An Overview of HRT Withdrawal

The terms menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy HRT have come to be known nearly as synonyms over the last two decades. At its inception, the medical community raved about the benefits of (HRT) and how it provides relief from the symptoms of menopause for women. The understanding of how hormone replacement therapy works and the risks and benefits involved are crucial in making informed healthcare choices for ensuring the quality of life and for lowering the risks of life threatening illnesses such as heart attack, stroke and associated heart disease, which become more common with age.

Withdrawal � all you need to know
Withdrawal is the sudden stopping of hormone replacement therapy. It could be that a woman undergoing treatment for quiet some time gets breast cancer or due to some other reason, must stop treatment immediately.

This is not same as stopping treatment where the patient first reduces the dose of estrogen and then slowly weans away form treatment. In withdrawal, withdrawal symptoms are observed commonly. Millions of women have also discontinued their hormone replacement therapy due to the increased risk of other diseases like breast cancer. Most of these women also began to suffer from withdrawal symptoms.

The withdrawal symptoms can sometimes be very severe for some patients who discontinue their treatment abruptly. It has been discovered that the severity of withdrawal symptoms is dependent on a many factors. Some of the factors determining the extent of withdrawal symptoms are severity of the patient�s original menopausal symptoms, the type of hormone replacement therapy underwent and the length of time a patient was taking hormone replacement therapy.

Women who suffered more severe menopausal symptoms are more likely to experience more severe withdrawal symptoms. The worst part is that when a woman discontinues hormone replacement therapy, her withdrawal symptoms may actually be even worse than what her original symptoms were. This is like a �rebound effect�, which is common due to the discontinuation of many prescription drugs

. It is suggested that HRT withdrawal symptoms may be mitigated if patients slowly wean themselves off their treatment over the course of a few months. This will allow the body to slowly adjust to hormonal changes and will reduce the severity of withdrawal symptoms.