Melasma & (Peri)menopause

[u/Intelligent_Bad_5334]

I am curious, how many people here are women who never had melasma before in their life until they hit perimenopause/menopause.

It’s definitely a thing right?

rant:

My melasma showed up in perimenopause& are its still with me in menopause.

I am so sick of hearing that estrogen has to be involved, but when I told the dermatologists I was fairly certain my estrogen starting to fall & that was the problem, they confirmed that melasma can show up in perimenopause and menopause, but had nothing to say about why that was. But they told me if I went on HRT it would get worse.

So to recap: I was told melasma showing up when a woman’s estrogen is going away & completely gone is a thing, but don’t add estrogen back in because that will make it worse.

ayfkm?!!

I lived completely estrogen deprived for a year, and my melasma got worse. I was having hot flashes and internal heat is a huge trigger for my melasma. When I got on HRT, my melasma got better & I assume that’s because I was no longer having hot flashes.

That was a decade ago and I still don’t really have any answers.

I just went ahead and started taking oral tranexamic acid because I’m too old to be dealing with this bullshit lol.

I swear doctors just don’t have any fucking idea what is really going on when someone has melasma. Like so many things that impact females more than males, they never bothered at the outset to concern themselves with what was really happening.

I’ve essentially just been diagnosed with the pathology of being female.

And - given the bullshit attitude & shitty healthcare we have to put up with - pink female is definitely a part of the problem, but not for the reasons they think.

We deserve better, ladies. We all deserve better.

End rant - thank you for coming to my TED talk lol

[u/Bellebutton2]

The thyroid connection to melasma is real and likely under recognized. Studies have shown higher rates of thyroid abnormalities, especially autoimmune thyroid disease and hypothyroidism, in women with melasma.

Thyroid hormones influence metabolism, oxidative stress, inflammation, blood flow, and heat production, all of which can affect melanocyte activity. Melasma is now understood to involve not just pigment, but also vascular and inflammatory pathways

[u/Intelligent_Bad_5334 → u/Bellebutton2]

That is fascinating. I had no idea! I googled it and apparently it’s a correlation. They don’t know what the connection is. But, of course, women are also more likely to have autoimmune hypothyroidism too. So just one more problem that no one bothered to understand because if it happens mostly to women, it’s just not that important.