How to Switch Hormone Replacement Therapy

For decades, doctors have routinely prescribed hormone replacement therapy for menopausal symptoms, a regime where prescription medications containing hormones are used to replace hormones that your body no longer produces. But in 2002, the Women's Health Initiative (a clinical trial where women were given hormone replacement therapy) reported that hormone therapy posed more health risks than benefits for women. Since then, approximately two-thirds of the women who had been on hormone therapy have discontinued its use, often without talking to their doctors about withdrawal. When you stop taking hormones, or switch to herbal or natural remedies, many women experience unwanted side effects like hot flashes and bleeding. Weaning off hormones by tapering the dosage is a much more effective way of stopping hormone replacement therapy.

Things You'll Need

• Prescription hormone tablets or patches

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Instructions

Weaning Off Hormone Therapy

• 1

  Taper off estrogen tablets. Take one estrogen tablet a day. Then take one estrogen tablet every other day for one month. Continue tapering your dosage by taking an estrogen tablet twice a week for the next month. Then take one tablet a week for the next two to three weeks. At that point you can stop taking the tablets altogether.

• 2

  Taper off your estrogen patch. Cut your patch in half and tape the edges before placing it on your body. Do this for one month, changing the patch once or twice a week according to the dosage you were on, and then try to stop using the patch altogether.

• 3

  Try tapering off your estrogen patch by using an alternate method. Cut the patch into quarters and taper off as above but going from a whole patch to three quarters, then to half, then to one quarter, and then stop using the patch altogether.

• 4

  Or try weaning off the patch by applying one patch every two weeks, then one every month, then go off altogether.