Hi beauty, I think I'm finally out of perimenopause and IN menopause. At least I hope so. But I still have times of having symptoms. My OB/GYN said that we can have funky symptoms 10 years after we quit having periods. You don't want to know how long I had bad symptoms! But since you asked......I would say the worst of mine lasted from age 47 to age 56-57. I had absolutely horrible symptoms for a long time. I had every test in the book. When it started, I also developed fibromyalgia with irritable bowel syndrome, severe fatigue, reflux, buzzing legs and scalp and tons of palpitations. I actually started taking calcium when I quit taking hormone replacement and discovered that it really helped my diarrhea. You're always supposed to take magnesium with calcium, so I started that too. I take Caltrate Plus (since it has other minerals and vitamins). I take 600mg twice a day. Then I take about 400-500mg of magnesium. There have been times when I backed off the calcium/magnesium, and I would get more palpitations, so that made me think it was helping with them. They say we shouldn't take more than about 1,500mg of calcium a day, and it should be in divided doses. So you need to be taking more calcium. If it causes you constipation, you can go up on the magnesium (since magnesium can loosen your stools). Also....a low magnesium can cause palpitations. I had them horribly once and went to the ER, and the doc gave me IV magnesium and I didn't have any palpitations for 2 weeks after that. its hard, though, to get enough magnesium sometimes, since it can give you diarrhea. I like B12 because it helps with muscles twitches. Your heart's a muscle, so it might help there too. I don't drink alcohol. I just can't tolerate it. But it wouldn't surprise me if it gave you more palps. It makes me so mad when a doctor says he's never heard of women getting alot of palps during perimenopause, cause I've heard probably hundreds of women say that's when they got them. For many women, they get them when they lay down at night. Its funny you mentioned the prickly scalp. I used to get that all the time and it drove me nuts! If I leaned over, it would get all prickly. If I touched it, it would get prickly. Gosh I hated that!! I can't believe how many weird symptoms we can get during this time! And you're right. Even after I've had my heart checked out and tested, its still very frightening to get those palps. Mine thump very hard and make me cough. Isn't it fun being a woman??

I don't know if this is significant or not, but when I was a child (under nine, because my mom was still alive) I was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid. I'd say that could be very significant since a lot of the time all these health problems tend to be seen together. The current test for thyroid disease, the TSH isn't really a very good indicator of thyroid function.. but that's what most doctors go by. I'd suggest having your doctor run the thyroid antibody tests too. I went to doctor after doctor for over 10 years to finally get one to run the right tests. ALL my other blood tests were normal, but the antibody tests were way off indicating autoimmune Hashimoto's Disease. Good luck!

Very interesting stuff about nutrition - thanks for posting, Cookie8. I have tried eliminating foods for several weeks at a time - dairy, wheat, sugar, caffeine (not a food, I know) - and have never noticed any difference at all in how I feel. How long does it take? For those of you who noticed a difference when eliminating foods, did you suspect anything before? Digestion problems, or something else? If not, what made you try eliminating foods? The juicing idea is interesting, Susan. I have some friends who do that. You're basically using food as medicine, right? The quantities seem to be much higher than anyone would include in a "regular" diet. How do you know which foods to combine? Is it palatable? Do you all discuss this stuff with your doctors? What do they think about it? How do these natural treatments work with traditional treatments? I can't imagine I'll ever be able to cut out synthetic hormones. Before synthetic cortisol, people with Addison's disease invariably died. (I had four addisonian crises before I was diagnosed and nearly died during three of them, so I'd never take a chance of going without steroids again.) Btw, Susan and Ravencajun, I have Sjogren's, too. I was diagnosed after an acute case of iritus where my eye was so dry and inflamed that the cornea stuck to the pupil. I spent two hours at the opthamologist's office, getting pupil dilators at regular intervals to try to break the cornea's hold. Little bits of the cornea would break free and the pupil at that point would dilate, so my pupil ended up looking small and round but with protruding "fingers". Really weird. Thank God it worked - they were worried I'd lose my eyesight in that eye. Do you get plaque on your front teeth from the dry mouth? Like you, Susan, I am never without water, but it never seems to be enough! And the nasal dryness in the winter is awful. I have bottles of saline spray all around the house. One thing that has definitely helped me is regular exercise. It doesn't make me less exhausted, but I am much stronger, so I can often push through despite the fatigue.

Good luck. The only medical advice I received about my Raynaud's is to move to Florida. My right hand is a mess every winter, often with open sores and fingernail damage. Since your problem is in your feet (that's how mine started 40 years ago), you can easily eliminate symptoms with disposable foot warmers that stick on your socks. I use these: Hot Hands Toe Warmers