Our goal, as is yours, is to achieve relief from your symptoms of menopause. It has taken many years for your body’s hormone balance to eventually become unbalanced – it may take some time to get it back into balance.
What should you expect in the first two months?
Different women have different degrees of sensitivity to the hormones. No two women are the same and no two women will respond exactly the same way. Variations can depend on a person’s sensitivity, her metabolism, weight, capacity to absorb etc. Our preference is to achieve the correct strength for each patient by gradually increasing your dose up to your minimum required dose strength and so avoiding any symptoms of excess that would subsequently require tapering the dose down.
The best balance may occur rapidly or it may take a number of weeks. Most women achieve major improvements and changes within three weeks of being on the treatment program. What is most important is to relate your symptoms to the medical staff of the Menopause Centre so that we can best determine where the minor changes to the treatment need to be made.
Possible early outcomes may include:
- Insufficient strength – this may occur as we prefer to prescribe your treatment initially at a more conservative dose. Inform the medical staff if you are still experiencing hot flushes, night sweats or other troublesome symptoms. This is generally purely dose dependant.
- An increase in hot flushes and night sweats – Hot flushes and night sweats may actually increase in intensity and frequency before they start to subside. This we refer to as an “estrogen dip” and possibly may occur when the body’s initial reaction to the supplemental NHRT is to cease its own production of hormones resulting in temporary worsening of symptoms. This is generally short lived and the symptoms start to subside once the supplemental NHRT starts to work.
- Oversensitivity to the hormones – as suggested above, we err on the side of prescribing a conservative initial dose depending on each individual’s specific requirements. However it may be difficult to anticipate sensitivity to the hormones.
These uncomfortable symptoms include reactions such as:
- Break-through bleeding
- Breast tenderness
- Bloatedness
- Headaches
These symptoms should be brought to the attention of the medical staff and fine tuning of the treatment can prevent them from occurring.
If you want to know more, contact us now on 1300 883 405 for your Free Medical Consultation. The consultation is obligation free and it will be your chance to get any of your menopause concerns answered.
