Could Over-The-Counter Allergy Medications Be An Actual Answer To The Hellish Symptoms Of Perimenopause?
Women on TikTok are reporting relief. But what does it mean?
by The Candidly Team
Many of us in perimenopause are hungry for symptom relief. Hungry enough to look for solutions in weird places and eager to tell each other about it when we find them.
And that is why when we heard that many women have been posting about using allergy medications to help ease perimenopause symptoms, our itchy ears perked up.
Could it actually work?
We’re not going to make you scroll to the last sentence of this article for a conclusive answer. The biggest takeaway is as follows: Many women are reporting symptom relief, and many of them are doing so on various social media platforms, to the point that the story’s been covered by The New York Times, The Cut, and CNN to name a few places. While it’s true these allergy meds have not been studied for effectiveness in terms of perimenopause and therefore, are not an approved method of treatment, that doesn’t mean it’s not helping some women feel a lot better.
Women are a dramatically understudied group in medical research, and we’re all just waiting for science to catch up. In the meantime, here’s why these meds could be easing symptoms for certain perimenopausal women.
What medications are we talking about?
As of now, lots of women are anecdotally reporting that a blend of allergy medications (like Allegra) and antacids (like Pepcid AC) have helped them with hot flashes, mood swings, brain fog, and lack of sleep.
Again, this has been neither clinically studied nor scientifically proven but the reasoning for this reported relief could be due to the link between estrogen and histamine, according to Soma Mandal, M.D., the Medical Director of Women's Health at Hackensack Meridian Health. ”Hormones, specifically estrogen levels, can surge and then fall radically. This can trigger waves of histamine that produce symptoms that are very similar to what we see during perimenopause/menopause symptoms, like flushing, anxiety, insomnia, mood changes — and even gastrointestinal issues, like stomach upset and diarrhea,” said Mandal in an interview with People. "For women whose symptoms may be histamine-driven, this combination of Allegra and Pepcid AC can offer real relief.”
While there are no randomized controlled trials of this approach to treating perimenopause and menopause, experts are not disregarding how it’s affecting women’s lives. “We have a clean mechanism, a long safety record for both medications, and a growing chorus of women saying it helped. That is enough to take the question seriously. It is not enough to declare this a treatment,” reported The Pause Life when speaking to Dr. Zachary Rubin, an allergist-immunologist and New York Times bestselling author of All About Allergies.
How can I tell if it’s right for me?
While we wait for science to catch up and give us more answers, a lot of us are left to wonder how seriously we should take this allergy med/antacid combination as a possible remedy for symptoms that exist here and now.
First and foremost (and quite unsurprisingly), we should all take the age-old advice to talk to our doctors. One concern experts express about potentially masking our symptoms with allergy medications is that we’ll fail to get to the crux of the issue, including any medical causes that command actual treatment and not just symptom relief. And, naturally, any new medication we introduce should be discussed with and overseen by our doctor anyway.
In order to understand if histamine issues are a part of what’s driving our symptoms, Rubin recommends a series of steps that include looking for patterns and keeping a journal about what triggers and relieves symptoms, then taking that information to your doctor to help make sense of it. If they decide that trying allergy medication is the best course, you can go from there. None of this is something to take into your own hands and self-diagnose.
Is it safe?
While allergy medicines and antacids may seem fairly safe when used for their intended purpose, “using them regularly and potentially over long periods for an unproven indication is different,” said Dr. Leana Wen, an adjunct associate professor at George Washington University in an interview with CNN Health. They can come with side effects or interact with various drugs so again, talking to your doctor is critical.
Like so many things related to women’s health, we’re at the starting gate in terms of research, but perimenopausal relief and treatment options do exist and all we can do is push for more and more. Consider this one more push, hopefully in the right direction.
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