Gel to patch mood plummet

[JennyDreadful]

Hi there I’m 48, in peri and recently switched my HRT from gel + 14 days of utrogestan to the Mirena and Evorel 50.

I was actually doing great on the Oestrogel, using 3 pumps, but the Evorel 50 doesn’t seem to be working as well. I’m thinking of asking to move up to 75 as my mood has dipped and I think 3 pumps of gel was probably equivalent to Evorel 75.

Has anyone had a similar experience of switching from gel to patches? In contrast the Mirena has been much better than Utrogestan for me in terms of stability of mood.

I switched from gel to patches as I thought the patches would be easier to stay on top of.

any insight would be gratefully received.

Hi OP I’m a (perimenopausal!) GP and you’re right that 3 pumps of oestrogel daily is equivalent to the evorel 75 patch not the 50. So if your mood has dipped I agree best to change to evorel 75.

I'm menopausal so slightly different but when I changed from patches to gel I found I absorbed the gel much better than the patch. I was on 100 patch for a few years, switched to 4 pumps of gel and after a few weeks reduced it to 3 despite 4 being the equivalent of 100. I seemed to get stronger effects per dose from the gel which in reverse would make sense of how you feel (I've made a mess of explaining, hope you understood it).

Thank you both, I don’t know why my GP put me down a dose when I was doing well on Oestrogel. I wanted to switch to the patch just to try and reduce the opportunity to forget to use it or to run out of time for the dry down in the morning. Do you know if I could apply one and a half patches to get an equivalent of 75? Or does the half I dont use become ineffective once it’s been cut and stored in an opened pack? Thank you!