multiple questions

Hello everyone,
I have multiple questions and need any feedback I can get. I am 45, have had Fibro for 20 yrs. Managed acceptable quality of life until I hit perimenopause hard. Questions...Does anyone have trigger points so bad that you can no longer exercise or stretch? Does anyone else have to use a wheelchair? Did anyone else see massive increase in symptoms with perimenopause? Is anyone else home bound? Thank you all for any input you can offer!

Peace,
Elizabeth

This is my story too. I'm 49 and when I was 44 I had entered perimenopause. I didn't have these stiff, achy, pains like I do now, but I had other signs of peri. Then they took an ovary and tube out b/c of a complex cyst that looked cancerous. THank goodness it wasn't. But as soon as that ovary came out, my peri got worse, mood swings, no libido, and the pains started several months later. It seems to me as I got further into it in the last 4 years I have had bad muscle problems.

I started taking bio HRT 1.5 years ago thinking maybe it was the imbalance of those hormones. I wasn't getting hot flashes, but I was getting chill flashes and always cold. I took all three hormones in low doses, but the only thing it helped was getting rid of my rages. So I still take very low doses of estrogen and OTC progesterone cream, but I stopped the testosterone as I felt no libido or energy from taking it.

Then last December I thought maybe these pains and symptoms are low thyroid. Since I was peri and at the right age, and had lost an ovary I started linking that in with adrenal issues and thyroid. It seems the ovaries, adrenals and thyroid all work together. When one or more is off, you can have a myriad of symptoms. Fibro I believe is one of them. But I don't know how to explain fibro in men. It could be adrenal and thyroid only for them.

I was told 20 years ago I had a goiter that went away. I paid no attention. Then last year I thought, how does a goiter go away and a doctor can tell? So I asked for a sonogram of the thyroid. I had complex cysts on all four quadrants, and nodules, and mild enlargement. No antibodies. All doctors said serum levels were normal, but from all that I read on my own, I felt they were wrong. I found a holistic doctor to give me Armour and adrenal hormone and have been doing that all this year. But, I'm still suffering the same symptoms of I believe fibro, but no one will diagnose me with that.

I believe that since I never had any of these symptoms my whole reproductive life, and that it all started since the ovary came out and I was more into peri, then it is the body out of balance. I believe woman have gone through these problems in the past and it was called something else and because they were depressed they took ADs, and anti anxiety medications that can mask over the problem until the body gets over the hormonal shifts.

I also have a hiatus hernia and was on proton pump drugs for a long time and I wonder if that kept nutrients from getting in to the body and then causing the thyroid to get messed up, which then caused me to get ovarian cysts, and then an ovary removed, and then even more hormonal shifts.

So that is my story and theory. I'm still wondering if I have fibro, I think I do, but none of the doctors so far will diagnose that. They sending me to physical therapy and say lose weight and strengthen the stomach. Well two years ago I was down 40lbs and kept it off and exercised pretty often and had worked the stomach muscles and I still had pain then. So they are idiots. It seems to me that whenever I lifted weights on a regular basis I'd never have any real strength or tone . Now I can hardly lift anything. Now since starting thyroid I seem to be more hypo and have the same pains and now I've gained all the weight back in the last year. I'm not in control of my eating as I'm more depressed lately so I eat in between meals more and less activity means more weight. I'm not obese, but I'm about 30lbs overweight again.

And it seems most of my life I've been up and down the same 30lbs, so I think I may have been hypo most of my adult life. I've gotten all kinds of illnesses: endometriosis, shingles at 30, hiatus hernia, cyst removed on one ovary, then a few years later another, then appendicitis, and now this pain syndrome.

Long story, sorry, but I believe the fibro is related to thyroid. I think many women in peri, are in a hormonal shift, when estrogen is dominant it can bind to thyroid hormone making it ineffective or causing the thyroid to reverse the wrong way. Muscle pain is a big low thyroid symptom. When women who are younger get fibro, I think they are also in some type of estrogen dominance. For men, it could be the same, but very few men get fibro. I also had endometriosis which is an estrogen dominance issue too. I still take very low doses of estrogen because I do have low estrogen symptoms, but my E is higher than my progesterone, even though my estrogen is very, very low. It is the whole imbalance regardless of how much you have in the cells.

So again, yes, I think it's all related to peri, and hormonal imbalances with estrogen, progesterone, adrenal and thyroid.

I had most of my thyroid removed due to a goiter when I was 17 yrs old, that's the way they handled it back then. So I have been on thyroid meds most of my life and have it checked once a year and had no problems with energy or pain til I went through an extremely stressful time which just happened to be about the time I start perimenopause. I chose not to take HRT but let nature take her course.

 

It will be nice when they get to the bottome of what causes fibro so we can all stop guessing.

 

No matter how much exercise I get I can not build up strength in my arms. I was brushing my dogs the other night and had to stop cause my right arm got soooo tired and weak. When I was taking stuff off the Christmas tree, holding my arms out to do so, I had to quit a couple of times and rest cause it was making the muscles over my ribs hurt. I can lift my 20 some pound great grandson once but if I lifted him and put him down and did it over again I probably couldn't do it over twice without my arms giving out. Our muscles are weird.

 

luv and hugs

Marlee

 

 

Hi Elizabeth, normally I walk my dog at least one good walk a day (more than just 5 minutes up and down the street) but for the past 3 weeks I haven't been able to exercise or work because my points are too tender to touch. Some days I have trouble wearing clothes, especially on my neck and back. It stresses me a little (which it never used to) because I had been planning on starting a new, gentle exercise program in the pool at the gym. But I haven't been able to move too much past the mailbox lately. I am 41, almost 42, and have also been wondering if I'm perimenopausal. I had a hysterectomy, everything out except ovaries, but they were never great performers to begin with, so, thanks for raising the question. I think fibromites know their bodies better than people without.