EllaAurora, Floo36 and Devon51 thanks for replying, and for the informative comments. On balance it seems like the oestrogen readings aren't terribly reliable in terms of determining how high a dose of HRT to take - on the whole I suppose it's worth knowing whether they are high or low though. You'd think that given the fluctuations, the tests could be done on an average basis rather than a one off.
Devon, I didn't know you could do home tests - how reliable are they do you think? Sounds like the NHS isn't going to cough up for a test and like you and Floo I think paying a private consultant's exorbitant fees for something that's not as useful as it should be is a bit on the nose.
As I'm well and truly postmenopausal I would hope my levels are fairly stable (read, non-existent!) though it always seems to me like every now and then they decide to drop another notch, with a consequent increase in negative symptoms.
EllaAurora I''m curious about your comment re a particular regime stopping working after a period of time. Do you know why that would happen? It makes the whole thing even more frustrating, as well as despair making - this endless search for something that's going to fix the problems so we can just get on with life
![bang :bang:](https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/Smileys/extended/bang.gif)
Thanks again everyone xx
LL