What is post menopause like?

[DustyLee123]

For those of you who are post menopause and not on HRT, what is it like? Do you still get some symptoms or have they gone now?

There have been some ridiculous comments like your body is preparing for death if you don’t take it.

Oh so one ridiculous comment then. Not 'people on HRT being so aggressive'.

'Not a brilliant advert for not doing HRT'

Is at least a rude if not aggressive comment

Well, she had a point tbf.

Was it a great advert for not doing HRT?

For me it is just like life before except I don't need to buy san pro.

I do have joint pain but that's due to the arthritis I was diagnosed with at 26.

Only a minority of women take HRT. I know plenty of women who live long and healthy lives without HRT. Some examples:

• my grandma lived to 90. She was never ill, never had a cold, walked miles each day until the end, was slim and healthy.
• My mum's nearly 80 and in good health, very socially active, said she barely noticed the Menopause or any significant changes.
• A family friend is 95 and fit as a fiddle. - My colleague is about to turn 60. She went through an earlyish menopause in her early 40s. Never took HRT. She's very fit, cycles everywhere, and runs marathons.

I fully acknowledge that for a lot women the Menopause is devastating and they suffer in many different ways. I'm nearly 50 and so far ok. If I need HRT later on, I'll certainly take it.

I just wanted to highlight all the women who are just fine without HRT.

So, for those of you who are on HRT and are loving not being dry, with brain fog and mood swings; how would you feel if you had your HRT snatched away in a heartbeat? How would you feel if you knew you would have to revert back to the horrible symptoms which made you go on HRT in the beginning? Will you still feel and look amazing?

I was fit as a fiddle, walked loads & on the surface appeared absolutely fine but I had horrendous vaginal atrophy which affected by physically & mentally but I didn’t go around discussing with people so they wouldn’t have known

Are you asking those of us who were virtually unable to walk upstairs and took the risks associated with HRT to be able to walk upstairs again, if we still want to continue to walk upstairs?

No, no idea why women who want to walk upstairs will continue to want to walk upstairs. It's a complete fucking mystery.

This with bells on.

It’s fucking insulting to suggest we take HRT just to ‘look and feel amazing’. I take it for crippling joint pain and migraines. I don’t look or feel amazing even on HRT. It just helps lessen the pain (but not get rid of it completely). I’m still dry and aging and stiff, but I can manage to get to the shops now or for a little walk in the park which I couldn’t do before.

@AlisonDonut I took HRT previously for those very reasons( joint pain, vaginal atrophy, moods swings and all the rest). Then illness struck, meaning it was whipped away in a second and I'm left struggling yet again. Was just wondering how HRT users would cope and how what they might use instead, because right now, life is hard, knowing you need systemic HRT to alleviate symptoms ( no ovaries either) and can't find anything which remotely helps!

I took HRT for joint and muscle pain that was crippling me. It had sod all effect. After much research the mucoskeletal effects are more likely to be down to vitamin/mineral deficiency often associated with aging rather than hormone changes.
I take vit D (during the winter), magnesium and vit B 12, which has had far more effect than at any time I was on HRT. I also take antihistamines which are great for joint pain.
Since I’m on hormone blockers for bc I also benefit from diuretics and statins. The low hormone levels encourage water retention in joints, a very recent study of women on hormone blockers post bc has shown a 40-50% reduction of joint pain when taking diuretics. It would be interesting to see if this result would be the same with menopausal women.
Hormone blockers produce extreme joint symptoms, along with diuretics, staying active, walking every day, really helps the symptoms. It does take a lot of motivation but you reep the benefits. Some women I know use walking treadmills so that whatever the weather they can keep moving.

It would also be interesting to know how many posters on this thread are speaking from experience. The op is obviously asking for lived experience of post menopause without HRT.
She is not asking for information re HRT there is plenty of excellent, balanced information available, but with the recent evangelism of the pro HRT brigade we are being overly influenced. There are lots of benefits but it’s not compulsory.
As a HCP I have to take a medical history every time I see a patient. I really don’t see any differences between women over 60 who are on HRT and those who have never taken it or have stopped taking it. If anything, in my field, for some women it extends the problems we see.

Your experiences with patients are not lived personal experiences.

Those women may have osteoporosis or heart disease which are yet to be diagnosed.

1:2 women have osteoporosis. 100,000 a year die from its complications.

You must know that the medical info out there is that for women under 60, the benefits outweigh the risks if they have symptoms and want to choose HRT.

