After going through chemotherapy for estrogen-positive breast cancer, I started on Tamoxifen. I knew that I'd be taking this hormone therapy for the next five years, but I really didn't enjoy the side effects. Chemo had given me hot flashes, but Tamoxifen gave me Super-Whopper Hot Flash Attacks! When I got hit with a Super-Flash, my blood pressure would plummet, I felt faint, saw yellow spots before my eyes, was forced to sit down rather than fall down, and then the heat wave would arrive.
A chemo-induced hot flash was limited to my torso and face, but a Tamoxifen Flash was a whole-body event. From head to toe, I would glow with heat and then flush with perspiration. When this happened in a restaurant, I would fish some ice out of the nearest glass and bathe my face. Once when I was at work, a Super-Flash hit me in the middle of a meeting with a coworker. As she told me her side of the argument, my flash swooped up and down my body, turning my face a ruddy, angry color. My coworker assumed that I was mad, dropped her side of the discussion, and conceded to me! That is the only time that a hot flash has helped me win an argument.
I complained to my family doctor about the hot flashes, and he prescribed an antidepressant. He said that if I didn't take it for the hot flashes, I would need to take it anyway, for the depression that might soon follow from having such severe flushes! We tried several different antidepressants, all of which had different side effects of their own. Finally, we agreed on one of them - Zoloft - and I finished out my Tamoxifen therapy with a side of sertraline. Full disclosure here: I could only stick with Tamoxifen for two years because it did cause some endometrial thickening that my ob/gyn didn't like the looks of. I switched to Aromasin for my last three years of hormone therapy, and it also caused hot flashes, but those were not the legendary Super-Whopper Body-Melter Hot Flashes.
However, not all antidepressants or nutraceuticals used for mood or hot flashes play well with Tamoxifen. Research has been done on a wide variety of these pills, and many almost wipe out the anti-estrogen benefits of this hormone therapy. Be sure you know which antidepressants are okay to use, and which might actually cause you trouble. In this article, I've included a table that lets you compare how 12 different pills work with, or interfere with, your potentially life-saving Tamoxifen dose.
A chemo-induced hot flash was limited to my torso and face, but a Tamoxifen Flash was a whole-body event. From head to toe, I would glow with heat and then flush with perspiration. When this happened in a restaurant, I would fish some ice out of the nearest glass and bathe my face. Once when I was at work, a Super-Flash hit me in the middle of a meeting with a coworker. As she told me her side of the argument, my flash swooped up and down my body, turning my face a ruddy, angry color. My coworker assumed that I was mad, dropped her side of the discussion, and conceded to me! That is the only time that a hot flash has helped me win an argument.
I complained to my family doctor about the hot flashes, and he prescribed an antidepressant. He said that if I didn't take it for the hot flashes, I would need to take it anyway, for the depression that might soon follow from having such severe flushes! We tried several different antidepressants, all of which had different side effects of their own. Finally, we agreed on one of them - Zoloft - and I finished out my Tamoxifen therapy with a side of sertraline. Full disclosure here: I could only stick with Tamoxifen for two years because it did cause some endometrial thickening that my ob/gyn didn't like the looks of. I switched to Aromasin for my last three years of hormone therapy, and it also caused hot flashes, but those were not the legendary Super-Whopper Body-Melter Hot Flashes.
However, not all antidepressants or nutraceuticals used for mood or hot flashes play well with Tamoxifen. Research has been done on a wide variety of these pills, and many almost wipe out the anti-estrogen benefits of this hormone therapy. Be sure you know which antidepressants are okay to use, and which might actually cause you trouble. In this article, I've included a table that lets you compare how 12 different pills work with, or interfere with, your potentially life-saving Tamoxifen dose.
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