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[dawncowp44]

Good Morning

My peri-menopause symptoms kicked in in earnest late September although I later realised I'd been having some symptoms for around 18 months previous to this ( mini hot flushes, brain fog, forgetfulness, worsening sleep & excessive peeing at night).  In September I started with Insomnia & Anxiety & full on hot flushes.  I started on the lowest dose of patches & Utrogestan at the beginning of December and at the beginning of January I changed to gel & increased the dosage as I hadn't seen any change to my symptoms & suspect I don't absorb well from patches.  I have now been on this regimen for 6 weeks.  My hot flushes stopped within 3 days & I have also noticed a reduction in needing to pee through the night, although it took using Oestrogen pessaries for 10 days before I totally stopped needing to pee throughout the night, so I know that the Oestrogen is working & causing me minimum side effects.

I understand that it can take 3 months for HRT to become fully effective  & that everyone is different but I'm interested to find out peoples experiences of this.  If HRT has effectively dealt with your insomnia & anxiety symptoms, when did you first notice improvement?  I'm assuming you don't get to day 90 and hey presto your suddenly sleeping through the night and are anxiety free?  Did you see a gradual & consistent improvement or was it more stops and starts?

I am currently taking 15mg Mirtazapine to help me sleep & for anxiety but as this dosage doesn't adequately deal with my anxiety I'm now trying to decide if I want to just stick with the current Mirtazapine (a higher dose doesn't agree with me) & deal with any anxiety I have or whether I talk to my GP about adding in another antidepressant to deal with the anxiety.  I really don't want to have to go through another set of side effects associated with starting new meds, especailly if I can expect a gradual reduction in anxiety.  Going off low dose mirtazapine is also a non starter for me until I either have an alternative sleep aid or my sleep improves

[CLKD]

Morning.  If your main symptom is anxiety then taking a dedicated anti-anxiety medication with the Mirtazapine may help. How is your anxiety, is it background, all the while .........

I have had various medications over the years: since 1989 I 've taken an anti-depressant to ease depression.  Most meds have worked for several years B4 my brain became used to them so my GP switched types. 

Add to that Valium as necessary which helped 4 many years: then Propranolol at night 2 ease anxiety surges.  Without some form of medication I am unable to 'deal' with anxiety. 

How is your diet overall?  Eating regularly: i.e. every 3 hours, 24/7 : can help anxiety.  4 me eating B4 my body requires energy really makes a difference.  Short term I have used Bachs Rescue Remedy mouth spray with success.

[joziel]

I suffered from chronic insomnia and (at night) anxiety until I increased my estrogen dose way above the maximum licensed dose.

To do that, I had to go private to Newson Health - but I get the meds on the NHS as they write to my NHS GP who continues them.

I'm currently on 250mcg patches plus 6 pumps of Oestrogel per night. This gets my serum estradiol to between 650-880pmol. I do much better when it's towards the top of this range and my sleep is already affected around 650.

My NHS GP was telling me everything was fine at 300. I would have ended up on countless psych meds, had already been prescribed pregabalin (which I never took after researching it). I'm very glad to have addressed the root cause here and increased my E dose. After all, no one has an anti-depressant deficiency.