Hot flashes Migraines and Hormones....OH MY!

Well it's been an eventful week for me. For the past two years or so I have been dealing with the increasingly annoying symptoms of peri-menopause. All the while I have insisted on not getting on the HRT bandwagon. I was insistent upon doing it all natural. And the black cohosh has worked to help with the hot flashes, but on tuesday of this week I gave up my all natural fight, waved the white flag and asked my GYN to give me the hormones!! LOL After having at least two episodes of migraine headaches that lasted for 3 days or more, I could no longer take on menopause by myself. I can put up with a lot of things, but I can't be in the bed for days at a time with the worst headache ever and nausea!! I have to remain active and keep up my exercise routine. Nothing is more important for me to remain stable with my Pulmonary Fibrosis. So for now I have gone on the estrogen patch, Vivelle Dot and cyclical progesterone. I am still having hot flashes but no where near as many. No headaches so far. She did give me a prescription for Imitrex in case the migraine comes back, but I haven't had to take that so far. I will also be seeing a Neurologist just to make sure there is nothing else going on, but she's 95% sure I'm having hormonal migraines. OH JOY!  Getting old is NOT for sissies. Especially if you are a woman. It's an everyday battle to stay healthy, eat right, exercise, keep your hormones in balance and live your life. So to my sisters out there, BE STRONG!

I'm Smoking HOT LITERALLY

First off, I'm sorry for deleting the other Blog, but it was kind of messy and I didn't know exactly what I was doing. They have a new format now that is much easier so I'm gonna try this again.  Now for the topic of the day......I had gone almost two months without one hot flash and all of a sudden BAM they are back!! I'm sitting here sweating as I'm typing this post!! When I first started having them I went to my GYN and insisted that something be done to stop them. I was adamant about not going ont HRT's so she recommended Effexor 75mg. I unfortunately didn't do my research on this med and started taking it. It got rid of the hot flashes almost immediately and I had no side effects that I could tell, however I made the awful mistake of missing one dose and I was very sick!! At that point I started doing some research on the drug and didn't like what I found. So I had to be weaned off and that was a nightmare!! It took over a month and I felt horrible the whole time. I have since been taking Black Cohosh which works well in stopping them, however I seem to be having a power surge right now. haha!! So today I went to GNC and got a different brand of Black Cohosh to see if that will help. If not I'll be trying the soy based products like remifem or estroven. Once a hot flash starts there isn't much you can do to cool down. It's like you are burning from inside out!! I just stick my head in the freezer sometimes. LOL  Well hopefully the new stuff will work better and we will see if I melt away or not.