HRT has had alot of press lately and frankly it can be overwhelming, but this blog is going to help you get savvy and cut through the confusion

I'm going to start with POI - Premature Ovarian Insufficiency, which happens before the age of 40. POI is often tagged on to the back of menopausal advice, which frankly really annoyed me when I was trying to navigate the whole realm of my POI diagnosis. 

Medical guidelines 

NICE guidelines recommend all women diagnosed with POI or Premature menopause (Under 40yrs old) should replace the hormones they would have ordinarily had up to the normal age of menopause. This is because POI or premature menopause is not natural and these women have a deficiency in hormones. This deficiency can come with increased health risks, which are mitigated when you take HRT.  

Ladies, I will be honest with you, when I was diagnosed with POI in my mid 30s the last thing I wanted to do was go on HRT.  I had not had a great experience with the contraceptive pill in my teens. I suffered from fatigue and constant yeast infections until I found out they were key side effects and took myself off it at age 20 yrs.   I also knew the pill depleted vitamins and minerals and was not natural. So I hadn't been on the pill for 15 years and here I was in a situation where I needed to go on hormones. I was also scared of the breast cancer risk that is touted around whenever there is a discussion on HRT. 

Grieving for the loss of what I felt like,  my body letting me down.  I felt like a 93 yr old with a mid-30-year-old body.  I was sick of being told these symptoms you are experiencing. They are all just menopause (You can read more about that here). I reluctantly went on HRT and struggled big time. 

My doctor was not a specialist in POI. She treated me like a normal menopausal woman, put me on old synthetic forms of oral estrogen and progesterone and I had symptoms galore. After trailing 3 different HRT's, I came off it. 

The 4 years that followed saw me working on my health from a functional perspective. I hadn't heard of functional medicine, but after chronic fatigue and debilitating symptoms had caused me to leave my corporate role I was  at a loss and it was functional medicine that saved me. I trained as a functional medicine practitioner and, like a detective, biohacked my health, with the help of mentors, teachers, course and trial and error. I finally got to the underlying cause of my chronic fatigue (I had Lyme disease and lots of infections, and toxicity, both of which can be the cause of POI, were they the cause of mine I will never know).

• Financial issues
• Relationship problems
• Moving house
• Getting married
• Death of a loved one
• Car accident or trauma
• Having a baby
• Redundancy
• Bullying in the workplace
• Conflict with neighbours or friends.

The list goes on....

Are a little more sneaky these are things that can go under our radar and we don't learn about them until the Dis-ease process is well underway.

• Inflammation in the body
• Chronic Infections
• Gut Imbalances & infections
• Hormonal imbalances
• Neurotransmitter imbalances
• Heavy Metals
• Mould
• Toxin exposure
• EMF & Wifi Exposure
• Pollution
• Chemicals
• Nutritional deficiencies

These often go unnoticed for a while as normal symptoms, when you catch yourself saying " oh my period is all over the place it has been for years" (Not Normal) Oh Constipation had it for years (Not Normal) Headaches yeah I get them weekly (Not Normal) you get the gist.

These are when you perceive something to be stressful because of a past experience you had.  Yet the person next to you may not to perceive it to be stressful at all. The thing is with perceived stress our body doesn't know the difference between real and imagined, so if we think something is stressful the body will switch on its stress defences. 

(1)https://www.healthawareness.co.uk/menopause/1-4-of-women-have-considered-leaving-their-job-because-of-the-menopause/#