Anxiety and Menopause

[Theresa2]

Does anybody know if their anxiety started during menopause and what you did about it?

[minders]

Well I havent gone through menopause yet, but I did see a womens health doctor and she tested all my hormone levels and said I was in pre menopause, I was only 31 at the time, she wanted to start me on hormone replacement therapy, she said it would help with my anxiety so much, I didnt want to start HRT at such a young age, and you always hear about women that get cancer with hormone Replacement so I was scared as well. So here I am still dealing with anxiety. Ask your gyno and see what their outlook on Hormone Replacement is. Good Luck to ya.

[sulmare]

you can confuse anxiety with the menopause, and I think the menopause will certainly heighten your anxious tendancies.  My mother had panic attacks during the menopause, but was fine before and after it.

I wish my GP would give me HRT!!!

[Pa1965]

Have you thought about bioidentical (natural) hormones?

I am almost 43 and feel perimenopause may be the cause of the exacerbation of my anxiety symptoms also.  I have had panic disorder for many years, but it has gotten worse the past few months.  I am in the process of doing a 28 day saliva test for my adrenal and hormones.  The company that sent the test kit to me then evaluates the results and formulates a transdermal cream that is unique to your tests to bring your hormones back into balance.  They start with the adrenal balancing since if your adrenals are out of balance (cortisol and DHEA), your sex hormones will be out of balance.  

There is a gynecologist here in Canada who is world-reknown for using biodentical (natural) hormones.  He used to be the head gynecologist at the Toronto hospital for many years.  He is totally against HRT because of the dangers involved.  He told me that if your estrogen levels are high, this increases your cortisol, which causes anxiety and tachycardia (fast heart beat).  I notice that during the follicular phase (first half) of my cycle, my anxiety levels and adrenaline (produced by the adrenals) are sky high along with my heart rate.  Also, he stated that when cortisol is high, it takes up a lot of your body's progesterone which in turn, makes you estrogen dominant causing these symptoms of anxiety amongst other things.  

As far as safety, he has 300 articles on the safety of biodentical hormones as being MUCH safer than HRT.  Many women are going this route now, apparently.

The company I ordered the saliva tests from is Sabre Sciences in California, and they also use biodentical hormones and supplements in their transdermal creams with great success.  You may want to give them a try.  I'm really hoping it works for me as I want to get to the root cause of this.  Regular doctors just want to add more drugs to the mix instead of finding out why the increased anxiety, and I don't want that.

Another option might be to try a product called EstroSense and AdrenaSense.  The Toronto gynecologist highly recommended the EstroSense for balancing hormones, and the AdrenaSense for calming down the adrenals.  I have those products as well, but haven't tried them yet as I'm still doing the saliva testing with Sabre Sciences and want the results to give an accurate picture.  I'm going to see if I can take them along with the creams.

The only thing with going the natural hormone replacement route is that you have to pay out of your pocket as these natural products can't be patented, but I think it's well worth it in the long run.

I hope this helps.

Pam