I posted a question in "Am I losing my Mind" but let me word it a little different. I sure need all your advise and help. I have been diagnosed as Menopausing, I am on HRT for the past 4 months. Is it still normal to have like a once a month total crash like. I mean the anxiety, nervousness, and just plain out blah. I do good the rest of the month but wow, I thought since I was put on HRT that ALL IS WEll. Please let me know that this is part of it all......
Love
Sishaircut

Good morning,
I am not on hrt, just bcp's so I dont' have alot of info. I do know my bcp;s dont' always balance me out. the hormones are so strong during this phase that sometimes I override the bcp, so I assume the same goes for hrt. I hope you get more responses that are helpful. In the meantime, you are not alone and I hope you feel better.

Thanks Enough...
I woke up at 3 this morning and was just crying so hard it almost made me sick. I am 51 and feel like the biggest baby. I am so new to this meno stuff that I question myself and doctors, thinking I am just crazy not meno. My dr. never did say that I was in peri, but in meno..My symptoms were so severe that I actually thought I did just crack up. I have been searching around looking for info on what to expect while I am waiting for my periods to stop. Will I stil have these crazy once a month breakdowns. I wonder why if I am on HRT...but like you said my body is probably stronger that the hrt...I have not total stopped my periods yet, one month and then the next I bleed...so I am no where near total meno. I love this site so much. you women give me the hope to start the day. Each of your experiences help me cope...THanks power surge for allowing me to go through this time of life with so many great women.
Sishaircut

Just a little note. Some days my anxiety is so bad I feel I won't make it through the day. I sometimes feel my whole body is wound up so tight. I have internal shaking too. i have really bad tmj that is worse from anxiety. I am on bcp's and my period is due to start Sunday, but I have been bleeding already for a few days, which happens every cycle, so i know for sure my hormones override the bcp;s. I actually am sort of glad about that, it confirms that my body is still doing it's own thing, so I know when i am anxious it's not my fault. ( if that makes any sense).

Hang in there, it'll get better, unitl it does keep coming here for support and read back old posts from others, it will help you relax a little. I also use xanax when I am at my worst, I try not to take it, but sometimes I just need the help.

Karen,
I also had that awful anxiety and feeling like I was losing my mind. After much research I realized I was on too much progesterone and not enough estrogen. I got off the P totally and just used E. I no longer have that awful anxiety and am actually starting to live a normal life after being reclusive and unmotivated with low energy for almost a year.

I am on bioidentical E. It has really helped.

Hi Sariah,
I am wondering after reading your post here, whether too much P is my problem. I started reading this thread because I have recently begun to fall back into the old rut of no sleeping (can fall asleep just fine, but am waking up around 2 with a buzzing body, night sweats and then not able to fall back to sleep at all), bouts of high anxiety and fatigue at the same time.
I decided to try the BHRT to help with these symptoms but now they're back and even a bit worse than before them.
I've tried to split my dose of P (got a period from that), tried to take it on alternate nights as well but that's not working either.
So, you are not taking the P at all?
Is that safe? I thought we needed the P to balance the estrogen.
I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place with this.
I hadn't had a period since May and was doing not too badly except for the insomnia and night sweats. Now I'm monkeying around with these hormones and still have the nasty symptoms.

Cathy

Thanks all for the responses..
My FSH levels showed almost no Proestoerone and I had just a tiny bit of E..I am on Activella. I am curious now as to how much P & E I am getting. It won't hurt to look into it.
I dont think I could be going through what I am without the help from this site...
thanks again all.
Sishaircut
Karen

hey Cath,

The trick with any HRT, BHRT, BCP is to try and find the right balance between the E and P. During peri your own body is still producing hormones of its own, so it is difficult to figure out which particular you are deficient in. And the side effects from too much E or too much P are so close to one another it is tough to tell.

If you think you might have too much P (in relation to your E) you can try using P vaginally. It doesn't seem to cause the same problems as the other methods of delivery.

There are so many differing opinions out there regarding the P. Some say you only need to use it 14 days out of 90, some say 10 - 12 out of 28, some say daily. I personally use it daily, as I am post an have no need to cycle, and I know from experimenting that without the daily P I feel horrible. Anxiety returns, and I could tell panic was just around the corner!! Needless to say I immediately went back onto the daily P. If you are curious as to whether the P is your problem, go off of it for awhile. It won't hurt you to stop the P for a couple of weeks. If you feel better without the P, well you will know you are one who has a problem with it and need to find another routine. If you feel worse, as I did, you will know you require the P, and perhaps need more of it than you are currently taking.

Good luck!!

