Please help- hot flushes shivering palpitations night sweats

[Wordsaremything]

i feel as if I've aged 15 years in the last three months. Just turned 49. Bloods done a while ago to rule out anything else. All that fine.

Symptoms are really ramping up. Cycle irregular ( can cope with that) but the hot flushes seemingly provoked by the tiniest stressor have been miserable in the hot weather esp at work where the air con is broken and a long commute on packed trains.

Now getting night sweats and palpitations alternating with a strange creepy/ shivery feeling all over my upper body.

So tired, largely due to constant nights of broken sleep.

Not keen on hrt. Just paid a fortune for goose down duvet and high thread count cotton bedding - do I need to rethink and get a wool duvet? I sleep naked (alone thankfully can't bear the thought of another body in there with me!) with windows open around house to try and get a draught - but then end up freezing with the sweating.

I had another terrible night last night and I could cry! This is not like me at all. Normally power on through physical discomfort but this is fast becoming intolerable.

Advice, sympathy? Please???

Last night one of the radio programmes was talking about people who live the perfect healthy lifestyle & still have heart attacks. No risk factors. I thought of this thread because I'm sure perimenop is like that, too. You can do everything right & still draw a short straw (& a few who do everything right & don't suffer). So that's why we talk in terms of risk factors, & there's only so much we can control.

Bit like giving birth (!)

There are other ways to keep bodyfat low, optimize cardiovascular health and maintain bone density.
Visceral adiposity, atherosclerosis, heart disease and weak bones are ?diseases caused at root by modern lifestyles

Perhaps some feel that these 'diseases of affluence' are unavoidable or are unwilling/unable to make the lifestyle changes which would be required in order to avoid them.

It's a matter of personal choice, my choice is to stick with a healthy lifestyle ?

although drs are not actually saying it ought to be used (yet) as a preventative treatment for all women against diseases of old age, the thinking is heading in that direction

It may well be the case that most women would be better off using HRT, I would suggest that is because most people do not lead healthy lifestyles, they are sedentary with too much body fat, too little lean tissue.
They 'need' Hrt to counteract the consequences of unhealthy lifestyles ?

Well I am back from the Drs.
I am now on oestrogen only patches (lowest dose) to top up my levels.
It was the other hormone that was making me bleed so heavily apparently.
She checked the blood results I had done, said they were ok and then said they weren't a helpful indicator anyway unless you had already gone through menopause!! So why send me for them!? (To be fair it was a different dr who sent me for them)
She said there are no risk factors really for taking the oestrogen only patch.
I am frustrated and fed up. I am already taking epo and vit b and am going to add in some vit d for winter.
I'm ok about taking the het but I dont want the heavy bleeding.
Really hope it works!

Suzanne...you make very good points and having lost my beloved dad to atherosclerosis it's something I do worry about.
I am going in a healthy eating kick too...I've done it before and can do it again.
I am also going to do more exercise even if it's only walking.
I had horrendous periods all my life so I'm not surprised I am one of the unlucky few with problems in peri.

No one is saying that HRT should be used instead of having a healthy lifestyle. It's completely missing the point to say that someone 'prefers to have a healthy lifestyle' rather than use HRT. This seems to be going back to the previous points that somehow people who are 'weak willed' or unfit or have unhealthy lifestyles use HRT as a lazy means of alleviating their symptoms.

The majority of women who use HRT - if we have to be specific- are well educated, intelligent and already have healthy lifestyles (this is what research has shown- not my own opinions.) They already take an active interest in health and keeping fit.

If using HRT reduces the plaque in the arteries by 50% (when used before age 60) then it reduces it whatever they are already - so that is in addition to any benefits already obtained through exercise and diet.

It is an extra bonus. And for women who have CVD as part of their family history ( me) then it's an important consideration.

If someone has sailed through menopause with no problems or only minimal then they simply won't understand how other women suffer and it's easy to come over all superior saying 'Oh a healthy lifestyle would sort it out '.

Badders

have you had a hysterectomy? if so then you can use oestrogen only. If not then you can't. Read Menopause Matters site the section on HRT.

I'd have thought that current users of Hrt would be women with debilitating menopausal symptoms and / or a high risk of CVD or osteoporosis?

Not sure what you mean by that; HRT is not used to prevent CVD . But the research ( see the Danish study if you want to read the facts) shows that the myth that HRT might cause heart disease isn't so and quite the reverse.

