Ladies who decided not to take HRT...how has it been?

I have never had HRT, perhaps I was lucky but I never had any real problems. The only problem I had was when I had a Well Woman appointment the nurse seemed almost angry that I never ‘suffered’.

62Granny

I have never taken HRT I am 66, I do have some joint pain but no more than my friends, I am fairly active and am a carer for my DH who has had a stroke. I did take the mini pill till I was 50. I lost weight (8 stone)after I stopped taking it and didn't want to put hormones in my body which obviously made me gain weight again. I am lucky? I still have my original hair colour and good skin without too many wrinkles.

@62granny thanks for your reply. Hope you and your husband are doing OK. It's nice to hear you have good skin and your original hair colour too. I was thinking I might end up like an old prune if I dont take hrt as most posts I read say you definitely age better facially if you take it. That does make some sense but hopefully a good skincare routine helps. I've been dyeing my roots since my early 30s though!

Emberforever

I have had a hysterectomy including removal of both ovaries at 46 (55 now). I have had 2 long periods off HRT, and during both I was miserable. The symptoms I could not live with were intractable joint pain all over, almost total insomnia, terrible anxiety, itchy, flaking, skin, dry eyes, abdominal weight gain, muscle weakness, crashing fatigue and hideously sagging breasts that actually were impossibke to fit into any bra. So yes - HRT for life here.

That really is so much to cope with. HRT is around to help and works for you 😊.

I have had a hysterectomy including removal of both ovaries at 46 (55 now). I have had 2 long periods off HRT, and during both I was miserable. The symptoms I could not live with were intractable joint pain all over, almost total insomnia, terrible anxiety, itchy, flaking, skin, dry eyes, abdominal weight gain, muscle weakness, crashing fatigue and hideously sagging breasts that actually were impossibke to fit into any bra. So yes - HRT for life here.

NonGrannyMoll

I didn't take HRT. Maybe my experiences would have been different if I had taken it, but there's no way of knowing because I didn't take it....! All I can do is tell you what my menopause was like. I had huge memory problems which made both my working and personal life difficult (I wouldn't just forget promising to do something, I forgot even the act of promising). My sex drive went into, well, OVER-drive (DH wasn't complaining, but it meant I was forever "fancying" other men, which was awful and out of character. I put on weight, suffered horribly from insomnia and went into obsessive nest-building syndrome. Would any or all of that have been avoided if I'd take HRT? Maybe, maybe not. We're all different, so my experiences will certainly not be the same as other women's. We either try HRT and see how it goes for us, or we don't (and see where Mother Nature takes us). Good luck with it anyway.

Wow, you had varied symptoms there. Some more common but others I'd not heard of! The trouble sleeping is really the worst for me but sleep can be an issue at any stage of life. I've got a very young son so I need all the energy I can get! Thanks for your reply and good wishes.

I have never taken HRT I am 66, I do have some joint pain but no more than my friends, I am fairly active and am a carer for my DH who has had a stroke. I did take the mini pill till I was 50. I lost weight (8 stone)after I stopped taking it and didn't want to put hormones in my body which obviously made me gain weight again. I am lucky? I still have my original hair colour and good skin without too many wrinkles.

ExDancer

Having ploughed through all these replies, I'm sure your head is spinning!
I'd wait and see how you feel when it actually happens. You say you are feeling tired, you need to decide for yourself if this tiredness is greater than the tiredness we all feel at this time of year. Then consider any other changes, and if they are making your life pretty intolerable ask to try HRT for a few months and see if it helps.
Personally I didn't find it helpful, but the decision is yours, listening to other people's woes isn't helpful.
I'm in my 80s now and would have taken the pills if I felt I needed them.
Good luck, I hope you sail through it.

Also thanks for your reply to my post .

ExDancer

Having ploughed through all these replies, I'm sure your head is spinning!
I'd wait and see how you feel when it actually happens. You say you are feeling tired, you need to decide for yourself if this tiredness is greater than the tiredness we all feel at this time of year. Then consider any other changes, and if they are making your life pretty intolerable ask to try HRT for a few months and see if it helps.
Personally I didn't find it helpful, but the decision is yours, listening to other people's woes isn't helpful.
I'm in my 80s now and would have taken the pills if I felt I needed them.
Good luck, I hope you sail through it.

For me, hearing the experiences of people who have been through menopause without HRT has been really helpful as well as a really interesting read. I never really gave HRT a thought until last year. There is a monthly menopause forum where I work that is very pro HRT, and my colleague who is a similar age to me has also started using it and encouraged me to try it. I started looking more into it. I initially looked on mumsnet but the threads there mostly seem to highlight all the benefits you get from it. I think I may have wanted to just let nature take it's course but this all made me wonder what is the best thing to do. I do realise that some women absolutely need to be on HRT and for me, at the moment, it is more pondering what is best for long term health. This thread has been a really good read and I appreciate everyone is different. I wouldn't take HRT just for the sake of it...but who knows...if there was no link to cancer maybe I'd feel differently and see it as just another supplement?

