Gabrielle Union Recalls Feeling 'Defective' Due to Perimenopause Hair Loss: 'Like Less of a Woman' (Exclusive)

For Gabrielle Union, menopause was the last thing on her mind, even when she started noticing changes in her body and mood. The Perfect Find star was 37 when she started going through a transition she couldn’t understand.

“I just felt off, that's probably the most accurate way I could describe it,” she tells PEOPLE. And after getting a full blood panel — without fully knowing what that was — Union was told that she was in perimenopause. 

Perimenopause refers to the time where the body starts to make its natural transition to menopause, which marks the end of a woman's reproductive years.

“I was just like, not me. I just left the club. That's like an old woman thing,” she quips. 

Now at 51, Union is reflecting on her journey after once feeling very “isolated” due to her symptoms, hoping to help other women feel less alone while going through the same thing. 

According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms of perimenopause include irregular periods, hot flashes, mood swings, sleep problems, vaginal and bladder problems, loss of bone density, higher cholesterol levels and more — some of which come on gradually.

“Around my mid 40s is when the symptoms were like, hey girl, we're here,” Union says. 

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Her biggest struggle, she admits, was hair loss, which can be even more difficult to handle as someone in the public eye.

“All of it can feel very isolating and you can feel like less of a woman, especially as a Black woman where our hair is our crown. There's literally the CROWN Act and I'm like, uh, my crown looks more like a barrette at this moment,” she says with a laugh.

But it was just one of her many symptoms. “It was the hot flashes, the night sweats that could happen at any time of day, brain fog, mood changes, ongoing sadness, anxiety that felt more like terror, hair loss, and then random weight gain,” she notes. “That’s when it really hit home for me.”

The actress says she was able to accept that she was in perimenopause and it became very freeing to finally talk to other people about her experience. “I'm not crazy. I'm not delusional. I'm not imagining this,” she says.  

Union knows firsthand “how quickly it can spiral” if a woman is written off when it comes to menopause, reflecting on a very low point in her life. 

“You just feel defective, right?” the Bring It On actress says. “You could be short with people, you could be super irritable, you could be just really sad, which some of those things may add up to people wanting to pull away from you or having extra commentary about your mood or how you are being.” 

“It's very easy to write off women of a certain age as you're just a b—, you're just bitter, you're just whatever. And you can start isolating,” she adds. “And the more you are isolated, the less people are able to track any sort of changes and it's very easy to go deeper into darkness.” 

That’s why Union is partnering with Clearblue to promote its Menopause Stage Indicator, a urine test paired with a health tracking app that’s aimed to give women an idea of what stage of menopause they’re in.

“I love that through the app, you can not just track when your period came, you can document when you have symptoms, the severity of those symptoms, exactly what is happening,” she says. “So when you are in the doctor's office, you have all the information that can tell the doctor everything that you've been experiencing in one place.” 

The star adds, “Anything that can help women advocate for themselves in a time that is usually shrouded by secrecy and is very taboo and nobody wants to talk about it, I'm going to do my best to make sure that women have resources and options and can learn new ways of advocating for themselves.” 

As she continued to deal with symptoms herself, Union took recommendations from a hormone specialist and adopted an anti-inflammatory diet to help, focusing on limiting gluten, dairy, caffeine and alcohol.

“It's really changed everything,” she admits, joking how hard it is to resist some of her favorites. “I didn't want it to be true because I love all the things. I love cinnamon rolls and real butter, lard, like a lot. So it's been a journey. And there's days I backslide, and when I backslide, especially around vacation, [my symptoms are] going to come right back.”

Although it’s different for everyone, Union says “there are solutions” for women, which is why she stresses the importance of being open and not ashamed of discussing menopause.

“The more we talk about it, the more we are in community with one another, the more we share resources, we're all literally in this together,” she tells PEOPLE. “It's coming for everybody. So let's get prepared.”