What is the ideal Hormone Replacement Therapy/HRT duration?
I’ll answer this question in two ways. The standard of care is if you’re going to go on hormone replacement therapy, you want the lowest dose of therapy for as short a time as possible, I disagree with that. It is like asking the question, "When is the good time to go through menopause?" Well, if menopause sucks, and there are really negative consequences to menopause in terms of all the symptoms that you feel, the vasomotor symptoms and the emotional hell and all of that, then when is a good time to do that? If in fact there are physiological consequences that are harmful like loss of bone and cardiovascular risk and increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease and more, when is a good time to do that, and what makes us think because we put off the date at which we suffer estrogen withdrawal that any of those things are going to be mitigated in any way.
So in my opinion, there’s no good time to go off hormones. Stay on hormones for the rest of your life and enjoy the highest quality of life you possibly can for as long as you possibly can.