How to Stop Hormone Therapy
You started hormone therapy, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you will stay on forever. The question is what happens when you stop. A group of New York researchers out of Columbia in conjunction with scientist at Bethesda and Gynuity and Christiana Care Health Systems in Newark, DE looked at weight, your cholesterol, and other chronic disease progression, such as hypertension, in women stopping hormone therapy.
Hormone Therapy will protect against osteoporosis, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Making a plan as to how you are going to mange those risks or conditions if you have them. Once you halt therapy you may need additional treatments for conditions that have developed. Screening becomes very important to track when you will need additional treatments.
Exactly how you stop: not the actual stopping of the dosages, but the lifestyle behavioral factors, will affect how your health is affected by stopping hormone therapy.
Blood level testing before and after can give some hints as to the smoothness of the progression. And can be helpful should you ever want to re-evaluate and understand the symptoms you are going through.
If you stop your smoking, give up excessive alcohol ingestion, exercise and sleep well, among other positive behavioral changes, you are less likely to have health problems with stopping your hormone therapy. Some effects of hormone use seem to persist even with positive changes.
You have double the risk of having high blood pressure needing treatment when you go off your hormone therapy.
Gouty arthritis is another condition that seems to be decreased in women on menopausal estrogen and progesterone hormone therapy according to a study from Switzerland and published in Menopause vol 22, 2015. Therefore the risk of gout could increase if you stop your menopausal hormone therapy. In short, there are effects of stopping medications, as well as effects of continuing the medications, and both still require gyno visits to be monitored.
Signs and symptoms of hormonal withdrawal or need to actually continue hormone therapy can be monitored by your gynecologist. We are happy to do consultations at Women’s Health Practice.
