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[Gnatty]

Or U may have been waiting to see whether you went to sleep  .  It can have a sedative effect, however my friend becomes hyper and agitated with it!

Exactly. Hyper and agitated = no sleep.

[Suzysheep]

Hi pink marshmallow

I had an awful time on HRT, and an absolutely hellish time when I came off. I had awful anxiety and early morning cortisol. I would physically be sick every morning it was that bad.

A couple of things that really helped were taking an antihistamine called phenergan before bed… it knocked me out and I didn’t wake up early and full of anxiety, and I changed from citalopram to venlafaxine.

I am one of those rare people that just can’t tolerate the HRT.

I used to suffer from awful migraines, since age 9. The one thing that has really helped with them was going gluten free. I originally did it for ibs reasons, but found it stopped them amazingly!

I really hope you find some sort of relief… it was an absolute nightmare for me, so I know how you are feeling x

[joziel]

Suzysheep, if you found that anti-histamines helped you, the reason you couldn't tolerate estrogen would probably be histamine intolerance.

Estrogen increases histamine and histamine increases estrogen, in a feedback loop. Estrogen also down-regulates production of DAO, which is the enzyme that processes histamine and removes it.

Many women are bordering on histamine intolerance but are managing it most of the time without symptoms or only mild symptoms - but adding in estrogen tips them over the edge. Often it's possible for these women to have a low level of estrogen if they optimise everything else.

I have a friend who can't tolerate estrogen (not sure why) but found venlafaxine really useful for night sweats too.

[Kat36]

@joziel, I’m guessing the drip feeding of the norethisterone through the day is serving me better than the utrogestan. I always felt that the estrogen was “fighting back” on utrogestan. Weird, but glad it seems to be working better for me.

[Suzysheep]

Joziel, that’s really interesting, I didn’t know that. In the last couple of years I’ve become pretty intolerant to a lot of foods, maybe histamine plays a big part! Thank you for the info.x

[Kat36]

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a4269f28c56a85fe95206ea/t/5edcef82f510a4510b261e53/1591537538852/The+Menopause+Consultancy+-+Histamine+Factsheet+-+June+2020.pdf

This is very interesting!

[pinkmarshmallow]

I’m so glad I’ve started this topic.  It’s amazing how we’re all trying to cope in so many different ways.  Still taking Propranolol at night - may be helping with surges?  Though still waking at 5.50am.  I’m speaking to a dr on Wednesday so  hoping I can explain what I’m going through on the phone and where I go from here.  I’m thinking of reducing Sandrena down to 1.5mg but then I’ve  got to try and source 2 different boxes of sachets - 1mg and 0.5mg!  So much anxiety with all of the phone calls too!

[CLKD]

It will take a couple of weeks for the Propranolol to settle at night.  Do you drop back to sleep after 5.50?  R U getting good quality sleep B4 then? 

Could you alternate the Sandrena to cut down i.e. every other night ( I know nowt about HRT by the way). 

[joziel]

You folks in this thread, take a look at this other current thread that's running - all 17 pages of it  - which is basically a few of us trying to deal with similar issues recently, updating on our experiences: https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,62514.0.html

It would be good to have more voices in that thread. The thing is, we seem to have so many different threads about anxiety, cortisol, waking early, jumping out of sleep, heart palpitations, tachycardia, racing heart, heart beating hard, throbbing and pulsing/high blood pressure and a lot of night-time related stuff. And the risk is all this gets scattered over multiple different threads instead of the experiences brought together...

For me, none of this was happening before I started HRT - it has all started since HRT began. And I'm 99% sure it is/was the estrogen causing it. I have now stopped the estrogen (last week, 6 days ago) and I am still experiencing prolonged episodes of all this - although I am also starting to get long periods when it isn't happening and things are fine again. I'd be curious to know how your current experience/symptoms, compares with your symptoms prior to starting HRT. Is it possible this is being caused by the estrogen for you folks too?

I feel like there is some common cause(s) behind all this which relates to HRT. Clearly not all women experience HRT like this, but there seems to be a considerable subset of us which do. I would really like us to pool our collective experiences and try to figure things out(!), so do come and join that thread and then post regularly with updates as you think about things or try different stuff. Over time, we might find commonalities.

