IBS and anxiety in perimenopause?

Was your bowels soft and yellow if so could be something you ate or drink 🍹 I have all those bathroom issues !

Lightly colored stools may indicate lack of bile salts due to either gall bladder or liver disfunction. It would cause bloating as well, but probably not diarhea. Posibly some food allergies that tend to develop during menopause. I had to stop eating diary for example. You can investigate into that.

Hi there!  Sorry that you're having problems with this!  It could be hormone changes that occur as a result of menopause.  But from personal experience, I think you could have bile salt malobsorption. One way you can tell is that your stools will be surrounded by yellow liquid.  Your stools won't be colored yellow, generally.  They will be very loosley formed. The yellow liquid is bile, and is extremely irritating.

The problem can come if you have gallbladder disease or gallstones.  There is another cause, though.  For some reason, some people stop producing the hormone that is needed for the body to reabsorb bile at the end of the digestive process.  Bile is released into your small intestine during digestion. The bile is supposed to be reabsorbed when the food gets to the end of your small intestine, as I recall. But if you don't have that hormone, it won't be.

My suggestion is that you ask for a referral to a gastroenterologist, who can do the appropriate tests to diagnose you.  Usually the first test to be done will be a liver panel, so that the GI doctor can tell if your liver is stressed, which happens with gallbladder disease.

You could be diagnosed, with IBS-D, but that is just a catch-all classification for various forms of irritable bowel syndrome, which are exemplified by diarreha.

If you try to supplement with bile salts (which may add more bile to the excess bile you have now) or with digestive enzymes, you can just make things worse...one thing you can try is the FODMAP list of non-irritating foods, which is available on line.

As I said, I know all this from personal experience.  I was first diagnosed with IBS-D, then had my gallbladder removed several months later.  

I hope this helps.  Best of luck to you, and please let me know how you get on!

 

I've started noticing gastro symptoms too lately. These weren't part of the initial peri symptoms. Actually I was thinking on doing a post about it as well. Have you had any gallbladder pain? Are your stools light colored? And maybe he is just one of those doctors that think all there is to menopause is hot flashes/night sweats!!??

Hi. Your doctor sounds about as male and clueless as mine. Being full of dread and anxiety is awful. I've had no period for 5 years and panic attacks for the last 5 months. Not everyone gets night sweats. I get cold flashes now not hot. My advice is find a woman doctor to help and there's a menopause natural complex called vital complex to try. It has helped me a lot. Good luck and remember symptoms will disappear as quickly as they came.

Hi-

I wanted to check in and see what happened with you. I'm experiencing yellow stool each morning. Its so strange because I feel like I can feel my intestines moving. I still have regular periods too. Of course I'm thinking the worse.

i have digestive issues that my dr did not treat i had to go to naturopath

i didnt think i had nightsweats but the anxiety that woke me up in the middle of the night was actually a night sweat

push your Dr for a diagnosis i suffered for way too long thinking i was crazy