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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was 58, postmenopausal, horrible hot flashes, mood swings, worried about sex because it eas starting to hurt. Testosterone cream made me horny and crazy but didn't fix my main problems.
Low dose estrogen patch felt like warm syrup flowing over my nerves. Used Menostar and topical Vagifem estrogen tabs 2x week from age 60 to 71. It was bliss I only recognize in retrospect. No flashes, no skin or vaginal fragility, looked 60 for 11 years.
Had to stop in 2021. Second menopause was a shock. Hot flashes. Vaginal atrophy. I am my age now. Ugh.
Go low dose.[/quote]

What the heck is second menopause!? 
Why does no one tell us about these things. [/quote]

It isn’t really a second menopause, which is the moment you have gone 12 consecutive months without menses.

It’s a return of the symptoms of peri/post menopause which cause diminished quality of life as poster describes. The thing is that for some women those symptoms carry on for decades after menopause - I work in elder care and have worked with women in their 80s who still have hot flashes for instance.

Again, the subject of long term HRT is a matter of debate in the medical community. The current advice is to take it for as short a time as absolutely necessary, but for some women that would be a very long time.

I was very well informed about the risks of HRT before asking for it, and still my GYN talked with me for over an hour before he prescribed it. I told him that I would accept a risk 10x higher since by that point the effects of nearly a decade of night sweats and chronic insomnia had left me stuck in clinical depression and with a body that felt 81, not 51. Two years later I feel my age and better every day because I’m losing weight and getting my fitness back with great sleeping patterns and all the other benefits that flow from that. My attitude at this point is that they can take my HRT from my cold dead hands and not before.

[/quote]

I’m not sure that’s accurate re the research saying you should take it for as short a time as possible. I see a menopause specialist who says there’s no reason to stop.[/quote]

I'm glad you have a provider who really understands the science and is not so risk averse as many providers who are refusing to put women on HRT at all, or limiting them to a short period of time on it.

This is the standard experience since that one study which was misreported about 20 years ago, after which tens of millions of women globally went off HRT, and a great many providers stopped putting women on HRT as they began to experience menopausal symptoms. Most of the information you'll find in web searches about HRT will state that women who choose HRT should stay on it for the shortest possible course of treatment.

Here's a Guardian piece which goes into more detail about the HRT controversy of recent decades. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/09/the-menopause-myth-how-demonised-hrt-came-back-from-the-brink

I watched a close friend die of breast cancer and she put the fear in me; while I nursed her in her hospice stage she made me promise not to ever go on HRT - she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer a year after she went on HRT and was convinced it was a causation rather than correlation situation.

I suffered terribly for several years, lost my career, my home, my mind and most of my will to live before I finally got on HRT and got my life back. I'm not exaggerating. Some women sail through the change, others experience discomforting and annoying symptoms which impact quality of life but not dramatically - but some of us suffer terribly, and the costs are massive. We are all different and we should have the informed choice to treat our symptoms during the change with whatever good tools are available, including HRT. I'm angry that despite my expressed concerns about chronic insomnia and the many consequent health effects I wasn't even offered HRT for nearly a decade, until I found a primary care doctor who wasn't afraid to refer me to a GYN who isn't afraid to help women. [/quote]

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