IMO, stress can do many quirky things, and is very hard to research or
quantify - what may be extremely stressful for one perfectly normal
individual will be a piece of cake for another perfectly normal
individual to cope with, so many things to factor in! In the very recent
past, I was in a very stressful - for me - situation, and began to
experience symptoms of menopause at the very same time. The menopausal
symptoms became so debilitating, I believe because of the severe
emotional stress I was also going through, that I had to immediately go
on hormone replacement, and the relief was enormous. Therefore, I am led
to believe (yes, I know all about anecdotal stuff and single case
histories....) that *in my case* stress further depleted my hormone pool.
We already know about stress decreasing prolactin. Seems reasonable that
stress would act on many systems, no? Judy Knopf