I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: General Discussion => Topic started by: Lillupie on February 05, 2012, 10:56:48 PM
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Does anyone on here esecially women experience high levels of the male Hormones (sp?) while on dialysis???
I had an endrocrinologist explain to me that on dilaysis the toxins exit through a dialysis like screen and not everything is able to be filited out of this screen.
For awhile now (since the start of dialysis) I have had some neck hairs, a few chin hairs, really bad acne, and would you believe a first time, a high sex drive. Well in June an OB/GYN did a blood test that showed higher then normal levels of testerone and Androgens. The endrocrinologist refused to give me females hormones because my mom is part Italian and he says that women from the meditterian (sp?) get facial hair. THis may be true but I am only 1/3 Italian. THey had me do an ultrasound of my ovaries to rule out a tumor, which i dont have. So it is the dialysis to blame.
Toward the end of November my normal OB/GYN started me on a birth control called Jolivette, and he said it would help out with the acne. And so far it has not done anything but to stop my peroids, which I have not had since December 20th. They (any OB/GYN) wont give me any other kind of birth control because of my past diagnosis of lupus and now Im on dialysis.
Dont know what to do because Im considering of getting a natrual estrogen and stopping the birth control on my own since it is not doing anything for my acne and facial hair.
Does anyone else have this problem??
Lisa
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I have never heard of this, but that doesn't mean anything. I'd be really curious to know more about the link between hormonal imbalances and dialysis, though.
This business about you being of Italian heritage and, thus, abnormally hairy sounds a bit lame to me, especially since your problem also involves acne.
I do not understand why a diagnosis of lupus matters; I don't know enough about lupus. Could you explain that?
I'm sorry I don't have any answers, but if you do get some, I'd love to hear them. I would hope that your medical team would be more helpful. I don't mean to sound sexist, but my gut tells me you might have better luck with a female gyn who would probably better understand how excess hair and acne would affect a young woman. Do you think that getting a second opinion might be worth the effort?
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I've read where ED is quite common among men on dialysis.
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I think what you're having is not extra testosterone but a lack of estrogen. Normally a woman's body has both and they balance nicely. But the kidneys are very involved in producing estrogen. So on dialysis you really have no estrogen. Some of become kind of asexual from lack of hormones. You are obviously still producing testosterone and it's taking over. Although I have the "wrong" hair growth from prednisone. Some meds can do that.
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Dialysis surely does wreak havoc on the sex hormones, for men AND women. Most of us end up with only a fraction of the sex drive we once had. When I was just your age, I had a problem similar to yours. I'd had two strokes and no doctor would prescribe birth control pills for me. It made me very creative about non-hormonal ways to minimize the effects of high testosterone. A tweezer became as important a grooming tool as my toothbrush. For acne, I'm sure there are better products available now, but I was able to keep it in check by using glycerin soap morning and night. (This was all 35 years ago.). As far as high libido was concerned, my doctor had simple advice:"Go home and make love to your husband", he told me. Just not on birth control pills...