Menopause without HRT?

[twoheaped]

Is it possible to go through the menopause without HRT?

I have never taken the contraceptive pill, or used a chemical device as I just didn't really fancy the idea of taking hormones.
Now I guess the menopause will be coming in the next few years and I have found little information on going it alone, as such.
Can it be done? I'm still not keen on the thought of taking hormones.

I'm fortunate enough not to be menopausal or perimenopausal yet at 40, but I'm bloody terrified of the menopause having seen my mother and aunt suffer and suffer for over 15 years now with the most awful symptoms. My Aunt can't take HRT for medical reasons apparently, but my mother just refuses to even consider it because of the whole 'just get on with it' narrative.

I just want to ask if women who 'endure' menopause, also endure things like headaches, hay fever, infections, depression, all manner of other illnesses, that can be relieved by drugs, because THEY ARE NATURAL.

Well, in my mother's case - yes, yes she does just endure headaches, migraines, depression, hay fever and infections (at least until they land her in A&E) because these too are apparently better than taking so much as a single evil paracetamol or antihistamine. There's just nothing I can say to that is there? I have come to the conclusion she genuinely does just love being a martyr, not just with menopause but in many other ways too. All this has made me determined to grasp HRT with both hands if I should need it. I probably will, given the family history of osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, severe menopause symptoms, late onset diabetes etc. My mother is now crippled with osteoarthritis, cervical spondylitis and depression but will never reconsider.

As a menopausal GP this is a great thread. As a GP menopause is very complicated and sadly GPs can't be expert on everything, in fact I emailed our GP sexual health helpline about my own problems as I really wasn't sure which way to go and received good advice. I often ask advice about patients.
There are too many scare stories about menopause and treatments. Like pensions 100 years ago we weren't expected to live much beyond 60 so a few years of menopause were acceptable (and pensions were affordable) At 54 myself we need to treat this. We need to realise that we are living longer so we need oestrogen around for longer to help us function, many of us will get to our 90s and need to live an enjoyable life.
My problems are flushes and insomnia. Once asleep I'm fine but lying awake until 3 am and then working a 13 hour day is not fun.

I think one problem is that, around here, it takes weeks to get an appointment with a GP. All my friends seem to be prescribed the same version of HRT, incidentally the cheapest, they say, having done some research.

None of them have got on well with the first HRT prescription, which means more appointments squeezed in around work and children and elderly parents. More weeks or months of unpleasant symptoms on another version pass: the side effects, like sudden weight gain and lengthy periods again, have been quite distressing. They just give up after six or nine months. They can't afford private consultations.

Obviously this is secondhand experience. But it has happened to a number of women I know at various surgeries in our area. The doctors have been lovely but there seems to be a try-them-on-the-cheapest-version thing going on. It just seems to be so hit and miss.

Of course, though, the women who get on well with it are just quietly going about their everyday lives, which is great. My own mother can't understand why I'm not particularly interested in hrt and had it for years.

I agree deux and FFS, I felt like the dimmer switch was going down and down and I was getting more and more anxious about the future, aching, sweating and being very grumpy, and fatigued.

Within three days of using bioidentical oestradiol, as a gel, and bio identical progesterone, as capsule utrogestan, I felt alive, at least 20 years younger feeling, and all the aches and pains gone, well rested and the woolly/ anxious thinking and shadows had lifted.

Absolutely feckin amazing. Like flicking the lights back on.

I was also against hrt, but realise that those anxious thoughts about it were a symptom of the peri meno!! The irony!

I love my hrt

Yes, I suppose you could 'get by and make do without it', but I was only living a half life, and I wouldn't muddle through now. No way, not when I see how lovely late 40s can be.

I'm looking forward to the future, have a new job, a spring in my step, thick glossy hair, smooth skin, and I think HRT's saved my marriage too. Not bad for a bioidentical hormone or two, eh?

Fat joints : what I'd describe as aches and pains but my knees felt too fat to bend properly ....

Funnily enough my thyroid packed in last year so could be linked to that

They can't afford private consultations.
I would urge anyone who is completely stuck with a useless GP to try somehow to see a consultant who knows about menopause. I'd forgo holidays , clothes and any other luxuries if need be to get health care that worked. I think sometimes that people expect too much of GPs who are not experts. Some are good with HRT but most are not. And not all private consultants are- it's a case of finding one who is. If you are really suffering then finding £200 (put it on a credit card if need be) is not a huge amount to pay to get sorted.

OR to do their homework and ask the GP to try certain types of HRT. I don't go along with this 'they only choose the cheapest' because if you pay for prescriptions the cost is not borne by the GP! It makes no difference to them if it's £5 a month or £6 a month.

Some article links for a big picture view on HRT and our choices:

www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/jenni-murray-if-i-knew-what-i-know-now-about-hrt-i-would-never-h/

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/19/misinformation-menopausal-women-drugs-companies-hrt

www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/13drug.html?module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Business%20Day&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article 

I had every intention of going through the menopause without HRT , however I have a part of the menopause that isn't discussed and can hit you side ways from nowhere , and that's vaginal atrophy got so bad my life was very compromised.

