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Hello, I am hoping someone may have an idea as to how to help this horrific symptom I have been dealing with. I have been getting nausea, in varying degrees of severity, with each hormonal fluctuation (before my period, during my period, with ovulation). Some months it’s more mild, some it’s so bad I can barely look at food for a week straight. Anti-emetics just take the edge off. Even in my more mild months, I still have some nausea for at least 1/2 the days of the month. On top, I have many other symptoms such as severe chronic fatigue, severe lightheadedness, vertigo/dizzy spells, anxiety, GERD/reflux, IBS, nasal allergy attacks, chills, joint pain etc. The nausea is newer than most of the symptoms, which I have had in varying/fluctuating degrees of severity for many years. I am 25 years old. I have restricted caloric intake (not by choice) over the last few years due to nausea, bouts of severe diarrhea, difficulty swallowing from GERD, etc. That said, my temps were low (96.5-98) when the symptoms were much more mild and I was eating normally, and have not gotten worse with the increasing severity of symptoms & restriction.
If anyone has any clues as to what can help this hormonal nausea, as well as how to increase my metabolism even with such a limited appetite/ability to eat normal amounts of food I would greatly appreciate any input! Thank you!
That’s interesting. Are you sure that it is hormonally linked?
If you don’t already, you may be interested in charting your cycles (either using the sympto-thermal method or just basal temps at least to see when you ovulate) and tracking nausea, as well, to get a better idea of the hormonal link.
Do you have any ideas about what spurred it/what was going on at that time?
I’m not positive it’s hormonally linked, it’s just seems most likely. I have been checked out by a gastroenterologist, neurologist etc and nobody can come up with any underlying condition to cause the nausea. I do have a long history of GERD, IBS, fatigue, migraines, anxiety, joint pain etc but no nausea. 3 years ago I had a stomach virus for one day and then one week later experienced severe nausea for 2 weeks, and then the next 2 months with my period. After that, the nausea went away, but for the next 2 years I felt increasingly worse with bad IBS, fatigue, anxiety, vertigo & lightheadedness. I also went off zoloft during this period (which I shouldn’t have done, in retrospect – I know people on this site are not too fond of ssris, but I felt much better physically and mentally on it). Then last October (about 2 years after this all began) I was quite nauseous during my period. I had a hard time eating for an entire week. I craved dry salty or sour things only and had scent sensitivity. It seemed very much like “morning/all day sickness” as I would imagine it to be. I also got this the next 2 months and also for a week when I ovulated (I don’t track temps regularly but can tell based on mild ovulation cramps & discharge, sorry to be gross). After that the nausea became more sporadic and less severe; a few days before my period, a few days with or after my period, a few days with ovulation. It seemed to be worse every other or every third month. Then all of a sudden, last month starting 4 days before my period and lasting several days into it, I had some of the most severe nausea I’ve ever had, couldn’t eat at all one day and no more than crackers on several others. It is really quite awful for me because I have a great fear of nausea & vomiting as well.
Sorry for the long response, but I have no idea what quite precipitated the nausea when it started last October, or what caused it to suddenly spike last month when it seemed it was getting progressively better. All I can guess is that extreme stress/anxiety and low weight/calorie consumption (I’m not under weight, but close) has severely thrown off my hormones, but I’m open to other ideas!
Thank you so much for listening!
I have experience with nausea, and it is the worst, possibly worse than the worst migraine I’ve ever had. In my case (and this is hormonally relevant) I have long suspected an unhappy liver, and I’ve found that eating to recover from restrictive eating made a good few things much worse for quite a while, one of them being (still the case) my liver. As the liver detoxes oestrogen I suspect in my case low progesterone and estrogen overload. What has helped me a lot – cured the nausea in fact:) is an egg or two a day for the choline, and I’m craving, and making, and eating, chicken liver pate. (When not too nauseaous to eat, do you eat eggs? You might not feel like them to begin with but that should change in a matter of a couple of days as you feel better. If not then maybe this is not the route for you) I’ve also recently added dandelion tea. All these measures have helped a lot.
I had the aversion to smells too. I too loathe vomiting. I’ve always had a tendency to nausea – car sickness for example, but when the nauseous patches got really bad I saw a link to a choline article in a 180 post and remembered that I had not had eggs for months. I’m the kind of person who needs and feels better on levels of animal protein and fat that are not too low, and some fruit every day. Perhaps thinking back to what you ate long before the troubles began will give you some clues too. Good luck, I hope you soon leave that awful feeling behind!A lot of those are adrenal insufficiency symptoms too. It would be advisable to get an a.m. cortisol blood test and a 24 hour cortisol saliva test.
Thank you for the responses!
Sue, I haven’t eaten eggs in a long time but used to a lot. I will try to maybe a eat an egg or so a day when I am not nauseous and see if it helps any. In terms of what I ate long before or right before it all began, it has varied so much due to several factors that I couldn’t even begin to guess! I haven’t really tried to “refeed” yet due to these issues but I have gone through periods of less calories and then more calories when I was feeling better so that may play a role. I think estrogen is definitely a factor here I’m just not sure the details or how to fix it!
Lynn, are you referring to the alternative diagnosis of adrenal fatigue/insufficiency or a true clinical adrenal problem? I have had the cortisol blood test with an endocrinologist which was normal, but have not yet done the saliva test. I too believe I probably have adrenal insufficiency in terms of most of my other symptoms, but what about the nausea? I haven’t heard of that so frequently in terms of adrenal fatigue, can that be a symptoms as well? What would you recommend to correct the adrenal issues/symptoms?
Thank you so much!
Possibilities to look into for estrogen taming – these work for me:
coffee but not if it wires you, made with milk it doesn’t in my case
progesterone cream (apparently there’s a question mark about this, I forget the details, maybe look them up, but for me I feel much better on it)
liver support as mentioned above
Best of luck!
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