Help me get to the bottom of these symptoms

[FiftynFooked]

I'm 52 and my periods had started to fizzle out. Had the typical meno symptoms, hot flushes, night sweats, low mood, disturbed sleep, itchy skin. GP put me on HRT-estrogel 2 pumps and utrogeston 200mg for days 15 to 26.

Initially I felt much better. Still had a few night sweats and the HRT created a regular withdrawal bleed but nothing that hugely bothered me.

I'm now 6 months in and after telling my GP 3 weeks ago at a review that I was doing well I now feel worse than ever. Symptoms are

Fatigue, in fact total and utter exhaustion. I could sleep the day around.
Brain fog is worse than ever
Very low mood
Regular headaches and nausea
Constantly hot. I tried to do a fitness class last night and my head was so hot I thought I was going to pass out.

I had a B12 shot last week but it's made no difference.

I'm intending to go back to GP and ask for blood tests but if they come back clear and it is just meno is it the estrogen or progesterone that needs to be adjusted? Or should I be investigating testosterone?

Any guidance would be really appreciated. Feeling really miserable at the moment 😢

I’d up it to 3 pumps

Will that help? I'm wary because I hear that as you get older you need less estrogen than more and too much can make you feel tired?

I do think you need a bit more. I'm 54 now and had been on HRT for a year when my symptoms started coming back. I thought I'd try adding more to see if it would help and it did in a few days.
I don't know about the age thing, maybe some of us just need more.

I’d do the same and put more on. I’m a
similar age to you, started on 2 pumps and over the years have gone up to 3.5. I generally started to feel better very quickly.

Ok thanks. I'll give it a try and up it to 3 pumps. Do you do all at the same time? It says I think on the NHS website that anything more than 2 pumps should be split over the day? So I could do 2 in the morning and 1 at night with my progesterone

I split mine. I was trying to avoid a "whoosh" taking it all in the morning. It works for me.
You can always drop down again if you need to. Definitely worth a try. Hope you feel better soon.

Thank you. I'll give it a go.

I do it all in one go/don’t split the dose. When I increase it, I do it by half a pump at a time and increase as it’s needed which seems to be ok for me.