Periods question 40+

[cakeallday]

I know there is a menopause board but it seems very quiet so hoping more people will see this.

I'm 43 and the day before/day 1 of my period I get a debilitating headache, nausea and it feels like I've drunk a bottle of wine the night before when I haven't.

It's becoming a problem for me if it happens on a work day.

Guessing it's peri-menopause?

Anyone else had this and is there anything I can do to prevent it happening? Tablets of some kind?

It sounds like you might be having migraines with a hormonal trigger. Mine got so bad I ended up on the Mirena coil. It didn't completely solve the problem because I get migraines for other reasons, too, but it does have a levelling out effect that for some time prevented the migraines from hormonal causes, but also just generally made me feel more like me - I think I hadn't realised how badly the fluctuations were affecting me. I was probably 41/42 when I first had my Mirena inserted and had my second put in last year.

I'm now 48 and having 'proper' peri-menopause that the Mirena doesn't really touch, and seeing the neurologist in a fortnight for Botox to sort out the migraines as everything else we've tried has failed. But for a good five years it got things mostly under control for me, with the added bonus of reducing the number and heaviness of periods in the meantime.

If this is migraine, by the way, it's worth asking your doctor for some kind of triptan medication, as this can work wonders in sending migraines packing. I have both rizatriptan and frovatriptan, which I use depending on where the migraine starts as that seems to impact their respective effectiveness. I find the frovatriptan tends to work best for me on the hormonally triggered migraines.

Hope this is helpful and that you're feeling better soon

I used to have that but it eased when I stopped the OCP. Thankfully it is only mild now as it used to knock me out for days.

Thank you so much @GrumpyInsomniac for taking the time to write that. I'm not sure if it's a migraine as I'm not sure how that is defined versus a plain headache. I'll look into the medication you mentioned.

Definitely seems like my hormones need levelling out. @WhoAteMyNuts - glad stopping the pill helped you - I'm not on any contraception as my husband had a vasectomy years ago, thank you for mentioning it though.

@cakeallday it's primarily the nausea and hangover feeling combined with the headache that made me think migraine. A migraine isn't always just about the headache. Case in point, yesterday I was struggling with a migraine that I'd had since the previous day. I'd had nausea, slurred speech, a feeling like my eyes were bulging out of my head, and a weird impression my scalp was too small. I also had massive sensitivity to light and smell and sound, with mild synesthesia.

A plain headache you could shift with paracetamol, and wouldn't have the other symptoms alongside. A migraine might or might not involve a headache - there are things called silent migraines - but with me it usually involves some other disturbances and is rarely shifted with paracetamol alone. Not everyone gets aura with migraine, but to me a migraine, even without aura, feels different to a normal headache. There's something about the intensity, and especially a feeling of hypersensitivity to all my senses, which often marks it out. I can also quite often feel when one is on the way, and not because I have a clue where my cycle is at any given moment.

I'd genuinely schedule an appointment with the GP and have a chat about it. In the meantime, read up on migraine and maybe have a look at the Migraine Buddy app: it'll help you track your symptoms and triggers and provide data you can refer back to with the doc in future to see what works and doesn't. It's also got a fair bit of info about migraines that might help you decide whether that may be what you're feeling.

I was wondering OP if you may be slightly lacking in iron? When I was pre perimenopause I was like you described slightly. Go have an MOT at the doctors ..I would just to see..