I am going for a physical tomorrow. At a friend's urging, I am having my thyroid checked; however, I don't think that's what's going on.
My symptoms seem like they could overlap several areas, but I'm wondering if estrogen dominance is at the heart of it. Basically, I have low grade depression and anxiety, fatigue, low sex drive, increase in chin hair, sluggish metabolism, some muscle and joint pain (could be secondary to pregnancy last year, but with the amount of working out/stretching I have done, I would think would be less), foggy thinking, irritability, weight gain even before pregnancy (now can't lose weight, even when I eat well and work out committedly), history of thinning hair (although less so since pregnancy), restless sleeping/some insomnia, and I've felt for years that I look older than I am.
As I was researching, it seems like estrogen dominance is a likely culprit. Anyone have experience with this? Anyone use natural progesterone? Did you test your hormone levels before starting the progesterone, or did you just try it and see if it helped? Is estrogen dominance a "fringe theory" that mainstream doctors don't buy into? Do doctors usually push synthetic progestins? What are the pros and cons of various treatments? Anything else I should look at?
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