Here is a link with an easy-to-read intro from the BMJ

www.bmj.com/press-releases/2012/10/10/hrt-taken-10-years-significantly-reduces-risk-heart-failure-and-heart-atta

It's not being used by fat women who don't exercise as some kind of 'cop out' for living a healthy life. Not sure if that is the undercurrent of some recent posts, but it's nonsense if so.

many women who ask for HRT for debilitating symptoms aren't given it by their GPs- because they 'don't believe in it' - never mind asking for it to 'prevent' diseases.

No I haven't had a hysterectomy.
The Dr says it's fine for me to take on its own until I stop bleeding.

Oh ffs.
Is this wrong?
Am I taking something dangerous!?

Badders - very quick message. Unless I've misunderstood where you are in meno your doc is completely wrong!

How old are you and where in meno ie periods etc? Heavy bleeding/periods in early peri-meno is usually caused by anovulatory cycles (you don't ovulate) so progesterone is not produced so the lining continues to build up. Oestrrogen only patches should never be given - this will thicken the lining further and can cause more/heavier bleeding!! The oestrogen will of course reduce your other symptoms.

There are treatments for heavy bleeding, and also you need some form of combined HRT which includes oestrogen and progesterone. What patches have you been given and how long since you tried the other HRT and what sort was it?

Lots of info on Menopause Matters website - sorry can't link to right pages - in a hurry!

...however not sure what doc means about "until I stop bleeding" if this is a couple of weeks then oestrogen only is fine but you would then need to add in the prog. I imagine you will be wanting to take oestrogen in the medium/long-term for minimising meno symptoms?

I am peri.
I still bleed but irregular and much lighter than it was.
I have had a quick look in the site and it seems to agree with pink and you.
So what the hell was she doing!?
I guess I just have to suffer til I stop bleeding :(

I am 42.
I was in combined hrt patches but it made me bleed very heavily...through pads, pants and jeans! :(

I despair!

Oestrogen only is for women without a uterus.

If you are bleeding, Badders, it's like Bellaciao says- lack of progesterone during a cycle because the cycle is not completed.
This causes the lining to continue to build up so you get a heavy bleed when you DO have a completed cycle.

Your dr clearly knows nothing. More oestrogen will thicken the lining more and result in more bleeding.

Go straight back and ask to see another dr.

You need sequential HRT with both hormones in a cycle, or oestrogen only and the progesterone part via the Mirena for example as another option. or some young women like you get on ok with the Pill instead of HRT.

Can't have the pill...Stoke risk
Can't have the mirena...didn't suit me.
Ditto depo.
I just feel like there is nothing that can help me :(

It's funny isn't it how if a man needed testosterone because his declined faster than his peers, I doubt is other men would try to dissuade him or bang on about the small risks , or encourage him to try other methods whilst he suffered for years and years. For some reason HRT is an emotional topic amongst women - and it ought not to be

Banging on?!

Do you realise how insulting you are?

Sorry?
Who's insulted and why?

I do really hope this thread is not going to be derailed yet again by people looking to pick arguments because if that is the intention of some posters it's certainly not mine.

It's not being used by fat women who don't exercise as some kind of 'cop out' for living a healthy life

Pinkfrocks
no that's not what I am saying.

Compared to what is optimal most of us are too sedentary with too much body fat, too little lean tissue.
This is down to modern lifestyles...as a modern person it is very difficult not to live a modern lifestyle.
Optimal health involves a great deal of swimming against the tide which for various reasons is just not feasible.

you asserted earlier that (to paraphrase) 'the thinking is heading in the direction of hrt use as a preventative treatment for all women against diseases of old age'

what you are labeling 'diseases of old age' are in fact diseases of affluence, of the mismatch between modern life and the conditions under which humans have evolved to thrive.

The drop in estrogen may be the proximate cause, but the distal cause is the modern 'obesogenic' environment

'banging on' is a pejorative phrase, is it not?

MENOSAN

It's like magic.

I've read bits of arguments and can't be arsed to read them all.

My mother got breast cancer from HRT so I did lots of research and take menosan as above and it is fab.

suzanne No one is disputing the fact that being overweight contributes to many diseases. So that's not really a valid argument against the use of HRT. Lecturing people about the risks of being obese or inactive is not actually going to change the need for some women to need HRT.
I wonder why you are using such complex language to say something very simple?

You can't blame obesity for everything. Women who have low BMIs and who are fit still develop diseases that are nothing to do with affluence- osteoporosis and vaginal atrophy being just two.

Also, people who are fit are not immune to CVD or stroke. Genes play a huge part.

I'm a bit lost TBH with what you are trying to say which appears to be 'keep fit and you don't need HRT'. Very simplistic is that is what it is, and comes from someone who has never had bad symptoms- or even I assume had the advice of a meno consultant for 8 years, as I have had.