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[Vicky81]

Hi all

Can anyone give me their experiences of their patch being too low or too high please?

Just wondering as I was on 60mg patch months ago but got night sweats
Upped to 65mg by cutting patch and they went ..bit I'm still currently  coning down off a 75mg patch that I thought was going to do good but cause me so many symptoms and side effects that were unbearable.
But coming down I'm still getting sleeping problems, plus today I've been teary (which I'm not usually) only since coming down off this high dose.
Last night I slept too heavy with dreams and today been very tearful.
I can't see thst my old patch mg of 65 would be too low as before I upped it I was absolutely fine.
Any ideas or experiences of too high too low would ve great to hear xx

[DottyD68]

Hi Vicky81,

From what I've learnt it isn't very straightforward (surprise surprise). Firstly some symptoms can indicate both too high and/or too low. Secondly everyone is different.

If you are perimenopausal your hormones may be fluctuating wildly which makes it even harder to get the balance right. You may find it's ok for a few days/weeks then you will get symptoms returning or new ones appearing.

For me the main symptoms are :-

Too low - night sweats, insomnia, aching legs muscles, low mood.
Too high - large/sore boobs, palpitations, jittery, weight gain.
Most of the time (irrespective of dose) - some level of anxiety.

If you tweak your dose give it a few weeks to settle as tweaking it regularly will just add to the confusion imo. Hope this helps x

[joziel]

If you are in peri, your own fluctuations make things very difficult.

When I started HRT, with every dose increase I got palpitations, anxiety, felt wired etc etc - everything seemed to suggest it was too high a dose for me. I got to 62mcg and freaked out and ended up in A&E after lying awake an entire night with heart palps and inner tremors. I didn't have any of those symptoms before starting HRT.

So I stopped the HRT. But the symptoms continued. After 6months off, I went back on again as my other low E symptoms had come back. This time, every dose increase seemed to do nothing at all and be completely ineffective. I ended up on 10 pumps of gel at the moment... When before I was freaked out after 3....

I think the reason for all this is that I stopped the desogestrel POP just when I also started HRT. So my ovaries were waking up from being suppressed for 10 years on the POP. I could feel all kinds of sharp pains coming from them and an ache in them. That was causing all kinds of spurts and fluctuations in estrogen and all that was causing a lot of hormonal fluctuation and probably high estrogen at times.

I think my ovaries settled down and also the higher estrogen dose has stopped me from cycling as well (a bit like the pill does) which also gets rid of fluctuations.

Which is all to say - there is only experimentation and trying to think outside the box and try things out that work for you. I thought I was very sensitive to estrogen and was spending ages cutting patches up into slithers. When it turns out that I don't absorb it well at all and need a pretty high dose...

[Minicat]

Sounds like the 65mg patch worked well for you before, so maybe stick with that or discuss other options with your healthcare provider.

[Vicky81]

Thank you all for your replies thsts very helpful xx