Answer a short questionnaire about your symptoms and health, and get a personalised summary of HRT options, grounded in current UK guidance and ready to take to a healthcare professional.
The menopause hardly ever shows up as one clear thing. It arrives as heat and broken sleep, as worry and forgetfulness, as a quiet feeling that you've somehow lost track of yourself. If that sounds like your last few months, you're in the right place.
No two women go through this the same way. Some barely notice it. For others it turns daily life upside down. Whatever your experience, it's real and it matters.
There is a lot to feel hopeful about: for most women, HRT brings real relief.
Around the menopause your ovaries slow down and levels of oestrogen fall. That is what drives hot flushes, night sweats, broken sleep, low mood and vaginal dryness. HRT gently tops the oestrogen back up, eases those symptoms, and helps protect your bones.
If you still have a womb, a second hormone called a progestogen is added to keep its lining healthy. After a hysterectomy, oestrogen on its own is enough.
The oestrogen can be worn on the skin as a patch, gel or spray, or taken as a tablet. Your prescriber helps you find the type and dose that suits you best.
For most people under 60, or within 10 years of their last period, the benefits of HRT outweigh the risks. The picture depends on your age, your health history, the type of HRT, and how it's taken. Oestrogen taken through the skin doesn't raise clot risk in the way tablets do. Risks are individual, which is why a prescriber goes through yours with you.
No. HRT is not contraception, whatever type you're on. If there's any chance you could conceive, you need a separate method alongside it, unless your HRT includes a hormonal coil, which does both.
They sound alike and are very different. Body-identical hormones (regulated estradiol, and micronised progesterone such as Utrogestan) are available on the NHS, tested, and recommended. Compounded 'bioidentical' hormones, mixed for you by a private specialist pharmacy, are not recommended: they don't go through the same regulation, and there's no good evidence the progesterone dose in them protects the uterus lining.
Oestrogen-only HRT has little or no effect on breast cancer risk. Combined HRT is linked to a small increase that grows with the number of years used and falls back after stopping. To put it in context, drinking alcohol and carrying extra weight both affect risk to a similar or greater degree. If this worries you, it's worth reading the WHC factsheet in further reading and raising it directly.
There's no fixed maximum. HRT continues for as long as the benefits outweigh the risks for you, reviewed at least once a year. Stopping abruptly and reducing gradually both work, though tapering tends to soften the short-term return of symptoms.
Irregular bleeding is common in the first few months of starting or changing HRT, and adjusting the progestogen settles most of it. It's bleeding that is still happening after 6 months, starts up again once it had settled, or is heavy or painful that needs looking into, so book a review rather than waiting it out.
Three short steps stand between here and a set of ranked options to bring to your GP, nurse or pharmacist.
A short, plain-English walk-through of your symptoms, health history and what matters to you.
Safety first, then your preferences. Each option is explained clearly, with UK brands, benefits and drawbacks.
Bring your ranked options to your GP, menopause nurse or pharmacist, and decide together what suits you.