Here’s a thing with which to kick-off this shiny new Substack… HRT brand substitutes and how bloody rubbish they can be.
Here in the UK, for reasons that are blindingly obvious to most of us, there are supply chain problems with many products. The Government blames them on the war in Ukraine and/or The Pandemic, but the reality is a large proportion of them started when Brexit happened.
Anyway…HRT has been affected. Which means that thousands of women have been affected, including me.
When my pharmacist told me that the Oestrogel I’ve used for two and a half years was unavailable, I panicked. I did some research online and found a pharmacy that would contact my GP and then sell me some (at three times the prescription price). I had it in my hands 48 hours later.
Fast forward to last weekend and I was two weeks into an increasingly dark depression. Properly dark. I put it down to SAD and world events.
My muscles and joints hurt and I blamed the heavy gardening I was doing because I couldn’t manage anything else.
I was falling asleep at 7pm. See also: gardening?
I had a migraine every day for a week. Stress?
It wasn’t until I was struggling to get up the stairs that I thought, “This feels how I felt pre-HRT. It’s as if my HRT isn’t working. Oh. Wait…”
I checked the gel bottle I’d been using for three weeks and found it was over-labelled. The real brand was Oestrodose, not Oestrogel. They’re made by the same company and that company says they’re the same, so they’re widely interchanged. For months, women who have used both have said that they are NOT the same.
Luckily for me, I already had an option. My regular pharmacist had just given me Sandrena gel as a substitute and that night I threw out the Oestrodose and switched to Sandrena. The next morning…no migraine. No joint pain. I cuddled my dogs and laughed at my partner’s jokes. The lights came on and the colours came back.
After one dose.
Two days on and I feel like a new woman. I’ve requested a permanent change to Sandrena. Nothing else in my life has changed to enable this improvement. I’m mostly just relieved that I’m feeling alive again.
How many women have not joined these dots or had access to a solution? How many are still in the dark, frightened by how they’re feeling for seemingly no reason?
If you know anyone who has recently had to change brands or is suddenly feeling ‘not right’ on their HRT, please suggest they check what they’re using and ask their GP about an alternative. The Oestrogel/Oestrodose switcheroo can be - in my opinion, unhindered by any science! - a big problem but you don’t have to struggle with it.
As we've all said a million times before, if it was Viagra they'd sort the issue out overnight. HRT for women? Nah, not a priority. 🙄 So glad you figured out what was going on and found an alternative!