You might have to go with your own experience on this one. I've heard some women love it, and then again some say it makes them so irritable they feel like a mad dog. I took it for about 3 weeks, hoping to help with libido and fatigue. It did nothing for my libido, but did help with fatigue somewhat. I quit taking it because I suffer from anxiety so bad and it just made it worse. You, on the other hand , may do just fine with it. It's all trial and error. Hope this helps a little. :)
How any particular hrt works of course depends on exactly what your body needs.
Generally speaking, women who find that taking testosterone makes them nasty and agressive are ones who are already making enough testosterone (and whose libido problems are due to something else).
Generally speaking, women who find that they are overstimulated by estrogen (as in panic attacks or rapid heart rate) are women who are taking too high a dose of estrogen or whose estrogen is not in the proper ratio (often referred to as "balance" ) with progesterone. And of course lots of women with anxiety or manic-depressive problems are on other medications that can interact with the hrt, making balance yet more complicated and requiring personal trial and error.
A positive attitude, time and trials: you've figured out what it takes. Here's hoping it doesn't take too much of the latter two.
Well, I can't argue with Dr. Vliet that low estrogen can cause some of those reactions. But my sense of things (and I'm not a doctor--just someone who has been paying a lot of attention to how hrt affects women) is that the low-estrogen panic/anxiety is more a depressive one, more brain-chemical-related. Lots of us get moody, short, freaked out, unable to cope when our estrogen is low. How large a step is that from an anxiety attack? This makes sense to me. Estrogen and seratonin are feel-good hormones, and when those receptors aren't occupied, I expect all sorts of mayhem to break loose in the brain.
Estrogen is also a stimulatory neurotransmitter, however. In certain cases (very rare) the stimulatory effect can be so strong as to cause monthly seizures (called catamenial seizures). In most cases, however, excess estrogen effects range from a mild "over-caffeinated" sort of buzz (and insominia) to cardiac stimulation causing a more rapid pulse to outright panic and perhaps cardiac arrythmia. One of the things I find especially interesting in this sort of stimulation is that progesterone is the specific treatment given for estrogen-caused seizures. That, to my mind, helps validate this as an important adjunct to the control of all of the degrees of estrogen-excess and explains some of why it is the ratio between the two rather than the absolute level of either that is the true measure of hormone balance.
Now, I realize that theory is fine but when you are grappling with panic, how do you know which extreme is the culprit? This is something that requires a much more subtle reading of clues. This is a case when hormone level testing can be useful in giving you at least a sense of which direction in which to turn. If that is not an option, then you need to look at all the various symptoms you have and try to guess which side of the scale they weigh on. Sometimes, mood lability, vaginal dryness, incontinence, depression give you the "low clues" and energy, insomnia, breast soreness and lack of the low clues suggest the other extreme. If all else fails, it seems that lowering the dose is a safer approach than raising it to see if that works (however much that doctors tend to try the opposite first, for nearly any hormonal symptom).
Does that at least start to make some sense in terms of what you are asking? If not, let me know and I'll try again. This is confusing stuff and so much of it remains guesswork. That is, of course, why all of us have to band together to share this stuff--no one else knows what's really going on after we put these hormones in our bodies.
(Edited by gibplace at 10:45 pm on Aug. 8, 2001)