Seeing Clearly
It’s been a long, bumpy road, but Sue Perkins has learned a lot along the way. She talks about therapy and the importance of looking after both your mental and physical health.
Sue Perkins is fully on board with thinking mental and physical health can’t really be separated.
“We do need to talk about health holistically – mental and physical health,” says Perkins, best known for presenting Bake Off from 2010-2016 and her comedy partnership with Mel Giedroyc.
She’s also keen that mental health conversations involve everybody. “Perhaps it’s oversharing, but I have therapy, and I’m sad that great quality therapy isn’t always readily available at the point of entry for everyone,” says Perkins, 52. “If anyone wants to do a campaign about that, I would be very happy to be on board, because it’s changed my life, and made me happier to be around and be with other people.”
Right now though, it’s Specsavers she’s teamed up with, highlighting their 2021 eye health report, and urging people to go for routine tests. It’s generally recommended that adults get checked every two years (sooner if you already have an eye problem or are experiencing symptoms or vision changes) – but the pandemic disrupted things. There was a drop in the number of eye tests delivered in 2020 and referrals to hospital eye services also fell. “People have been under such vast external pressures,” she says. Home-schooling, worrying about job security, where the money’s coming from, and when you take on board all of that, as well as the sense of panic and anxiety from a strange situation like this, things like taking care of oneself can easily become secondary.”
PREVENTION
Eye tests are about so much more than just renewing your prescription for contacts or glasses, though. They can also reveal important things about your general health – like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, inflammation and cancer – as well as detect early signs of eye health problems like glaucoma, before any obvious sight loss develops. “Early prevention is everything,” says Perkins, who has been wearing glasses since the age 25. “If they do find something, in the vast majority of cases, you can have it sorted out.”
“A lot of the time, we don’t make appointments for our health or whatever it might be, in case it’s a bad outcome. And I can completely understand that, because I too share that anxiety at the moment, where everything is up in the air and strange and new. But the longer we leave it, the more likelihood there is that there could be a bad outcome.”
FAMILY TRAGEDY
For her, there is a much deeper, personal reason for valuing eye tests. Sue Perkin's dad Bert was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2017, picked up by an optician. Sadly, Bert’s tumour was inoperable and he died six months later.
“This is the reason I’m part of the campaign, this is why I bang the drum,” says Perkins. “My dad’s sight was failing, he wasn’t going to the doctor. He was really scared. He was also of that generation where everyone was so polite, he didn’t want to bother anyone. In the end, we persuaded him to go for an eye test. A really young, incredibly brilliant optician did a health check and saw obviously that he had a brain tumour.
She would have known, I’m pretty sure at that moment, that it was going to lead to the terminal diagnosis, but the way she handled the referral, the way she spoke to him was extraordinary.
“I think the way you’re told health outcomes massively changes things, and for the family. Of course, there’s a neverending and deep sadness about his passing, but I have no rancour about the way he was treated, and I’m incredibly grateful to her for being so gentle.”
Perkins is keen to emphasise that her dad’s case was “very rare” – but says the
experience “woke me up” to how crucial it is to keep a check on your eye health, and also to the immense power of kindness. The optician’s handling of things will stay with her. “It’s hard to explain it, but to know that he [my dad] wasn’t unduly stressed by it, is everything. It was as good a way as possible of learning one of the worst things in the world, is all I can say.”
COPING WITH STRESS
How has it influenced her own approach to taking care of herself? “I’m starting to really see that I need to make interventions, I guess in terms of what people now call ‘wellness’ – and I hate that phrase. My diet is very good, I’m vegetarian and love vegetables with a passion. I love boxing, that’s great for fitness, and there’s a shocking amount of good in punching! I highly recommend it.
“ The biggest health worry I have is stress,” Perkins adds.
“I would say my job is stressful, I’ve had some endocrine issues which have caused crippling anxiety, and yet I’ve [carried on working] through that, which means you’re dealing with adrenaline from work, crippling anxiety, and then the stress of having to cover it all up with a sort of cheery grin and ‘I’m absolutely fine, thanks!’
“In the future, I am going to have to think about how I manage stress, which I’m not great at, but equally if I can’t manage stress, how do I then change my work-life balance? That’s the next journey for me, really.”
HEALTH ISSUES
The endocrine issues she’s referring to are linked to the pituitary gland tumour she was diagnosed with in 2015. Although non-cancerous, the tumour wreaked havoc with her hormones, which she’s previously said caused “epic destruction” to her life.
“Unmedicated, it caused huge levels of anxiety and all sorts of problems that were not much fun – but I’m medicated now and it’s under control,” she says.
It’s been a long, bumpy and ongoing road, though. “When I was ill and having a lot of stress, and I wasn’t going outside and the rest of it, having constant panic attacks, I learned a lot and really looked at all stresses in my life,” she reflects. “Stress is a natural response – some stress is biologically imperative, we need a bit of stress to keep us going, keep us alert.
“For me, [it’s about] what I’ve learned about dealing with stress, where it’s unhelpful and unwanted, when it feels too much, or when I’ve been too much – we need to be aware of when we might be causing stress too.”
And we’re all different. It’s about recognising “your own stress barometer.
Set your own limit”, says Perkins. “Decide what’s motivating and exciting stress-wise, and what’s debilitating and exhausting. It’s impossible to eliminate all stress, but you can certainly eliminate some.”