Posted by dusty rhoads on July 9, 2010, at 2:45:06
I'm a 35-year-old woman who's had PMDD for about 5 years. It seems to have gradually gotten worse over the years, and I now only have about one good week per month. I've found a bunch of things that help (B vitamins, exercise, fish oil, grapefruit juice, calcium, magnesium, vitamin d, meditation, yoga, getting plenty of sleep, etc) but still have pretty bothersome symptoms (irritability, anxiety, depression, bloating, etc). I've tried SSRI's, anxiolytics, birth control pills, etc and they were all either ineffective, or the side effects made them intolerable.
Anyway ... I recently went to a naturopathic doctor and got my hormone levels tested. Turns out my estrogen is on the low end of normal, and progesterone and testosterone are on the high end. This jives with what I've been reading on PubMed about women with PMDD having low estrogen levels. I've also read on PubMed that grapefruit can increase estrogen, and after drinking grapefruit juice I noticed that I felt calmer and happier.
So, my question is ... has anyone out there with PMDD tried estrogen therapy? All the doctors I've seen so far are very reluctant to give me estrogen, but I'm not giving up because I have a strong feeling that it would help me. Supposedly estrogen by itself can increase the risk of endometrial cancer, but I read in a book on menopause that endometrial cancer is really only a risk for women who aren't shedding their endometrial linings every month, i.e. postmenopausal women. I probably have at least another decade of PMDD torture before menopause, so I'm ready to try estrogen now. But it's frustrating that it's so difficult to get estrogen therapy by itself, without progesterone, which I already have too much of.
Any thoughts or anecdotes would be very much appreciated! :o) Or if anyone knows of any studies that I can print out and show my doctor, relating to the safety of estrogen therapy for pre-menopausal women. I did find one enterprising doctor in the UK who touts estrogen therapy for women under 60 (Dr John Studd), but I can't access his journal articles for some reason.
Thanks for reading!
poster:dusty rhoads
thread:953868
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20100703/msgs/953868.html