Hi everyone,
I'm sooo relieved to have found other menopause sufferers with which to talk to - other people so just don't get it do they?
I started perimenopausal at the age of 36 (6 years ago) had major swings of period flow from nothing for months on end of flooding in 30 minutes :~
I ended up having the Merina coil fitted to control the stupidly heavy periods and was in heaven for about 4 years until menopause symptoms started creeping in.
Looking back at aged 36 I also now realise that I started major palipitations then too and was diagnosed with an ectopic heart rate out of the blue - hmm I've since read this is a menopause symptom.
Cutting out caffeine sorted that one straight away
(tip 1!
)
Then about 2 years ago I started getting medium hot flushes several times an hour all day and all night long - sleeping was nigh on impossible, it was hellish! I read up on stuff and tried the Lady Care Magnet. 1 year of no hot flushes - heaven again
(tip 2)
A year later they started up again - I was gutted, they weren't nearly as bad but I wasn't going to stand for it without doing anything lol!
I gave up sugar and had 2 months solid with no symptoms and the energy of a 5 year old - it was AWESOME! I'd get to 8pm having done all the after dinner stuff (got twin 12 year olds!) and had heaps of energy left and I'd want to do gardening or vacuuming or something - quite bizarre! I thought that sort of energy had long since gone!
Then the hot flushes started up AGAIN! What I'd now figured was that when you take something that makes your symptoms go away all that thing does is get rid of, say, 10% or 20% of all the symptoms that you might ever get. So when they come back it's NOT that the thing doesn't work any more, or your body's got used to it or something, it's presumably (and I'm no expert here!) that your estrogen, or something, has dropped (again) and you need something else to combat them.
To cut the rest of the story short as soon as mine come back again I add something else in that gets rid of them. My list sounds awful now but if by doing all these things I can (more or less) sleep and hence function 'normally' then I'm well prepared to do them. If I stopped doing them all I'd be a gibbering wreck within a week with 24 hot flushes and all the side effects mentally that would accompany that - {shudder}!
So I now 1) wear the magnet 2) am caffeine, alcohol and sugar free (see the site 'I Quit Sugar' - don't attempt this based on what you currently know as it won't work!) 3) take soya tablets 3) take 1/2 dessert spoon of flax seed powder with my cereal 4) take evening primrose oil...
PHEW! Big post for my first one, sorry, but there's a lot of really useful info in there
I hope it blesses at least one person
XXXX