So to have any quality of life I need systemic HRT and local oestrogen and recently required laser treatment .....so hopefully yes you will be fine , but just keep an open mind for this part of menopause that effects upto 70% of women and is brushed under the carpet .

ali I'd never take any advice on anything medical from journalists unless they are medics. I work in the media so I know how it works!
As for Jenni Murray she ought to be banned from talking about HRT! She forgets to add that she was morbidly obese for years, drank a lot (she's on record as saying that) both of which carry far more risk of BC than HRT.
I asked my consultant about her comments that 'HRT gave her BC and her dr said this' and he was shocked- no dr can prove how anyone got cancer, but in her case it was probably lifestyle.

I think she does women a great disservice and it makes me angry.

Likewise the Guardian has a 'point to prove' and is selective with the information.

if you want unbiased REAL advice, go to the info by the British Menopause Society and the International Menopause Society- top researchers and consultants.

Dorge I like the dimmer switch analogy, I feel exactly like that.

The problem with thinking you will brazen it out and go to the doctors if it gets bad, is the frog in a hot pan of water approach. If the agonising pain and sleepless nights came on immediately then you would go, but it comes on in increments and by the time you are literally climbing the stairs at night on your knees, you have lost years of potential hormones and the damage has been done. I was only able to prove to my GP that there was an issue when I could show him the data on my Fitbit about how little sleep I was getting. 3 months later he was telling me I had osteoporosis at 48. I had gone to the GP 7 years earlier and been turned out by a female GP telling me I was too young and they would not test me.

It is shocking how we are just dismissed and the refusal to test younger women means that the average age doesn't reduce when it seems if they actually tested people and fed it all into a database, the average age of menopause would probably come down. And more people would get the treatment they need to see themselves into later life without osteoporosis. It really naffs me off!

It would be interesting to hear frommusicaltheatremum on the question of pressure to keep drug costs down.
My wannabe trainee medic doctor pointed me to this:
www.gponline.com/exclusive-pressure-rises-cost-gp-prescribing/article/1227489

If she's still around, thanks for posting and can you enlighten us?

Sorry, daughter, not doctor!

HRT is dirt cheap.

Someone I know has a cream for eczema prescribed and the cost per month is £100.

Most drugs are not expensive.

I buy my own HRT on a private prescription. Even that works out at a round £12 a month for 2 items.

And a positive view to consider:

articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-07-21/features/9907210001_1_silent-passage-menopause-older-women

That latest link is almost 20 years old- 1999. it's also from the US where the type of HRT used is not the same as in the UK now.

None of these are 'medical' sites. The Guardian feature was written by a Gp but, without spending my entire day on MN (!) , it's not possible to pick it apart, but it's a very jaundiced view.

If you want to read about HRT go to reputable UK sites including the BMS and Menopause Matters. Neither has any political bias or sub-agendas.

TBH I'm shocked that the Guardian published such a trashy feature.
The writer says this:
We need high-quality information about our choices, and honesty about what we don’t know and aren’t sure of. The menopause has been made a disease and opened a marketing opportunity, and the resulting misinformation has served us all badly.

Absolutely! Yet she includes comments from research published in the 1990s which is now out of date and has been replaced by up to date research . Her comments about CVD are laughable.
If you read the 2016 report by the IMS they say categorically that HRT helps prevent CVD.

^There is strong and consistent evidence that estrogen
therapy may be cardioprotective if started around the
time of menopause (often referred to as the ‘window of
opportunity’ or ’timing’ hypothesis)3
, and may be harmful if started more than 10 years after menopause^
.

.

Menopause Matters is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.

www.menopausematters.co.uk/sponsors.php

The latest link, about Post-Menopausal Zest, isn't even about HRT, but focuses on a more positive view of menopause as a time of power and renewal. I.e. it’s not all gloom, atrophy, and decline.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead coined the term ‘menopausal zest’ in the 1970s:

books.google.co.uk/books?id=20cZMZV0tI0C&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=post+menopausal+zest+margaret+mead&source=bl&ots=ZJATZ9LA14&sig=HUl3N6hVek_2l2Qvxctb9I4Ej8o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiCmI38oczVAhUNblAKHVxqCOEQ6AEIODAD#v=onepage&q=post%20menopausal%20zest%20margaret%20mead&f=false

Here’s another positive article on the gifts of menopause:
writehealth.co.uk/living-with-zest-creativity-and-menopause/ 

Are you anti HRT Ali ? if so, just say so, and why perhaps?
Margaret Mead has been around for decades. I first read her ideas in the 70s when I was at uni.

Menopause Matters receives funding from many different people. This is what the link says:

Menopause Matters is supported by a range of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical companies

as are most websites who take advertising in order to fund them. Like Mumsnet :)

You won't actually see any prescribed HRT products advertised on MMatters but you will see loads of other products.

Unless you are saying that the former chairman of the BMS and a practising consultant gynae is in cahoots with pharma companies?

Not sure of your agenda here.....

I heart, that's post menopausal zest talking there, go you!

I think there are such clouds of misinformation around the persona of Margaret Mead and her work, it's hard to know if anything was/is real.