Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)

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Forms of hrt

HRT is available in various forms, including pills, patches, and vaginal creams. Your health care provider will start you on a regimen that is best suited for you. It may be necessary to try more than one regimen before finding the one that works best for you.

• Cyclic hormone therapy is often recommended. With this therapy, estrogen is taken in pill form for 25 days, with progestin added somewhere between days 10-14. The estrogen and progestin are taken together for the remainder of the 25 days. Then, no pills are taken for 3-5 days. There will be monthly bleeding with cyclic therapy.
• Continuous, combined therapy is where estrogen and progestin are taken together every day. When this therapy is started, or when switching from cyclic to continuous therapy, women may experience irregular bleeding. Most women stop bleeding within one year after starting this therapy.
• HRT is also available as a patch which is applied to the abdomen or the thigh. This patch allows the estrogen to be absorbed through the skin into the bloodstream. Some women prefer this method because they do not have to take pills.
• Vaginal cream containing estrogen may be given to women for vaginal dryness. The cream is usually given along with one of the other forms of HRT because the cream may not relieve many of the other symptoms and does not appear to protect against bone disease.

Additional medications may be recommended for some women with severe symptoms from menopause, or women who are at very high risk for osteoporosis or heart disease. One of these supplemental drugs might be androgen, a male hormone given with estrogen to relieve severe hot flashes.