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TV presenter Fiona Phillips has revealed she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The 62-year-old star, who is best known as the former host of ITV breakfast programme GMTV, was told she had the illness over a year ago after experiencing months of brain fog and anxiety.
In an exclusive interview with the Mirror where she works as a columnist, she said: “This disease has ravaged my family and now it has come for me.
“And all over the country there are people of all different ages whose lives are being affected by it – it’s heartbreaking. I just hope I can help find a cure which might make things better for others in the future.”
Phillips, who is an Alzheimer’s Society ambassador, said she always feared she would be diagnosed with the condition because her family members had the disease.
She continued: “It’s something I might have thought I’d get at 80… But I was still only 61 years old.
“I felt more angry than anything else because this disease has already impacted my life in so many ways; my poor mum was crippled with it, then my dad, my grandparents, my uncle. It just keeps coming back for us.”
Phillips, who took part in Strictly Come Dancing in 2005, said she has worried people will “judge me and put labels” on me, adding: “It’s a horrible bloody secret to divulge.”
The mother-of-two’s husband Martin Frizell has said the diagnosis came after she started feeling “crippling anxiety towards the end of 2021”.
“We thought maybe it was the menopause because all the symptoms were there; brain fog, anxiety and confusion,” he said.
“We got in touch with a menopause specialist who took her under their wing and put her on HRT (hormone replacement therapy) but while that improved some symptoms, the brain fog remained.”
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Menopause specialists then suggested Phillips should seek further help to explain why she was struggling to remember things.
She then had months of cognitive tests before she received the diagnosis she had dreaded.
Phillips is now part of a trial for the drug Miridesap which is being carried out by the University College Hospital in London.
It is hoped the drug can slow or reverse the progress of the disease.
Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease that causes mild memory loss in its early stages.
In late-stage Alzheimer’s, individuals lose the ability to carry on a conversation and respond to their environment.
