Una Healy has revealed a painful health diagnosis that may have been caused by her contraception, as she calls for better education and support around women's health.
The 44-year-old Irish singer, who rose to fame in the chart-topping girl group The Saturdays, said she has developed an ovarian cyst that could be linked to the hormonal coil she had fitted to manage her agonising and irregular periods.
The coil is a small, T-shaped device placed inside the womb. The hormonal type slowly releases progestogen, which makes periods lighter and less painful. It is a common long-term contraception method and is more than 99% effective.
“I have an ovarian cyst. I was having really, really heavy periods,” Una explained. “I had the coil in, which was great for that, but I think it could be a result of having the coil in that I developed the cyst. So we have to monitor that and see how much it grows.”
The NHS states that ovarian cysts are a possible side effect of the hormonal coil, describing them as “small fluid-filled sacs”. They can form when the hormone in the coil disrupts the ovary’s normal release of an egg, causing fluid to build up.
Mum-of-two Una said of her heavy cycle: “It was embarrassing. I was sitting watching a show one night, and I had a tampon and a pad on, and I was in jeans, and it just soaked the whole way through. I had to get a jumper and pull it around.”
She said the bleeding sometimes came twice a month, adding: “I was passing out with the pain. I just felt s***.” Una even sometimes performed through the agony, saying: “Some nights you’d just be popping a Panadol and hoping for the best. It’s better than nothing.”
Una, who shares daughter Aoife, 13, and son Tadhg, 10, with ex-husband and former England rugby star Ben Foden, 40, said she has also been warned her oestrogen levels are unusually high – which has limited how she can treat her perimenopause symptoms. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is often used to ease perimenopause symptoms by topping up hormones.
“I tried HRT but I couldn’t take oestrogen therapy because that would just be too high,” she said.
The NHS states that oestrogen treatment is not usually recommended for women with certain hormone-sensitive conditions, and high oestrogen can fuel the growth of some cysts.
Speaking on the Image The Motherlode podcast, Una said women’s health was still under-researched, recalling how her own mother – a former nurse – “suffered in silence”. “My mother didn’t like her 40s, she found them tough. She said, ‘It gets better in your 50s’. I never thought I’d be looking forward to my 50s,” she added.
“The resilience in the female is exceptional when you think back to what they went through. There is support and research out there now. It’s developing, it’s getting better, but it’s still not great. I think it’s good to talk about it.”
