Stopped HRT - how long until things settle?
I stopped HRT (75mcg estrogen patches) 3 weeks ago after tapering off over 2 weeks. I’d been on HRT for about 6 months.
I came off because I genuinely wasn’t sure it was helping, and I wanted to do a sort of ABA test rather than stay on medication unnecessarily.
But since stopping, I feel awful. Very emotional, low, anxious, and my daily morning nausea has become much worse again. Those were basically my only peri symptoms before HRT too (anxiety + nausea).
What I can’t find reliable info on is this: how long does it take to stabilise AFTER stopping HRT and reach some kind of baseline again? Everything online seems to focus on how long it takes to adjust when starting HRT.
I’m struggling to work out how long to wait before deciding whether to go back on it. If this is my actual baseline off estrogen, then maybe the patches were helping more than I realised.
For context: I’m 40 and also have a Mirena coil.
It’s complicated by the fact that a huge family crisis started about a month before I stopped the patches, so now I genuinely can’t tell what’s hormones, stress, or both. In hindsight, this may have been terrible timing for an experiment.
edited to add - I’ve never been tested and I’m not suggesting any testing, just talking about a general baseline of how I feel.