Not coming from Davina but NHS consultants , the International Menopause Society, headed by the UK's Prof Nick Panay, and the Women's Health Concern.

chronic UTI is a massive problem in older women especially in care homes. Vaginal atrophy is known to cause UTI and topical
oestrogen to have a positive effect on counteracting chronic UTI. I’d be very surprised if there was no difference for those women with VA using topical hrt v those who do not

I think you have misunderstood. It was no kind of "threat" to those who don't want to do HRT. I actually chose not to because when i needed it it was way less effective and had way less options. the anwser arose because the question came up about why women have menopause. Its an evolutionary fact that women evolved to not live long after they cease to be fertile....men too but we are talking about women. Evolution works best when the resources are used by the animals that are most likely to survive and reproduce. That way you get the most mutations and the best chance of getting more useful mutations. BUT along comes learning and intelligence and they have produced three things. The things are are cooking/processing food so that people who can't chew their food can still digest it and benefit from it. Please lets not go off on a UPF tangent. I am talking about stewing, grinding flour, soaking grain to soften it, even adding herbs and spices to make it more attractive. Simple stuff. The second is the extra work resource to do things for people that they can no longer do themselves....hunt for them, do the field work, help them to travel when the group move. The third is a reason to do this. Older people become the repository of knowledge, the teachers and so on.
Back to modern times. We have learned to take better care of our health, diet is better. Living conditions are better. We have spare resource, houses, hot water, all the good stuff BUT our bodies are still pretty much in the same evolutionary state of the body's loss of fertility causing risk to other physical aspects of health. We deal with this with our intelligence and our extelligence. We design and create things like HRT and we share the information. We find out about the uses of vitamins and minerals either in our daily diet or in supplements. We learn about the benefit of impact in exercise to strengthen bone and the benefit of low inpact exercise for people who would be put at risk by high impact exercise and we share the knowledge and HRT is part of this. Yes there have always been outliers...people who live to 100 in excellent health with all their teeth....people who remain fertile way beyond the average. This is about long timescales and large populations.
Anyway I better get off the soapbox. But finally, no one is threatening anyone.

Its my lived experience because at the time it was the best choice for me. I aso had many friends and colleagues at work in my age group, all menopausal at the same time, all having different experiences and making different choices. I don't evangelise in either direction although I get why women who were suffering badly with menopause and who get HRT and experience a miraculous improvement ARE evangelical about it. I am evangelical about water softeners!!!
I to was an HCP (retired now) and I'd need to know why people are coming to you and what your speciality is before commenting....no don't tell me I know you cannot break confidentiality.

Yes my experience without HRT was one of increasing pain and after the first 7 years of being told I was too young I already had osteoporosis.

Which is why I responded. HRT literally saved my life.

Life is great. I never had any problems before, during or after the menopause and neither have my sisters, other relatives or friends .

None of us take HRT and never will.

Much more energy. Sometimes get a bit hot and bothered round my head, but I think I always had poor heat regulation. I use soya milk rather than ordinary milk, as it is good for balancing female hormones, so I think that helps.

And neither are most of the posters on here. I am a 60 yr old post menopausal woman who, in my first post gave my lived experience.
The OP is looking for lived experience not advice. There are lots of reasons why HRT may benefit you but in my experience I had to come off it abruptly because I was diagnosed with hormone positive breast cancer.
I now take hormone blockers so have very low levels of oestrogen and progesterone.
I am healthy , active and so far my bone density is normal, I have a scan every two years to check it.

All drugs carry risk.
I am currently sat in a hospice watching my little sister die from stage 4 ovarian cancer. Coincidentally she had been on HRT since age 50. She is now 56. There is a slight increase in the risk of developing breast cancer, ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer. It feels like that risk is very real in my lived experience. We are one of those famous statistics but we are also real people for whom HRT has caused real cancer not just the hypothetical cancer that the “experts “ on this thread dismiss.

So please f@*k off with the preaching. If the op is looking for positive experiences please respect this. She is not looking for lived experience of HRT, there are plenty of threads available for this.

But your lived experience is with HRT. Read the thread title. It is asking for lived experience WITHOUT HRT.

I did go through menopause WITHOUT HRT. When I was that age, the options were very few I refused to take premarin, tried patches briefly but they turned me into a raging violent harpy and never even found a complementary substance that helped. Many many years later, when Gina became availabl without prescription, I started using it for dry ness and itchiness. Where did I say I used HRT?

I'm in my 60s and had my last period about a decade ago. No HRT. My skin and eyes are definitely drier, so I've changed my care routine. My DEXA scan was good, so no fear of broken bones. No other symptoms that I've noticed.

I think a lot of "symptoms" that are called post menopausal are really just signs of normal aging, which can't be fixed with drugs.