Peptides vs HRT? Choose your fighter 🥊
One year officially in Menopause-- Here's what I've learned & what's working best
Heads up before you read: this is my personal experience and research, not medical advice. I’m not a doctor. Always consult your healthcare provider before applying anything you read here to your own body.
I just got off a call with my HRT provider, and what she told me was actually pretty exciting 😎
We reviewed the labs I had drawn back on April 15th — this round through Function Health (whole post on that one coming soon). That draw landed almost exactly a year out from my total hysterectomy last February. If you’re new here, I’ve written about the who, what, when, where, and why of that decision — go back and catch up if you want the full story.
This past year has been anything but steady, on so many levels. But one thing is for sure: it has been a major blessing and a relief to not be fumbling with horrendous cycles, bleeding all the time, and pain. You know the drill.
I’ll say it again — I am forever grateful to my OB/GYN for presenting the best solution for me, which was the total hysterectomy.
Going into that procedure, I had real reservations about how my body would respond afterward — whether I’d just be trading one circus for another when it came to balancing hormones. And I’ll still tell you it was the best decision I’ve ever made, even while riding some major waves of stress and life change: a divorce that followed almost immediately, a relocation, and the list goes on.
So meeting with my provider today was refreshing. It confirmed that, hormone-wise, I actually know what I’m doing. Here’s a little backstory on what’s happened over the past 12 months.
My 12-month hormone timeline
I started HRT immediately post-surgery and found my favorite pretty quickly: a topical estradiol spray. After about six months, I met with my telehealth HRT provider to reassess (my OB/GYN had retired by then, and I’d moved out of state).
Physically I felt pretty well, but my levels had settled at the very low end of the post-menopausal range. My provider suggested it might not hurt to increase my dosing to see if I felt even better.
So I switched everything up — moving to injectable progesterone and estradiol on their standard starting protocol.
I stayed on the injectables through Q4 and into early January. Then, seemingly overnight, I felt that familiar shift: my estrogen was climbing too high. Bloated, puffy, just generally not great. I’d also added the teeniest dose of testosterone a couple times a week — micro, micro dose — and suddenly my side effects were through the roof.
Turns out I’m SenSiTivE
Here’s where my DNA comes in. I already know — thanks to understanding my genetic patterns — that I’m a high-risk candidate when it comes to testosterone. My conversion pathways lean heavily toward DHT and the androgenic side (read: side effects), plus faster estrogen conversion. Turns out I’m quite the sensitive Sally when it comes to HRT in general.
As soon as I felt that system overload, I backed off and went right back to my topical. Within a couple of weeks I felt great again, as my levels settled back to the lower end of “normal.”
And then — of course, as it goes — something else threw me off-kilter this spring. I went hard with three consecutive weekly sessions of EBOO, an intense detox treatment that did my body a lot of good… but also seems to have bottomed out my hormones after the third pass. Suddenly I was waking up with hot flashes and night sweats, plus some pretty pronounced anxiety during the day.
Luckily, I knew exactly what to do. I started back on my injectables for fast relief to get my levels back up. This was right after my spring labs, so I had a clear picture of where things stood — and yep, the labs confirmed they’d tanked.
