I do agree Pippa that it sounds like it might be too low a dose. I seem to remember someone saying that the estrogen in the patches is something-hemihydrate 17b (someone help me here) and that the estrogen in other products can be something different. So maybe there is a difference between patches and gel.
I know from my own experience that my body does not experience estrogen I give it, in the same way that it experiences the estrogen it makes(!!). Yours doesn't either, because there must have been times when you were pre-menopausal and had very high estrogen levels and then much lower levels. And I'm assuming you didn't get these symptoms then. Because that is part of every woman's cycle. So I don't understand how this can be 'body identical' and yet here some of us are, having to be so careful about minute changes - when our bodies go low to super high to low again with our own cycles, pre-menopause. Ergo... there is a difference. What that is, I wish someone would figure out
![Grin ;D](https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/Smileys/extended/grin.gif)
Basically I know this stuff is all supposed to be body identical, but my body knows the difference and isn't getting the memo there
![Grin ;D](https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/Smileys/extended/grin.gif)
... So I'm sure different products make a difference as well, and then there are the absorption differences which affect dosages individual women get too. I think some of us are much more sensitive than others to all this.