‘I was awful to live with’: Lisa Curry’s private hell
Lisa Curry has revealed how a mysterious debilitating condition had a devastating effect on her marriage to former husband Grant Kenny.
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Lisa Curry is brave enough to admit she used to be a nightmare to live with.
At times, she was stressed out, irritable and quick to temper. Curry, 58, Australia’s former golden girl of the swimming pool, said she had regularly experienced mood swings since her early 20s.
But it wasn’t until the late 1990s, when Curry, then in her mid 30s and retired from swimming, finally realised she suffered from a hormonal imbalance.
At the time, the former triple Olympian and Commonwealth Games gold medallist was a busy mother of three young kids, an elite level outrigger canoe competitor and wife to former Ironman surf lifesaver and Olympian Grant Kenny.
“I was moody, irritable and very quick to temper to the point, I’m ashamed to say, I was pretty awful to live with at times,’’ Curry said.
“It was hormonal so it wasn’t all the time. But those couple of days a month, I just turned into this different person.
“Your husband kind of looks at you and goes, ‘Who the hell are you? Where’s the happy wife, the happy girl I married?’
“Grant is well aware of hormonal imbalance now. But at the time we didn’t know and it was hard between us. Each month that it happened it felt like you put one brick up and you put another brick up and all of a sudden you start to build a wall between you. You just become this person that you’re not.’’
Curry, who split amicably with Kenny in 2009 after 23 years of marriage, still takes a hormone balancing supplement.
She now lives in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland with her husband of two years Mark Tabone, 54, a former hairdresser and tribute artist entertainer
And with COVID-19 sweeping the globe, she said it has never been more important to look after your health and manage stress levels.
“Stress is a very important factor when it comes to hormonal imbalance,’’ she said.
“There is always a certain amount of stress in our lives that we need but if you are facing physical, financial and/or emotional stress it all adds up.
“Many women, including myself, have found a sense of calm when your hormones are balanced. That’s a bit step in the right direction as far as stress is concerned, especially when there is so much going on in the world.
“With Victoria back into lockdown, it also reinforces how important it is to keep open lines of communication and not feel like the world is closing in on you.
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Curry co-founded a business with naturopath Jeff Butterworth who first diagnosed her hormonal imbalance back in the late 1990s. Their business, called Happy Healthy You, features their “hero product’’, a hormone balancing supplement called Happy Hormones.
Butterworth has worked with women, specialising in hormonal imbalances for almost 30 years. Curry said the body’s hormones can become unbalanced for reasons including stress, synthetic hormones, poor sleep, alcohol consumption, sugar intake, lack of exercise and even childbirth.
Happy Hormones are described as a “unique combination of natural herbs and superfoods’’, contains black cohosh, chaste tree, raspberry leaf, maca, sage, dandelion root, licorice, wild yam, psyllium husk, passionflower and gymnema.
Curry has also recently released a new eating plan called the four-week Happy Reset Program that aimed to reset the metabolism, decrease inflammation and increase nutrient dense foods.
“It’s the way we should be eating,’’ Curry said. “If you look at a pandemic…the healthier your body can be, the stronger your immune system can be.”
Originally published as ‘I was awful to live with’: Lisa Curry’s private hell