OK, so true confessions: I AM A GYNECOLOGIST…and when I experienced my first hot flash I had NO IDEA what was happening to me!
My daughter and I were shopping, and she was scoping out the Discount Rack…her favorite…and SUDDENLY I felt absolutely awful.
I was a little lightheaded, slightly nauseated, and was convinced that I had just stepped into an oven.
I excused myself and stepped outside.
The sensations passed in a few minutes and I said to myself (once it was over!)…“Elizabeth, Holy Moses, I think that was a hot flash”.
Yes, I talk to myself…and Moses, too, apparently…
OMGOODNESS…so, I figured I would “gut it out”…after all, how bad could it really be?
How long could it really last?
Do I REALLY want to take hormones??
I lasted 4 months…then I called “uncle”.
I was having night sweats that awakened me with soaking bed sheets, had to change clothes and totally disrupted my sleep…which left me feeling tired and terrible the next day…and I needed to be able to function.
My hot flashes were distracting me from accomplishing tasks throughout the day. And I did not have any way to predict how much longer “the change” would take until I was safely through to the other side.
I asked my doctor for estrogen replacement therapy (AKA “hormone replacement therapy” [HRT]) and what a good call that was!
I started at the lowest dose, which was not quite enough initially to relieve my symptoms, so I started taking the lowest dose twice daily until my symptoms completely cleared.
Once I was symptom-free for a few months, I backed off to once daily and that seemed to be a good dose to keep me feeling OK.
Now, there are MANY symptoms that come with menopause and EVERY WOMAN will experience her “change” in a unique and personal way.
The most common symptoms include:
- Hot flashes (feeling as you’ve been rudely thrust into the hottest oven imaginable)
- Night sweats (same thing as hot flashes BUT so much worse, see my description above
- Mood lability / irritability (mood ranges from depressed / sad, to anxious, to extremely irritable, to euphoric…all in 5-10 minutes!!)
- Concentration difficulties (worse than word finding challenges, cannot focus on the task at hand despite always being able to do so previously, sometimes cannot remember in the moment something you KNOW and have known for years)
- Sleep problems (difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, weird dreams)
- Memory disturbances (see #4 above)
- Skin changes (once firm, now not so much – regardless of how much you exercise)
- Hair changes (thinning begins across the scalp, not bald but thinning)
- Sometimes thyroid dysfunction (low thyroid can sometimes confuse a diagnosis of menopause as the symptoms may overlap)
There are many things that you can do to counter the symptoms of menopause, including:
- Focus on exercise, nutrition, hydration to keep yourself as healthy as possible as your body and brain experience the changes of menopause
- Talk to your healthcare provider about your symptoms and potential interventions, which may include medication(s) and checking some lab values to ensure you do not have an additional issue which may need to be treated independently from your menopause symptoms
- Consider your own preferences for intervention – some of us will go to any length to avoid hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or other medications, and some of us are not “good candidates” for HRT (i.e., if we have a personal or family history of breast or ovarian cancer, and there are other considerations which may not allow you to take hormones)
I look forward to connecting with you during a future podcast where we can dive deeper into this topic and have a meaningful discussion about you and your “change”.
Until then, remember, I am listening to you!