M0nica

While I appreciate that for some women the menopause is very difficult, I do think the fact that for many women it isn't is played down, so that women approaching the menopause approach it expecting to have problems

Sometime in my 30s/early 40s I heard a radio programme about women in some part of India, where the women were more or less put into purdah when they started menstruating and had to live a constrained and closeted life until the menopause. They could then move around freely, leave the house, not cover their faces etc etc. As a result very few women had difficult menopauses. On the contrary they looked forward to it because it gave them back their freedom.

This program made a deep impression on me, and while I had no constraints on me before the menopause, apart from having to deal with monthly periods, I did really look frward to it because it meant not having to be prepared for periods all the time.

That's really interesting what happened in India. It is great not having periods, can't deny that .

Claremont

It was never an option for us in our mid 70s. Menopause came, and went, and that was that- no big fuss.

I think HRT has been available for longer than you think Claremont: I am 75 and I can remember way back in the 1970s people took something called Conjugated Mare's Oestrogens* which was a form of HRT.

*I always thought this sounded like something from a Latin lesson

I didn't take HRT. Maybe my experiences would have been different if I had taken it, but there's no way of knowing because I didn't take it....! All I can do is tell you what my menopause was like. I had huge memory problems which made both my working and personal life difficult (I wouldn't just forget promising to do something, I forgot even the act of promising). My sex drive went into, well, OVER-drive (DH wasn't complaining, but it meant I was forever "fancying" other men, which was awful and out of character. I put on weight, suffered horribly from insomnia and went into obsessive nest-building syndrome. Would any or all of that have been avoided if I'd take HRT? Maybe, maybe not. We're all different, so my experiences will certainly not be the same as other women's. We either try HRT and see how it goes for us, or we don't (and see where Mother Nature takes us). Good luck with it anyway.

Having ploughed through all these replies, I'm sure your head is spinning!
I'd wait and see how you feel when it actually happens. You say you are feeling tired, you need to decide for yourself if this tiredness is greater than the tiredness we all feel at this time of year. Then consider any other changes, and if they are making your life pretty intolerable ask to try HRT for a few months and see if it helps.
Personally I didn't find it helpful, but the decision is yours, listening to other people's woes isn't helpful.
I'm in my 80s now and would have taken the pills if I felt I needed them.
Good luck, I hope you sail through it.

Macadia

Excuse me for sounding daft but, what is HRT for?

Genuine question Macadia
How did you get to the age you are and not know what HRT is for?

I am now in my mid 70s and I menopaused in my 40s. It took me ages to realize it had actually happened as I had always been irregular. It was only after having a blood test that I was aware that this was it.

My mother had a terrible time, I can well remember the tears, depression, the hot flushes and the mood swings.

My GP was very keen for me to have HRT and I took part in a clinical trial (where we had six months HRT and six months placibo but we were not aware when we were taking what) which resulted in me finding that it made no difference to me as my symptoms were non-existant.

I know full well that many women suffer terribly and that their symptoms are very real but I can't help feeling that sometimes women are made to feel that problems are inevitable. Which may, in some cases, actually make the symptoms worse.

Oh I used to get those, and they were excruciating as I approached the menopause.

I think anything hormone related can cause so many problems.

The headaches knocked me flat, they were just awful.

No HRT for me. I was fortunate to go through the menopause without troublesome symptoms.

Now I no longer have periods I don’t get the monthly pre-period headaches any more. I sure don’t miss those!

I am 66, fit and active, and grateful for my good health.

And not because we didn't have to go to GP, but because it just was not available at the time at all.

Macadia

Claremont choice is supreme. Women everywhere have to fight for common human rights to medical care.

Of course- totally agree. The OP however does mention the concept of choice re HRT- and without criticism, I just pointed out that for many of us, the choice was not available at all.

Same for me, never offered it, didn’t need to see GP

Many of us here were not offered HRT as we didn't have any need to go to the GP. Not a matter of choice just not applicable.

Macadia The majority of women who get breast cancer have not used HRT. It raises the risk of getting it slightly, but you have only to read the media to know that there is nothing anyone ever does, or ever eats that doesn't inrease your risk of something or another - or decrease your risk - you takes your choice.

I do not have quite your trust in God, when it comes to my body, as we know everyoneis born with some gene mutations and having been born with a bowel condition that had me in and out of hospital through out my childhood, plus being born with neural diversity. I am a believer in free will.

Or in biblical terms, once Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, we were left to sink or swim with no intervention from supra worldly entities.

Obviously

Claremont choice is supreme. Women everywhere have to fight for common human rights to medical care.

Thank you, Monica. I never go to doctors so I didn't know this. My mother never did HRT and she died from breast cancer. I just struggled through menopause and figured that if God wanted my body chemistry to be changed during the transition then he would have made that adjustment to the design. I am currently as fit and as strong as a teenager (and sleep like a newborn baby - which is NEVER! ). Hot flashes keep me from using the electric heater at night. Core strengthening exercises and balance are important and I do Tai Chi every morning.

Macadia Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is a treatment that can help relieve symptoms of the menopause. It works by replacing the hormones oestrogen and progesterone, which decrease during menopause.

However it can have side affects and has been implicated in some cases of breats cancer.