Been putting off posting this in case I jinxed something! Sorry it’s a bit long. Hopefully my small successes may help others.
Quick background - been on HRT for 7 months now. Started aged 45. Symptoms were hot flushes, night sweats, tiredness, aching, sleep problems. Dreadful anxiety and low mood which would come and go. Started HRT and CBT.
HRT helped with the sleep which was good of course, and the CBT was good but couldn’t help the physical anxiety symptoms which were pretty constant especially mornings. The CBT was more about coping with it which it did wonderfully. HRT reduced hot flushes and night sweats but they were still a problem.
After about five months the low mood, anxiety and flushes/sweats started to ramp back up. GP wasn’t happy to give me higher patch as I have migraine aura. She referred me to menopause clinic but I was told the wait may be a year. (In fact it wasn’t and I have since spoken to the consultant but that’s irrelevant to this thread).
As I was getting desperate I asked to change antidepressant from fluoxetine (been on 15 years) to venlafaxine. I had been tapering off the fluoxetine very slowly over about a year and when I restarted as peri hit I felt I never really got the benefit from taking the full dose again I should have. I realised after a bit of reading that SSRIs particularly fluoxetine can poop out or suddenly become less effective and a change to a different class (SNRI) would be worth a go. I asked for venlafaxine as I knew it had some effect on hot flushes in some women.
ANYWAY what I came here to say was that yes the venlafaxine has worked beautifully for me in terms of both anxiety, mood and hot flushes. Since I’ve started taking it five weeks ago I have had one minor night sweat (used to be one a week and awful) and maybe one hot flush a week (normally had several a day). I can even get hot exercising or put the heater on in the car without it setting the damn things off!
So if anyone is struggling with flushes and unable to take HRT, do consider this. Bear in mind that it needs to be tapered off very slowly and carefully if you come off it which some people may not be happy with.
So generally at the moments I’m feeling much better. There is still the option to increase patch if I need to, I am waiting for clinic letter about blood tests to see how well I’m absorbing the patch I have. But the clinic have assured GP there is no problem in going to higher patch with migraine in itself.
One other thing, over past few years towards peri my migraines (non-aura) have ramped up hugely, was averaging 8-10 a month. I would get them around ovulation and then from around day 18/20 until period. Also getting much more severe.
I trialled a Cefaly nerve stimulator (you have to buy it yourself and it costs about £350 if you do keep it) and have got migraines down to 4 per month over the last two months. That has made a huge difference as you can imagine. My brain feels like it’s getting a rest from the constant migraines! Takes 20 minutes per day. As I have asthma and take an antiD lots of the usual migraine prophylactics are not open to me and I wasn’t willing to risk side effects from the ones I could try like the anti epileptics.
Thanks for reading!
Author
Topic: Some Positive Updates from me - Venlafaxine, Flushes and Migraines (Read 873 times)