For those of you thinking menopause is some sort of heaven I am
afraid to be the bearer of bad news... you ain't seen nothing yet. I
was one of the fortunate who never had PMS or any problems from puberty on. I think I had cramps twice in my life. The only time I went a little nuts was when I going on or off the pill and that was basically a month of having no idea why there were tears running down my face because as far as I was concerned I was not in the mood for crying and there was just a bunch of water coming out of my eyes for no reason at all. When I decided to get my tubes done I was warned it could make things miserable but it never bothered me a bit. It was more of an inconvenience having the monthlies, but never a big deal and I didn't have the problems others seemed to have. My mother who had gone through hell couldn't believe I was escaping unscathed at all.
Then I found myself saying "why is it so hot in here?" a few times too
often. That made me realize I must have aged somewhere along the line and looked up the symptoms for perimenopause. Holy crap. I had most of them and had no idea. My doctor put me on a natural hormone and I was stunned. I didn't have the early stages of alzhimers at all (I had no short term memory at all by then). All the cream in the world wasn't going to help my dry itchy skin etc. and so on. It was all a loss of hormones. So within days of taking them my brain returned, I could sleep again without wanting to just go roll in the snow and basically was back to my old self. I hadn't realized it is a process longer than puberty and can hit as early as 35 and just keeps progressing until you are 50 or more. I had no idea how things had just sort of slowly changed over 5 or 6 years until I got my old self back.
Now I know why older people are often cranky. I have always been pretty laid back but boy oh boy, tell me I have to wait for my bioidenticals and someone is apt to lose an eye and think they just met someone possessed by a demon much worse than shown in the exorcist. If I miss them because some doctor doesn't think women need such things so let's see how it goes, or sometimes the dose is off as your body changes so you have to keep getting them checked, neat things like a dark thick hair starts growing out your face, right on front, and it appears out of no where. Take too much or the wrong combo and you gain weight without even trying or can't sleep or can't wake up or get zits. We don't even want to go into all the moods, heart palpitations, anxiety attacks, etc. and so on. I swear I'd take having my periods any time over this nice little change. Year after year as I have gone through this (and I think I am into year 10 now) the changes aren't half as nice as they were during puberty. These ones are all 'oh yuck! when and how did that happen and how do I make it go away?' It's not a fair trade at all IMO.
TheDogHouse wrote:For smokers, I read that most smokers are hyper-glycemic.
Due to the nicotine that effects pancreas function. Most smokers have a high blood-glucose level.
I don't know about that one but you never know since stranger things have happened. I have smoked for a lot of years and until last summer I was hypoglycemic which is the opposite. Again all related to the foods. Now I've swung the other way which was totally expected given that usually happens with hypo after a while and I had gained a lot of weight thanks to a major hormonal imbalance (and one stupid dr who it turns out had me on 3 things that all have weight gain as a side effect and never told me even when I was saying there was no way on earth I had eaten enough to gain 100 lbs and something must be wrong).
What I have found interesting as well as totally frustrating is between all the various hormones that cruise through us, they each seem to be effected by various things from sleep to exercise to food to stress to age to substansances like nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, etc. When one goes out of balance from any or some or all of those, it throws the rest and like a series of dominoes things start to go wonky. Your whole endocrine system can get nuts.
Meanwhile, try and find a doctor who gets it. There are a few gems around who are up on it and trying to get it figured out but between all the new and old thinking they all have their own little theories and I am still looking for one who understands it or can get it working. Half of them think it's just all in your head dear, pat pat pat, just live with it while others know full well it's a very real issue. Some others go so far in the other direction they really blow things which is what happened to me and I'm still trying to find a way to sort that one.
I can tell you that things like panic attacks can be from your hormones so if your doctor can figure that out you'll feel probably get sorted. You do have to watch though. I had a normal doctor who assured me she knew what she was doing but things weren't gettting better. I went to a holistic doctor who assured me he knew what he was doing and things went okay in some respects and much worse in others. On to a homeopath who freaked at what the last doctor had given me and explained why I was worse and even more imbalanced but I didn't find a lot of improvement with those changes either. Onto a walk in clinic (since I am no longer up for paying to see a doctor and there are not GP's accepting patients) and found a fairly reasonable one who sorted a few things out but refuses to deal with my HRT because woman should just learn to live with it. I pretty much twist his arm and I think he knows I will change pretty quickly from very reasonable to having to come up with a bail fund if he messes with me. He also refuses to send me to an endo who could sort this all out since he's a head patter and so the search continues.
You have to keep looking until you find the answers because our health care system really doesn't fully support woman's health but it is changing. If you watch Oprah she did a whole week on HRT and bioidenticals and other hormones and they came right out and basically said we are going to have to figure this out ourselves unless we can hit the gem doctors out there. Given the size of the boomer population and the age they are now I am sure many doctors are fearing for their lives as the women are changing from happy go lucky-peace-love-dove to fix this or you are dead meat buddy. The
ones who do know what they are doing are really busy unfortunately so it takes a while sometimes to find them and be able to get in.
You can bet if men were walking into offices with the type of changes to their bodies women get they would have this figured out a long time ago.
Sorry, long and a bit of rant. Must be time for more progesterone.