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this IBS hormone relationship

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Irritable Bowel Syndrome
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Posted 7/23/2008 8:18 PM (GMT 0)
Hello all.

Hope you are all coping. I have not been too bad until about 2 weeks ago. Gas, expanding waistline as day progresses and now the good ol' nausea!! However, I have also recently started to experience hot flushes and other possible menopausal manifestations.

Is it the general opinion that, just as IBS can have a link to PMS, it can be exacerbated by menopause hormonal fluctuations too? Also my weight has started to change from day to day almost. I used to be a steady 8st 6lb (Fine, I can live with that) but now it can be anything between that and 8st 10lb. Can water retention cause this rapid weight alteration?

Oh the joys of middle age!

Take care.
Posted 7/23/2008 8:30 PM (GMT 0)
Yep, yep. Any hormone fluctuations at all. Hormones run your entire body, not just your sexual organs, but it's a good bet if those hormones are off, they'll throw the others off too. I think this is why women are more likely to have IBS (although men have hormones too, but theirs do not naturally fluctuate as much).

Yes, water retention can happen fast and change your weight a lot. Out of curiousity one morning I weighed myself, had a normal poop, then weighed again. A normal bowel movement weighs three pounds!

My grandmother had a mild heart attack while we were at a craft show. When it happened, it triggered a release of all the fluid she'd apparently been collecting around her heart. I know she peed a big cup full in the back of our van before we could leave, then we had to stop at a gas station on our way out and she went again. She said she thought she would never stop peeing. No telling how much fluid she got off in those 30 minutes or so. And she's a thin woman and it wasn't even noticeable on the outside. So I know there are a lot of places it can hide!
Posted 7/23/2008 8:32 PM (GMT 0)
I hear you! It's not fun.....I'm currently having a period and I'm 53 now. My first in over 2 to 3 months. And of course my daily bm count has gone way up. My entire pelvic area feels as if it's in overdrive. Very tender, swollen, just not right at all. Similar to how you felt after delivering a baby perhaps, if you've had children. But not quite L & D either.

What all this tells me is I once had it so good and I didn't even know it!

Sometimes you want to run up to women and/or men with normal guts and say - enjoy it!

Of course you don't, they'll think you've gone bonkers......but as I see my 3 family members use the bathroom just once a day, I really am in envy sometimes.

I go even more than the dog does (averaging 4 or 5 #2's a day). When my family takes her for walks and she dumps twice, oh my gosh, they have to tell me all about it because I guess they think, I'll somehow understand.....since it pertains to poop.

But right now I'd love to numb this body of mine and stay out of the bathroom for a few hours anyway. I'd love a daytime stretch of 4 to 6 hours of not needing a bathroom, at all - that would be heaven!

Last night my 21 yo daughter popped in after going out to dinner with friends, only to invite them over to watch a movie. I had been using my favorite bathroom, our powder room. Well, that option was out, I was confined to my bathroom way the heck upstairs, the one farthest from our water intake. That toilet takes ~forever~ to fill up in between flushes. I'm in the 3 to 5 flusher stage too....

Anyway, didn't mean to steal your thunder but it does really get you down, when you factor in hormonal changes too.

No wonder some male docs just do not understand our problems - at all.

Mary/Marsky
Posted 7/24/2008 5:23 PM (GMT 0)
Yeah, hormones are a bugger for IBS. My period always made it worse (part of why I'm now trying the constant birth control to stop my periods - I'll let y'all know how that goes). My mom is going through menopause, too, and I know that her IBS acts up when she does get a period (although they're coming less and less for her).

When you think about it, women really DO have it so much harder in so many ways. Periods, pregnancy, labor, menopause....SHEESH!! People just don't give us enough credit sometimes...
Posted 7/24/2008 6:56 PM (GMT 0)
No, men do not give us enough credit! For all that we go thru.

And yet when we're feeling our worst, is when they're feeling their best - if you get my meaning. As if we can just flip a switch!

But if they had to have monthly periods and deliver babies, the human race would die out!
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