Hello ladies.
AngelaH. Can I ask if you think it's possible for me to be oestrogen dominant?
It seems unlikely as I am 67 and very post meno however I have been trying HRT for ten years and I have never felt that it has helped me. I have always been prescribed more oestrogen than progesterone and during my menstruating years my periods were always very heavy.
I wonder if it is worthing trying to reduce my oestrogen dose but continue taking Utrogestan to see what happens?
I have an upcoming HRT review with the nurse at my surgery and I will mention it to her but I doubt that she will be familiar with this approach. Time will tell!
Many thanks and take care.
K.
Hello Kathleen,
We all are different and everyone is unique, so everything is possible! What I have learned is we need to listen to ours bodies. I am 53, post meno now, but don’t know for how long exactly, because I was on progesterone for 5 years, which stopped my periods completely and I went through menopause and post meno, so I believe I am somewhere in my early post meno, no more than 2 years. It’s hard to say if it’s connected to my history of estrogen dominance or not, but HRT estrogen + progesterone doesn’t work for me and makes me extremely ill. I was struggling for more than a year, trying different forms of estrogen: gel, patches and spray, they all made me feel even more ill than I was. I couldn’t understand why estrogen made me worse, my blood test came with results very low estrogen, just 34, so why HRT didn’t work to me? I still don’t know the answer, but eventually I found my own treatment. It comes my body hates estradiol, the main ingredient of HRT, which NHS use. I found out estriol does very good job for me, it looks like my body doesn’t need replacement therapy, it needs just a little top up. I use very little doses and not every day even and progesterone when I feel I need it and it works perfectly for me. I suffered from horrible nausea and fatigue before, they are gone now, I am full of energy and feel like I used to be, bones and muscle pains are gone too and I can spend all day on my feet and don’t feel tired.
Unfortunately NHS treatment is not for everyone, in fact not everyone needs such a big amount of hormones to function, post meno body doesn't need to keep reproductive function anymore, but we need hormones for brain, bones, muscle…… and small doses to keep them happy are more than enough. This is my own experience, of course we all are different and I believe everyone can find the right treatment, even if it looks like is not right from NHS point of view, it doesn’t matter, the main thing is working well for the body.
I would not even to discuss this with any medical professionals, they are working under NHS rules and normally they are not willing to offer or just discuss something, which is not fitting to their rules. Utrogestan is a big dose of progesterone, to balance it with estrogen you should take amount of estrogen proportionally. It is the right balance between hormones, which is responsible for how we feel. I don’t take estradiol at all (I take the weakest estrogen- estriol) as I have mentioned before, my last blood test result was - estradiol only 34 and I am felling fine, I don’t feel ill anymore. I do believe you can try the smallest amount of estrogen, but you need to remember that progesterone should be in the right proportion to that amount and unfortunately NHS cannot offer you that.
I wish you well and good luck, I hope you will find your own treatment eventually.