Hey floater,
I do know this; when I have not taken the P at night two things happen. I do not sleep and the next day I feel pretty darned good. I am still taking the E daily. Oddly, and maybe you can help me with this.....I tried splitting the E and taking 1/2 in the AM and 1/2 in the PM. Last night I was awake ALL NIGHT LONG. I had that feeling like I had been plugged in to an electrical outlet. So, did the E stimulate me so much that I couldn't sleep? And, because I didn't take the P there was no balance???
Holy cow. This is crazy.
Also, when I took a small break from the P last week, it brought on a period. Is that what to expect if I go off it again??
I think I may need to go with a different formulation rather than the pill. Maybe compounded cream so I can dial the P down a bit. The 100 mgs might be too much??
I was supposed to stay on both without cycling at all, but I can't see getting over this hump and continuing.
For sure, I thought these amounts would help balance me out. What the heck was I thinking that it would be that easy.....;-O

I was prescribed cyclical HRT for anxiety that started when my periods became irregular. It made my periods regular again, but when I stopped the progestogen part of the cycle each month and resumed the estrogen only part of the cycle (48 hours before my period would come) I had 48 hours of dreadful anxiety each month. I'd never suffered anxiety prior to periods when I had them naturally. My own hormones certainly were going up and down underneath the cycle imposed by the HRT, as I had two periods in one month at one time, despite taking cyclical HRT which should have regulated periods to once every 28 days. I think the fact that I still experienced anxiety whilst on HRT might have been due to the fact that taking conventional HRT, it contained a synthetic progestogen rather than a bioidentical progesterone.

I eventually came off conventional HRT and started using natural progesterone under the direction of a doctor. I no longer experience anxiety, and didn't even get anxiety when I had three periods last year (felt great in fact, probably because I'd started producing estradiol again, temporarily).

So no, I don't think it's unusual to get anxiety on HRT. I did - and not only before periods (although it was most noticable then) but also if I was going through stress at other times of the cycle, I'd get panic attacks. Are you using bioidentical HRT?

Manyboys,

I use to cycle my bioidentical also, use to take 1.0 mg estradiol (.5 a.m and .5 p.m. ) everyday and progesterone from 10-25 day of cycle to bleed. This was about 4 years ago but now I am in a much reduced formulation. Anyway, if you have a uterus you need to take the progesterone to allow shedding of your uterine lining (this why bleeding occurs).

Taking the estrogen at night did not likely cause the alertness but rather the absence of progesterone did not allow you to sleep. Having said this, there are days that regardless of what I take or activity of the day, there are night when I can't sleep...thankfully this is not to often. And yes stopping the progesterone will cause you to bleed.

Plumeria

Hey thanks all for the replies.
I am on synthetic HRT (Activella). It has estorgen and Progest. in it. But It sounds like you have better control if you can manage each one individually. How and what do I ask my dr. Is it bioidentical or creams? Can I get the creams without a dr. perscription?. I am so new to this that I feel like a real idiot.
My dr. did say that I should give the hormone at least 3 months to get in good in my system. Maybe I am expecting a miracle or something, I guess I just need to be patient.
It is 3 in the morning, I am back not sleeping, having headaches and my mind wont shut down so I can sleep, It sort of feels like square one. But I am going to just wait this out to see why I am doing this...This should be my time of ovalation, if it happens, so maybe that is why.
Whew..deep breath....Yes I will get through this..
Thanks all
Sishaircut

Oh yeah..
What is cyclical HRT?
thanks

Hi Karen,
I am not too familiar with synthetic hormones at all, but I know that some ladies here have good success with it. As far as separating them out is concerned, I do think for me it's the only way to go. It turns out I am not a one size fits all kind of gal.....;-) I am going to go even one step further and ask my doc for a cream/gel formulation of E and P when I go back to see him and will try that route. I think I really do need to be able to tweak the doses as needed which I can't do now with the pills.
I've only ever bought the OTC yam cream way back when I started peri and it didn't do anything at all for me. Then I went into a compounded progesterone cream which is a prescription and made by a special compounding pharmacist. That worked well until I hit meno and needed to supplement some E.
I don't really know what you can buy OTC in the States, but I do know it's less here in Canada. So, all my hormones have been prescriptions.
I took my Prometrium last night (didn't split it....took the whole thing) at about 5:30 while I was getting dinner. By the time dinner was done, I felt like I'd taken a sleeping pill! I could have gone to bed then. So, consequently I slept all night which was great. BUT, now I am drowsy and dopey. Kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place with this.
If you're going to see your doctor, I'd bring up moving to bios and trying the cream/gel formulations. They may be easier on your head because you can move the dose up and down according to your headaches.
I'm finding that it's a lot to deal with and all this thinking about how I feel, being tired and needing sleep is such cr*p. I would like to feel like I did when I was 30 or 35 or even 40....45 wasn't bad either.....;-)

Cathy

Cyclical HRT is where you cycle the progesterone, using it in the last 12 days or so of every 28 day cycle, whereas estrogen is taken every day. If a woman is still having periods, cyclical HRT tends to be prescribed. It mimics the woman's natural hormonal cycle pre-menopause where progesterone is produced at ovulation and dropping levels of progesterone two weeks later usually stimulate the uterine lining to shed and produce a period. If your periods have been erratic, cyclical HRT can make them regular again. It had this effect with me. Prior to starting HRT I'd had a four month gap between periods. Once I started taking HRT my periods started coming every 28 days again until a year to two years later, my own hormone levels must have dipped below the levels necessary to produce periods and my periods became scant and started skipping, despite the hormones in the cyclical HRT.

Post menopausal women sometimes take HRT on a continuous basis, where estrogen and progesterone are taken every day rather than the progesterone only being taken for 12 days at the end of each 28 day period.