So the knee pain went away but then came back in the other knee. Maybe my chiropractor was right about bursitis.
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Ok I have a couple things I need explained. Actuaries posing as doctors may respond to one or both. (OK I added a 3rd.)
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Allergies. I had an allergy test when I was 14, because I’ve sniffled and sneezed my whole life. I was thrilled when Claritin came out (in the 90’s) bc it meant relief for my symptoms. Several years ago I had an allergy test that showed I was not allergic to anything. Crazy, since I sneeze and drip when I don’t take a daily antihistamine. I recently went to see a pulmonologist about my maybe asthma. He ordered some labs and one was an allergy blood test. Again I tested negative for everything. Are the allergies all in my head? Or is the fact that I take an antihistamine every single day of my life impacting the results of the blood test?
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Sleep. I consistently get 6.5-7 hours of sleep. I wake up between 3 & 4 most mornings. (And yes, I go to bed at 9 most nights. Hubby gets up at 5.) I know that’s not terrible compared to many adults but I am tired all the time. The pulmonologist said I am probably missing REM sleep. He suggested going to bed later, which I tried over the weekend but I still woke up at the same time and was even more tired—to the extent it was hard to function. He also suggested “tiring myself out with exercise”. It is still 90 degrees here at 8 at night but I am trying that. He seemed to indicate this would have an immediate positive effect but so far nothing. I might need a more vigorous walk and more than 20 minutes but dang it I am tired and it was 90 degrees. But I digress.
So this morning I noticed how hot I was when I woke up. I am 55 and still having my cycle. While I was hot, it’s nothing like how I’ve seen hot flashes and night sweats described. And yet—when I came home from my chiropractor this am I was freezing. I checked the thermostat to see if someone turned it down to 68 again. Nope, it was set on 70. I put on a sweater as usual. And then I wondered if my usual cold nature makes hot flashes more like warm flashes. Is this wake up thing hormonal? -
Anxiety. I have anxiety about many things. Am I just looking for something to worry about? Might an anxiety pill solve all of these issues? My PCP said my anxiety was “situational” and she wouldn’t give me anything. Might it be time to revisit this subject?
BTW, the cough I have had for 6 years is finally gone now that I am using my flovent inhaler twice a day. Who knew? It took about 2 weeks.
Also my blood pressure is ridiculously high today.
the peri-menopausal group i’m on facebook would say that it’s peri-menopause related and you need HRT. if you are already on HRT, then dunno.
i joined it due to a few symptoms, but i don’t have most of the symptoms they complain about in there. then again, they blame almost every symptom under the sun on peri-menopause, but being tired and anxiety are tops.
my mother takes xanax for anxiety and takes it situationally, so i think your pcp is wrong.
i hate xanax as it puts my head in a fog.
the chicks on the peri-menopause group would say HRT rather than xanax. my mother swears by xanax.
Note that you’re negative for all the things they tested for. It is very possible that you have an allergy to something that wasn’t part of the test.
The medication you’re taking addresses symptoms, not treat the actual issues; so I doubt that will have any impact on allergy test results.
With that said, the question to ask might be “what else could cause these symptoms?” You might get an appointment with an Ear/Nose/Throat (ENT) doctor and see what they might say.
Also, do you live in an urban/suburban location where there might be air pollution? Don’t need LA smog levels, but you could be very sensitive to this.
Final suggestion to try that is not necessarily medically related: consume honey that has been made locally. Apparently, this would help with building up “immunity” to local allergens (which might not be part of the allergy test the doctor runs).
Antihistamines don’t really treat symptoms, do they? Don’t they prevent you from responding to the allergen? Decongestants and the like treat the symptoms. (Anyway I did look this up and antihistamines do not affect blood tests but they do affect the skin prick test.)
They tested quite a lot of potential allergens. Trees, grasses, mold, dogs & cats, I forget what else.
My locale has decent air quality but many people have moved here and developed allergies bc of all the stuff in the air all the time. In this area “seasonal allergies” happen all year long, but still tend to be worse in spring and fall.
I do use local honey but don’t take it daily. I could. But if I don’t actually have allergies then why would I need to.
Not on any hormones currently.
I found this on healthline.com. I’m planning to wait until I hear from the doctor who ordered the testing, but I’m going to ask if he thinks I should stop taking Allegra.
I was severely allergic to cats as a kid. Now, not as much.
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allergies can come and go, yes. my brother now allergic to shellfish, as an example. i was (as a kid) allergic to other foods. not anymore. you can develop immunity to something (like w allergy shots).
I tested positive for allergies to dogs/cats, despite never having had issues around either (had cats as a kid and my 20s, dogs the last 8 years).
allergy tests usually are for specific and predictable things: mold; certain tree pollens; certain grasses/weeds; etc. if they don’t use the right serum to prick you with, they might miss it. But what “it” is might still exist in your orbit and for some reason they can’t find it.
