about menopause is not a one-time confession, but part of a broader mission that she has recently called her “second act”: promoting healthy aging for women, including sexual health, which is also directly related to hormonal changes. The actress has been openly speaking for several years now that the topic of menopause should cease to be taboo — and her own experience with an erroneous diagnosis became another argument in favor of this position.

On social media, the reaction to her words was predictably emotional: women shared similar stories of symptoms of hormonal changes being treated for years as something else, from depression to chronic fatigue and autoimmune diseases. The general conclusion that commentators make is that the topic requires not sympathy after the fact, but basic medical literacy — both on the part of patients and on the part of doctors.

Russian context

For Russia, the situation is mirrored, and in some places even more acute. The topic of menopause is traditionally discussed even more reluctantly than in the West: in families it is not customary to talk about it, and at an appointment with a therapist or neurologist, the hormonal version of the symptoms in a woman of forty to fifty years is most often not considered at all — complaints of insomnia, anxiety or joint pain go along their own separate routes, to different specialists, without a single picture of what is happening. There is simply no separate area of ​​“menopausal medicine” with specialized specialists who could be accessed through regular insurance in most cities of the country — a woman has to piece together the diagnosis herself, room by room.

Berry's story in this sense works as an object lesson for two audiences at once. For women — as a signal to disagree with the first diagnosis in silence, if something in the doctor’s explanation does not agree with the sensations of their own body. For the healthcare system as a whole — as an extra reminder that even where medicine is technologically advanced than in many other countries, the female body after forty remains an area where it is easy to make a mistake with the diagnosis simply because the topic is still studied last.

How not to repeat someone else's mistake

The main practical conclusion from Berry's story is simple: when unusual symptoms appear after forty, you should keep the hormonal version in mind — and not be afraid to get a second opinion if the first diagnosis looks more serious and severe than expected. Especially if the proposed treatment extends over “the rest of your life”: this is a case where excessive vigilance is cheaper than years of unnecessary therapy.

A second opinion is not a manifestation of distrust of the doctor, but standard medical practice in any country where they know about it at all. Hormonal tests, consultation with a gynecologist-endocrinologist, and not just a general practitioner—three simple steps that, in Berry’s story, could save months of incorrect treatment. And if an actress with access to the best clinics in Los Angeles twice missed the correct diagnosis, then for women without such access, their own persistence and basic awareness of the symptoms of perimenopause become not an optional option, but the only real protection.

Sources:

• https://www.today.com/health/celebrity-health/halle-berry-2-common-menopause-symptoms-doctors-misdiagnosed-rcna587732
• https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-women-perimenopause.html
• https://en.newsner.com/celebrity/doctor-shuts-down-panic-after-penelope-cruz-and-olivia-wilde-share-petrifying-perimenopause-symptom/

Xrust Halle Berry told how doctors twice made a mistake with her diagnosis — and almost put her on hormones for life