MS and menopause..

Hi, !

You are definitely not alone in dealing with MS and menopause. And I know at first, I know it can feel like a guessing game of "is this my MS or is this a symptom of menopause?". And, even if you are not in full menopause, you may be in perimenopause (TMI here, but that's where I am -- perimenopause). People in perimenopause can experience almost all of the symptoms linked to menopause (hot flashes, fatigue, mood swings, change in libido, brain fog, etc). We have a pretty nice community of women in menopause or post menopause that talk pretty openly about that experience. Here's one piece (with member comments at the end of the piece) -- https://multiplesclerosis.net/living-with-ms/moving-menopause-ms-double-pleasure-double-fun. And here's a conversation from our forums on menopause and MS -- https://multiplesclerosis.net/forums/menopause-and-ms. We also have a sister site dedicated to menopause, specifically, if you are interested -- https://menopause-community.net/. I know navigating this life change and a condition like MS can be tricky, but you can do it! If you have further questions or thoughts, don't hesitate to reach out!

Best, Erin, Team Member.

MicFab, don't panic, but do start charting your periods or absence thereof. I went through perimenopause with all kinds of distressing and confusing symptoms and treatments including endometriosis and what they called at the polycystic ovarian syndrome with painful periods and a lot of facial hair, for which I recommend waxing at regular intervals. They're now calling the same identical condition PMOS, polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome. My OB/GYN asked me to chart my period, including the heaviness of flow, for almost a year. When my period stopped for a full year, when I was about 51, he told me I had officially entered menopause and put me on HRT, hormone replacement therapy because HRT was supposed to protect against breast cancer and heart disease. Within a year, the results of the Nurses' Study, the only long term study of women's health conducted in the world, came out and stated that when you actually looked at the results of putting women on HRT, in fact HRT produced MORE breast cancer and MORE heart disease than raw dogging your menopause. Here's a link to look at the Nurses' Study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurses%27_Health_Study

Now here's the thing: my doctor immediately took me off HRT, leading to my continuing to have regular bleeding every three weeks for another nine months. We never did figure out where that came from, but I did get to have two menopauses. ALSO and please note, this was 27 years ago, and Heaven only knows what the current thinking is about HRT! My beloved UROLOGIST put me on vaginal estrogen with Estradiol, which is doing a splendid job of keeping me sexually active and free of UTIs.

YOUR MILEAGE WILL VARY. Menopause is like MS -- we all take to it differently. Find a doctor who listens, who takes you seriously, and who proposes safe means of keeping you safe and healthy. And don't worry about feeling crazy and not having the faintest idea of what's going on. That part is perfectly normal. Finding a listening doctor who finds ways to help your through an event that is comparable to puberty in terms of duration and conveying a feeling of absolute madness, anxiety and collywompusness is essential. You are most definitely NOT ALONE and you're not CRAZY! Hmm. Does that sound like any other advice you've gotten for any other disease that brings you to these pages?

Oh, and one other practical tip: while our body is deciding what temperature it thinks it's living with, the most practical tool I ever found is cooling scarves that I found on Etsy. There are hundreds of vendors and billions of choices. Knock yourself out! You soak the scarf in cold water and some magical crystals inside the scarf grab on to that cold and when you tie the scarf around your neck, it cools your blood, which of course runs all through your body, colling you off nicely. I'll also include a link for the best cooling vest EVER: soak it in water for two minutes and wear it all day. It is so easy to charge and SO easy to dip in water and cool again. And it doesn't have to be frozen, and it's not very expensive. It has saved my temperature sensitive hide time and time again! They're on sale at the moment and come in a wide variety of sizes. Here's the link: https://www.mycoolingstore.com/collections/evaporative-cooling-vests/products/alphacool-evaporative-cooling-vest

Trust me, MicFab, in a few years, you'll look back on this and laugh. It's very disorienting to go through, but an awful lot of us have gone through it, with and without MS at the same time. You came to EXACTLY the right place to find out how to manage it and MS at the same time! Best of luck, love, and be SURE to get yourself that cooling vest, it will save your life on MANY heated occasions!

All the best,
Therry, a Multiplesclerosis.net Team Member