I don’t know about the blood test you had. new to me as a concept.
keep taking claritin if it seems to help. no downside. I doubt “all in your head.” maybe it is more asthma and the other inhaler helps too?
find a (new to you) allergy/asthma specialist and find out what they think. my ENT trips told me my sinuses had narrow openings and so were prone to infection. surgery could address, but i chose instead for allergy shots to prevent them from filling up in the first place.
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sleep - based on my spouse’s experience, this stage of life is shitty for some women and their sleep. she is always tired, can’t get enough sleep, has body temp control challenges, etc. sounds terrible to me. but is common based on the conversations she has with peers.
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anxiety - lots to make a person anxious in today’s world. I can’t pretend to evaluate this.
I’m going to agree with ao fan’s perimenopausal group. I found hormone replacement therapy helped with hot flashes and with the depression i slowly developed as perimenopause kicked in. I think it’s worth trying.
Also, hrt got a bad rap several years ago, but the negative stuff that for all the publicity doesn’t apply to your situation. What those studies were designed to test was “if a post-menopausal woman has heart disease, does hrt help?” And the answer was a resounding, “no”, in fact, it might make matters worse. But if you pick apart the data, hrt actually helps those who are younger or recently experienced menopause. It’s only problematic for older women who haven’t menstruated in several years.
Since you are still perimenopausal, you are in the “probably increases your expected lifespan” group. Ymmv, and it also depends on your other risk factors. But it’s definitely worth checking with your doctor, and probably take safe to try.
One thing to be careful of is that if you have a uterus, you shouldn’t take estrogen unless you also take progesterone. Your doctor should know that, but one of my friends got into trouble because her doctor was careless about that. So it’s worth checking.
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Sometimes when you stop taking a drug there is a thing called the rebound effect. At a real basic level, your body gets used to the drug and does less or more of whatever to compensate for the drug. When you stop taking the drug, your body doesn’t know it and has gotten used to doing the more (or less) of whatever it was. One example that I recall is taking cough suppressants. If you take them for awhile, when you stop your coughing actually gets worse because your body was trying to cough but the drug was preventing it. I don’t recall if that can occur with anti-histamines but it seems likely as you are suppressing the histamine response with the drug so your body is generating extra histamine to make up for it. When you stop, your body keeps that higher level which is going to react to things you normally wouldn’t react to. I’d want to stop taking the Claritin but I’d check with my allergist before doing so.
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In general, your body temp will decrease by a degree or two when you sleep but it fluctuates throughout the night (as it does during the day too). Depending on how/when you are waking, your body might be cycling through a hot phase to raise your temperature to a normal level. This might feel like hot even though you are really just back to normal. However, everybody is different. I sleep hot and sweat a ton if I’m not wearing clothing to absorb it. If this is new, I’d probably blame it on peri-menopause.
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Anxiety is tricky. The answer is probably yes that an anxiety pill will likely cause your anxiety to go away. I’d need more detail on symptoms to make an actual diagnosis but the DSM guidelines are fairly easy to find and you can check it out yourself. I’m not certain why your PCP thinks it is situational but my gut says she’s wrong. It very well might be related to peri-menopause rather then actual anxiety.
I have some sort of environmental allergy, but no clue what. My PCP told me to start taking Allegra and that helps a lot with itchy watery eyes. I’m not worried about figuring out exactly what it is… just keep taking Allegra every day. 
Yeah, I went to Europe at the height of allergy season and developed allergies. Used Flonase for a while (I’m so old this is when you needed an Rx) and everything cleared up and I was able to stop using it. Used nothing for like 20 years and then had eye issues and had to go on Allegra.
At some point today I remembered that I am also triggered by scents, which are in everything these days. I try to avoid them but I’m sure I have exposure. My husband even bought the scented trash bags, which I hate.
having a heightened sense of smell is also a big thing they complain about in the facebook perimenopause group. it’s a symptom.
Huh, TIL. I had a heightened sense of smell when i was pregnant. I lived in NYC. I would walk into a subway car and know which seats the homeless guys had slept in. It was pretty disconcerting.
So Mr aj has a medical test today and he asked me to look over the forms he had to fill out. At the bottom of the stack were his test results from his recent doctor visit. I scan through them and noticed they tested his thyroid. TSH was high—outside of the range they had for what is normal. Not way high, but high. T3 and T4 in the ranges.
The thing is, he has a number of symptoms that I honestly thought were long Covid. I looked up a list of hypothyroid symptoms and showed it to him and he ticks off nearly all. I cannot believe that if he actually talked to his doctor about his symptoms (he probably wouldn’t have mentioned the depression unless asked) that his doctor did not make that connection when he saw that result. Of course I can’t be sure he told his doctor everything.
Anyway, after today’s test if everything is ok, I am sending him to the doctor with that list of symptoms and highlighting all the ones he’s told me about.
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This was the case for me and doctors generally ignored it until I took a free-T4 test and showed them it was low (which is hypothyroid and I’m on medications for this now). He should at a minimum get the expanded tests done.
because often doctors suck and are entirely unknowledgeable, particularly primary care physicians. i can learn more from google than from my pcp.
outside of pcp’s they only know stuff from their specialty and are otherwise useless.
pcp’s are just plain useless.