Worried about your hormones?

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We are playing a lot of catch up on understanding hormones for women. A lot of people become focused on the hormone levels and try to “replace them.” It’s not necessarily that the hormone levels are wrong, it’s that they are changing and dysregulated that can cause mood, anxiety, attention problems (and even sometimes psychosis). Checking your hormones is not a terrible idea, but having hormones within normal range does not indicate there is no issue, so it is actually better to go by symptom management as opposed to actual lab values especially when it comes to perimenopause. We make a diagnosis of perimenopause by symptoms, not lab values. Lab values can indicate if a woman is in menopause or postmenopausal pretty well. The Follicle Stimulating Hormone (or FSH) will be very elevated in a postmenopausal female. It's because the ovaries are not responding by making enough estrogen and the FSH is saying "hey you lazy girls, get to work" and the ovaries are like, "no thank you boss, we are retired now, you can say whatever you want and it's not going to bother us."

The clinical term you see frequently in research is “dysregulation of the HPA axis.” There are a number of examples of changing hormones causing changes in mental health status, the most profound changes may be in postpartum (with a giant drop in allopregnanolone) and perimenopause (essentially up is down, down is up, left is right and right is left- like a bunch of circus clowns trying to direct you through TSA). If you feel like you’re on an emotional roller coaster during these periods of life, you are not alone. Your body and brain are going through some pretty amazing and wild changes. There are treatment options to help, for example: zuranolone (to replace allopregnanolone) for postpartum depression or hormone replacement therapy for regulating the hormones a little during the perimenopause transition. Not to mention the regular psychiatric medications too!

#mentalhealth #momlife #women #perimenopause #menopause #depression #anxiety #adhd #adhdwomen #hormones

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352289520300023

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