2024 has been, by far, the most difficult of my life.

Stacey Cornelius

2024 has been, by far, the most difficult of my life. But as I reflect I'm reminded that someone boosting a post here pretty much saved me.

Seriously. Not kidding even a little.

It was a post mentioning how dopamine levels drop when estrogen drops, so lots of people experiencing perimenopause are discovering they're ADHD.

It caught my attention because I'd developed nearly incapacitating anxiety and depression and I was not okay. At all. Didn't occur to me it was connected to menopause because I was already three years in. But the dopamine mention made me wonder.

I thought I was well-informed about peri/menopause symptoms and impacts. I was not. Many of us are not. But that's a rant for a different post.

I initially blew right past the ADHD mention because I was so desperate to find some answers. I can see some of you nodding with wry smiles.

Called my then-NP. "I am not okay. I have two suspects. One is very much at the top of the list."

So we decided to try hormone therapy first. She said some people begin to experience good results in as little as a week.

A week? Try 36 hours.

It took a day and a bloody half to see a huge change in my mood. For anyone taking notes, the hot flushes (a minor thing in comparison) settled down after about a month.

I circled back to the ADHD thing a couple of months later. Because why not flip your life upside down just after spending months feeling like you were losing your entire damn mind?

Anyway.

Whoever wrote that estrogen/dopamine post, thank you. And whoever boosted that post into my timeline, thank you, too.

This place has some definite problems, but I'm so grateful for the good people here.

Trillium Jones Take Care 🫂

@StaceyCornelius

Can I ask how much you're taking?

Stacey Cornelius

@FrozenPeach I started with 2.5mg daily oral progesterone. After about 3 months I noticed symptoms worsening, so now I'm taking 5mg. (3.75 didn't quite cut it.)

Doing a 3-day estrogen patch of 50UG (not sure what UGs are, but I suspect it's a patchy measurement with an mg equivalent).

GunChleoc

@StaceyCornelius @FrozenPeach Unless you can get by with food supplements and need stronger meds, you should definitely get a blood analysis before you take any medication, so that you won't overdose. You might only need one of the hormones.

Robyn

@gunchleoc
No idea what expertise and experience you are basing your advice on. But based on my experience and reading it's not particularly good.
Blood tests are of limited utility in fine tuning hormone supplementation when they can only ever provide a snapshot of one point in a constantly varying cycle that is becoming unpredictable with menopause. And the medical consensus is strong that people with uteruses should not take Estrogen only HRT.
@StaceyCornelius @FrozenPeach

Mer-fOKxTOwl

@RedRobyn @gunchleoc @StaceyCornelius @FrozenPeach afaik estrogen = (part of) hrt? where do you draw the difference?

Robyn

@glowl
Low estrogen is the part of menopause that most people seem to want help with. But if you have a uterus estrogen supplementation without also having progesterone in some form is associated with increased cancer risk.
I'm responding to the suggestion that OP might only need one of those hormones if they had more bloodtests and managed their diet differently by pointing out that many of us can't have one without the other.
@gunchleoc @StaceyCornelius @FrozenPeach

GunChleoc

@RedRobyn @glowl @StaceyCornelius @FrozenPeach I know somebody who has elevated estrogen and low progesterone, so you should still get a test as a starting point that you can fine-tune. Taking even more estrogen would be a very bad idea for her.

Gnomigut

@gunchleoc @RedRobyn @glowl @StaceyCornelius @FrozenPeach did you even read the OP? She‘s doing it together with a Doctor. I bet it includes blood-tests. So what are you preaching? Are you a doctor? Is this a second (unsolicited) opinion?

GunChleoc

@theVedek @RedRobyn @glowl @StaceyCornelius @FrozenPeach This wasn't aimed at the OP, but the person asking which amount she was taking. I wanted to look out for her, because I don't know her and she might take a dose that would be detrimental to her personal body chemistry. So, I'd like her to see a doctor about this rather than mimic somebody else's dose. That's all.