Because frankly doctors are RUBBISH at providing any understanding with these issues. They are all stumped when I talk to them about it, it's as if they've never heard of it before. Even menopause specialists. The only things they can suggest are increasing, decreasing or even stopping estrogen. Which we can really do by ourselves, if it's that simple. There is stuff going on here which they are not aware of as a group of symptoms....  OR - there is a difference between this so-called 'body identical' estrogen and what our own bodies make and many of our bodies don't like exogenous estrogen. (That means estrogen not coming from our body.)

Anyway, I am now waffling - but please do come join us on that other thread so we don't end up with 65000 different threads called 'anxiety' or 'heart palpitations' etc etc and can try to get everything in one place for future women to search for and find... 

[pinkmarshmallow]

Thanks CLKD - no I don’t sleep after 5.50am and not too bad sleep before then usually. 

Joziel - will go over to the thread you’ve suggested now. 

[Suzysheep]

Joziel, none of my anxiety or cortisol surges even existed before I used HRT.  Once it was out of my system ( which was a hellish few months) it’s gone again.

I will look on the other thread x

[Marchlove]

High and low cortisol have exactly the same symptoms!

So the only way to know is by doing saliva testing at 4 points during the day. The Dutch test also do a nighttime awaking saliva swab, so that’s useful for those who wake up in the night with these symptoms. It is expensive but has the added advantage of also doing DHea as well.
Another cheaper alternative is Zrt labs combined cortisol and Dhea test.

I’ve done these tests many times over the last six years and I now know that this is the only way you can tell what you are experiencing.

It’s such a shame that the nhs are not able to offer this simple and non intrusive test.

X

[joziel]

Suzysheep, I'd be interested to know your entire story if you wouldn't mind telling it!? I just created a separate thread on the forum with a list of questions so we can start to pull together different women's experiences and I'd be really grateful if you could answer the questions there

I am just desperate to put all this together before I really am peri-menopausal and really do need estrogen and have to negotiate all this. Or deal with life without estrogen

[2cats]

Hi

At the moment I’m on 2mg Sandrena gel daily and on days 15-26 take 200mg Utrogestan tabs orally.  Also 40mg Propranalol when I wake up with these horrible surges and take 30mg Citalopram to help with low mood (which I had before peri started).   I’ve been on this a year now. 

The cortisol surges wake me up every day around 5.30am and start from my feet up through to my chest in waves.  They can be so intense it’s really getting me down.  I’m hating going to sleep as I know I have to wake up to these surges.

My migraines (which I’ve had since puberty) I’m now 53, have got worse from day 20 through to the next cycle day 3.  Can anyone advise me what I can ask my GP when I eventually get an appointment with her?  Previously she hasn’t wanted to give me a thyroid blood test.  I just don’t know where to go from here.  Any advice would be helpful.

Hi, to help with your migraines try this for three months to give it a fair chance of working for you: 400mg vitamin B2 and 400mg of magnesium powder. This is from the migraine society and my neurologist. I can tell you the b2 I’m using as it’s quite difficult to find a pill with that level of B2 (saves taking more than one pill a day).

[2cats]

Hi pink marshmallow

I had an awful time on HRT, and an absolutely hellish time when I came off. I had awful anxiety and early morning cortisol. I would physically be sick every morning it was that bad.

A couple of things that really helped were taking an antihistamine called phenergan before bed… it knocked me out and I didn’t wake up early and full of anxiety, and I changed from citalopram to venlafaxine.

I am one of those rare people that just can’t tolerate the HRT.

I used to suffer from awful migraines, since age 9. The one thing that has really helped with them was going gluten free. I originally did it for ibs reasons, but found it stopped them amazingly!

I really hope you find some sort of relief… it was an absolute nightmare for me, so I know how you are feeling x

Hi, I’m really interested to hear that phenergan helped with your anxiety issues first thing in the morning. A mental health nurse has just prescribed this for me but I haven’t taken it yet as my sleep isn’t too bad most nights but my anxiety is bloody awful in the day! If it knocks it on the head from waking , it might be enough to start to reduce my anxiety through the day. Has it continued to work for you?