Hi Peacegirl,
I've been on thyroid meds for Hashimotos for 25 years & like you, Stella & some other members, have found that this really seems to complicate menopause. My heart goes out to you as it can be a very difficult combination to manage. Not impossible though, so please don't give up hope - just means keeping at it like a dog with a bone!
have been permanently hot for a week. Its weird because its literally all the time so nit like a flush. I don't sweat any more for some reason but I would be permanently soaked if I did. Its worse after eating.
My last thyroid results have my tsh suppressed and my t4 over range. I don't feel too well so perhaps i am a little ‘over'. . . .
have a visibly swollen thyroid too now
I thought menopause was complicated but endocrinology is crazy complicated!
If your thyroid is currently swollen and your TFT suggestive of overtreatment, I would urge you to ask for referral to an Endocrinologist - preferably one sympathetic to menopause. With a suppressed TSH & above range T4, this alone could be causing you to feel horribly hot, but on HRT the picture can be very murky & menopause is a time when expert Endo input can be crucial to getting our lives back on track. As you say, the field is so very complex, so it's not a road that's easy to walk alone.
If in addition to feeling too hot, your digestive tract is going into overdrive (loose stools, indigestion, hunger difficult to satisfy), you feel unreasonably tense/anxious/jittery, have racing thoughts & you're losing weight, that would also suggest to me that you might benefit from reducing your thyroid meds a little, but I wouldn't do this without Endocrinologist approval unless whoever oversees your thyroid condition is already happy for you to make minor adjustments yourself & these are followed by timely TFTs to ensure any changes are appropriate.
Like Stella, I've found with increasing age (I'm late 50s), that a TSH at or near bottom range makes me feel uncomfortably over-revved though prior to peri I needed it to be low/suppressed in order to function well.
You will know that if we're overtreated over a significant length of time this is detrimental to the body systemically & that our cardiovascular system & bones especially can be at risk. It's also exhausting for the body when metabolism is running too high.
Thermoregulation is said to be compromised in hypothyroidism even before you throw menopause into the mix & that was certainly my experience. Then at the start of peri my body seemed to go absolutely haywire, with the most intense overheating & like you, for very lengthy stretches- not the few minutes you read is classic for flushing & night sweats. Like you, I seem to be unable to sweat, which makes it harder for us to cool down. Especially at night, my body seemed unable to bring my temp back down so that again like you, I felt almost permanently too hot & this prevented me getting back to sleep. This went on for more than a decade, until a few years postmenopause I finally started HRT, which helped to some extent, but did not resolve symptoms enough for me to stop looking for a more effective regimen, which has become the Holy Grail!
I see from your footnotes that Femoston Conti + Evorel is the most recent regimen listed - are you still on that combo now? I ask because if by any chance you've since swapped to Utrogestan, I've found that to be impossible to tolerate on thyroid meds. Women on thyroid replacement are said to be more sensitive to progesterone/progestogens & I find it's this element of the HRT package that is the worst for exacerbating overheating, insomnia & generally revving metabolism to an excessive extent. Read recently that progesterone causes an increase in retention of minerals at cellular level - potassium & zinc from memory - but don't quote me on that, that encourage conversion of T4-T3 which as you'll know, speeds up metabolism . . . one consequence being feeling too hot all the time.
Please make sure you drink plenty, as it's easy to become dehydrated if thyroid is running high & the diuretic effect from prog can exacerbate this. I find prog very diuretic but that oestrogen causes me to retain fluid - the difference having become obvious experimenting over time on sequi cycles & with changing regimens.
Sorry for the long post - it's a complicated scenario for us & this can make it difficult to give a straightforward answer to queries. I hope there's something useful in this & that you manage to get some expert help soon, so that you feel less lost in the maze.
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Topic: A permanent hot flush/sweat? (Read 1689 times)