A community for women to find support and discuss living with ADHD.
I'm directing this question to all women, not just cisgender ones or ones that menstruate. My understanding is that we all can experience hormonal fluctuations during the month, for some it's just more predictable or obvious than others. Hormone therapy can have this effect too for our trans sisters. Curious what you notice, if anything.
When I first got diagnosed in my 30’s and started on Vyvance I became so frustrated when I would menstruate cause I felt like all the progress I had been making was completely undone! After a few months my male doctor was like “oh yeah there can be some symptom fluctuations that might occur during your period” Months I thought the meds just weren’t working!
That must have been so frustrating! Did you end up doing anything to adjust your meds or do you do anything in general to make the period week easier to manage?
Yeah my meds have always barely touched my symptoms during the luteal phase. It’s even worse now that perimenopause has set in. Before I figured out I’d started peri, I was googling about early onset dementia because the ADHD symptoms had gotten so unmanageable. (Y’all, I forgot my own address where I’ve been living for seven years. Forgot my own birthdate at the pharmacy. Got lost on the way to the grocery store I’ve used for ten years. Couldn’t even watch simple TV because of spacing out too much.)
Fun fact: estrogen is a neurotransmitter that helps dopamine do its thing.
I take HRT now, but the 12 days of progesterone means a week of being an absolute box of hair. I stand up and forget why. Forget nouns and have to describe them (like that stabby shovel thing for putting food in your mouth). Cooking dinner and turn to open a cabinet and just stand there swaying back and forth with no idea what I’m supposed be doing, while the food gets all fucked up.
Woah. This is incredibly helpful! How do you get the perimenopause diagnosis? Like there’s times where I’m sure I’ll never be able to access that memory again, also thought Alzheimer’s
My BPD gets unmanageable too since Vyvance seems to keep me emotionally balanced
It’s all by symptoms. In my case it was night sweats, sweaty palms so bad I had to give up my hobbies, sudden development of eczema, dead libido, inability to climax, brain fog, loss of speech fluency, morning sickness, and the occasional very mild hot flash when angry or stressed.
There’s not really any test for peri, because hormone labs only take a snapshot of one moment. Not very useful because hormones fluctuate day to day. If doctors brush you off (super common ugh are we even people) there are telehealth sites that can help.
Fuck, I feel like this is starting to happen to me, I just turned 40. Thank you so much for sharing, I will be talking to my doctor about this. I have dementia in my family, and I was seriously starting to get worried.
Yeah definitely. I'm experiencing it right now and it sucks. Interestingly, I'm autistic as well and while it makes this worse, I actually think it makes the adhd even more worse. I've increased the amount of high intensity cardio exercise I do to see if that helps. But today I'm feeling really defeated, like nothing will make this go away.
That's rough, I'm sorry. Hopefully tomorrow is better! I definitely have days like this, and they suck.
Absolutely. The week before my period it’s like all medicines cease working. My doctor worked out that I slightly increase my dosages during that week.
Oh, I'll have to ask my doctor about that!
every single month I have a small panic attack about how my meds have stopped working and I'm going to have to increase my adderall dose and what if I hit the top limit and they still don't work and my symptoms are worse than when I started the meds.... and then three days later it's like oh yeah it's just my stupid period 🙄 things have gotten goofier timing wise with my iud messing with my cycle, but same idea. it's a low dose of progesterone but I think my body dislikes it regardless.
edut: more specifically, i have much more trouble motivating myself to be productive and focusing. I do have some depressed mood issues around that time too but they're not really impacted by the adderall
Yeah. There are a few days a month I don't want to eat anything and I can barely count. I'm pretty sure I have dyscalculia (horrible word to say btw) and sometimes jumble numbers on good day. I'll quote the digits in someone's correct change in any old random order. When I'm forcing myself to eat, I have to check and double check my math.
I most definatly notice a worsening of symptoms during the luteal phase. As well over the past couple years I'd say my symptoms have gotten significantly worse overall due to incoming peri which actually ended up getting me diagnosed as I just couldn't cope anymore. At least now I know why i have had the issues I've had over the years but now I'm super not excited about the hormonal roller coaster i am on. The Peri is still pretty mild so I just started back on birth control again to stabilize hormones so that's helping but instill have my bad days. And though I am glad I have the meds now and they work well usually, the hormonal chaos does make them less effective which is frusterating on those days.
One of my first indications that my period is on its way is my usual dose of caffeine makes me sleepy. Then it usually affects my overall executive functioning negatively.
Oh, that sounds familiar (the coffee part) although it never occurred to me to tie it to my cycle. There are definitely days when coffee does nothing even if I slept well. I'm going to track it closely and see. Thank you for sharing!
I am definitely more scattered right before my period. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how it fits together, hence me posting the question.