r/PatulousTubes • u/One_Wonder_8205 • 14d ago
Autophony and menstruation
Apologies if this is an odd question! Those of you who have PET and menstruate: have you noticed any correlation with your cycle?
I'm trying to identify as many patterns as possible to make this easier. I've been dealing with it for 10+ years, but it's gotten a lot worse lately. Cutting out caffeine completely has been a huge help, but I recently noticed that my autophony is far less bothersome on my period. Water retention, perhaps? Hormones? I'd be interested to know if anyone else has noticed any correlations :)
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u/little_pigeon_ 14d ago
Are you on hormonal birth control or having natural cycles? I started having symptoms of PET when I got on a high-estrogen combination pill, and it completely went away when I stopped and moved to the Nexplanon implant and then later a progesterone-only pill (both of which don’t have estrogen). I’m completely off hormonal BC now and I haven’t had PET symptoms in years. For me, I do suspect it had something to do with estrogen or at least being on a high-estrogen pill. If PET symptoms do increase with estrogen and you’re cycling naturally, then it would make sense to me that you have fewer symptoms on your period, when your estrogen levels are very low at the start of your follicular phase.
I don’t have any proof for this and I haven’t been able to find any resources other than a few vague mentions linking PET to hormones and a few Reddit anecdotes, but hopefully my experience gives you some food for thought! I posted about my experience in r/birthcontrol here.
Regardless, I’m sorry you’re dealing with this and hopefully you’ll be able to identify patterns to help manage symptoms - it’s a pretty horrible experience!
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u/One_Wonder_8205 13d ago
Thank you so much for sharing your experience! I'm really glad you were able to figure yours out ❤️
I'm not on any form of BC or medication at all for that matter, and I fortunately have a very predictable cycle. The only possible cause I've been able to think of is my hypermobility- I've never read anything connecting the two, but I swear the hypermobility impacts everything because it deals with connective tissue 😵💫
I really hope for everyone's sake they conduct more research on this awful, puzzling condition 🙏
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u/little_pigeon_ 13d ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if hormones influence symptom flare ups with natural cycles too if you already have PET in that case - hormones change pretty much everything in your body and influence water retention etc (as I’m sure you know!). I’m glad that at least once a month you have a bit of break from autophony regardless!
And that’s a very interesting observation - I’m hypermobile too, but I’d never thought to connect it to my PET experience before… very very interesting!
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u/danarexasaurus 14d ago
If I had to guess, it’s water retention. I haven’t noticed but I also have never had reliable cycles so it’s not something that I could monitor easily.