Breast cancer picked the wrong woman: Martial artist fights with courage
This ICU nurse tackled breast cancer and a pursuit in martial arts with determination.
- A woman’s breasts and brain are closely connected through hormones like estrogen and progesterone.
- Breast cancer treatments can induce sudden, menopause-like hormonal changes, affecting mental health.
- Women are encouraged to proactively discuss mood changes with their doctors and prioritize mental health check-ins.
During October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, West Palm Beach psychiatrist Dr. Kristi Wragg has an interesting message for all women: Your breasts and brain are more connected than most women are ever told.
“Both are extremely sensitive to hormones — and both can make your life miserable if we pretend otherwise,” she explains.
Wragg notes that, while every October the world is showered in pink ribbons urging women to schedule mammograms, most breast health campaigns often skip the other half of the story: “The hormonal swings, which power breast tissue, are also hijacking your brain chemistry,” she says. “That foggy mood, sudden irritability, or middle-of-the-night panic attack? It might not be ‘all in your head.’ It actually might be in your ovaries.”
Wragg, a board-certified psychiatrist with Ferd & Gladys Alpert Jewish Family Service, wants women of all ages to understand what is happening at a hormonal level even if they’ve never been diagnosed with breast cancer — and how those hormones get super-charged when a woman is being treated for breast cancer.
How estrogen and progesterone are like ‘Wi-Fi for the brain’
Estrogen and progesterone are not just reproductive hormones — they also connect your brain’s neurotransmitters to the regions that control mood, focus, and anxiety. Wragg likens these hormones to “Wi-Fi for the brain.”
When estrogen rises, so too does the feel-good hormone serotonin, thus making life feel manageable.
However, when estrogen decreases, so too does serotonin and that’s when you might experience inexplicable mood swings or crying jags.
Meanwhile, progesterone communicates with your brain’s GABA system. The GABA system acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter. It lessens a nerve cell’s ability to receive, create or send chemical messages to other nerve cells.
Sometimes the GABA system is a calming force, says Wragg, while other times it can lead to woman feeling irritable.
“These shifts are why many women feel like they’re living with an unpredictable roommate inside their own heads,” explains Wragg.
‘Hormonal earthquakes’ — from your period to menopause
Many women experience mood swings during menstrual cycles — but Wragg characterizes them as “just the opening act.”
During perimenopause, she says “your hormones may swing wildly like your favorite pair of heels on a cobblestone street, then eventually crash in menopause.”
That’s when women often experience hot flashes, insomnia, brain fog, and mood swings that can blindside even the most even-keeled women.
She notes that “I’ve seen patients in their 40s and 50s who’ve never had anxiety suddenly plagued by racing thoughts or depression. Their first question is often, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ My answer: ‘Nothing is wrong with you — your brain is reacting to a hormonal earthquake.”
How breast cancer treatments may exacerbate hormonal swings
Wragg explains that medications like tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors essentially pull the plug on estrogen production in order to protect against cancer.
While these medications are necessary to save a breast cancer patient’s life, Wragg says that “for a woman’s brain, such treatment is like suddenly being shoved into instant menopause — sometimes even as quickly as overnight.”
Wragg says she’s had patients describe it “as if someone dimmed the lights in their mind: memory gaps, irritability, or waves of depression that feel foreign and frightening. These aren’t character flaws. They’re side effects no one warned them about.”
While women are often told by their doctors to expect hot flashes or bone thinning during menopause, Wragg laments that often “not a word is said about mood swings or cognitive fog. We still treat women’s mental health and physical health as if they’re separate from one another. However, in reality a woman’s ovaries and neurons are in constant contact — and this influences how you feel mentally, emotionally and physically.”
Stop playing the ‘blame game’
Educating women about this brain-body-hormone connection matters, believes Wragg, because “when women don’t understand the hormonal connection, they blame themselves. They get misdiagnosed. They suffer in silence. And too often, they get brushed off with the dismissive phrase ‘It’s just your hormones.’”
Wragg wants women to understand that their “hormones are not background noise; they are chemical conductors that have a major influence on how you feel, think, and function. You can’t ignore the impact they have on your daily life.”
So what should women do?
Wragg urges them to prioritize their mental health check-ins with the same vigilance as their annual mammograms.
And more specifically for women of a certain age, she advises that “if you’re approaching menopause, starting tamoxifen, or simply noticing your mood fluctuates with your cycle, tell your doctor. And don’t wait for them to bring it up — because many won’t.”
She also urges women to be kind to themselves: “Give yourself the grace to see these changes as biological — not personal weakness.”
During Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it’s vital for women to remember that while an annual mammogram might save your life, understanding your own unique brain-body connection is just as important — because doing so could help you feel like yourself during the journey.
Steve Dorfman is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. He writes about all aspects of health, fitness and wellness. If you have news tips, please send them to [email protected]. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.
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