When the World Gets Too Loud: Estrogen’s Role in Sensory Overload

When you think about menopause before you enter its earliest stage (perimenopause), you may picture physical symptoms like hot flashes. In reality, menopause is just as difficult on the emotional side. 

It’s common for women to experience irritability, anxiousness, and more as their hormone levels change. 

Today, we want to highlight a less-talked-about impact of dropping estrogen levels: sensory overload. If you find yourself getting overstimulated more easily, it could indicate that your body’s making less estrogen.  

We have good news. You’re not stuck in this state of sensory overload. Here at PSI Medical Group in Wixom, Michigan, Robert Grafton, MD, and our team can help you rebalance your estrogen levels with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. 

By supplementing the estrogen your body’s no longer making on its own, you can significantly reduce unwanted menopausal symptoms, including sensory overload.

How estrogen and sensory processing connect

Decades ago, researchers realized that estrogen connects to your body’s ability to process sound. In more recent years, studies have delved deeper, exploring how estrogen affects your sensory neurons and the brain as a whole. 

The big takeaway here is that dropping estrogen levels affect the way your brain and body process stimuli in a number of different — and significant — ways. 

It affects your auditory processing, making things seem louder. It affects your visual sensitivity, too. You might notice that the light from screens bothers you more than it did before. Your experience of touch might change — less estrogen can increase tactile sensitivity, making certain fabrics feel rough or scratchy, for example. 

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s worth talking to Dr. Grafton. That’s doubly true if you’re experiencing other symptoms of a hormone imbalance, like hot flashes, sleep problems, and mood changes. 

How to rebalance your estrogen levels

Here at PSI Medical Group, Dr. Grafton offers bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. That means he has a way to replace the estrogen your body’s no longer making with hormones that are chemically identical to the ones you naturally produce.

This process starts with lab work, so Dr. Grafton can check your current hormone levels and evaluate if this treatment option could be right for you.

If it is, he tailors the hormone therapy to you. And administration of the replacement hormones is simple. We implant a tiny pellet under your skin so it can gradually release the hormones you need to feel your best. This should ease the sensory overload you’ve been experiencing. 

To see if bioidentical hormone replacement therapy could be right for you, call our team at PSI Medical Group in Wixom, Michigan, or book your visit through our convenient online scheduler today.