Stopped HRT months ago but still having night sweats

How long can it take for constant night sweats and some daytime hot flashes to calm down. I was on a low dose Premarin pill but had to stop due to migraines. I stopped the Premarin pill on Jan 8 but I am still having daily hot flashes and night sweats, plus insomnia. I do still use a small dose (.5 mg) of Premarin vaginal cream twice a week. Could this be causing the night sweats due to the inconsistent dosing?

I am willing to wait it out but the night sweats are miserable. I recently had bloodwork done and my thyroid and other stuff look fine, except for the fasting glucose, which is a little high. Walking is helping with the blood sugar but the night sweats are making me nuts.

Any suggestions to help get this to calm down or to help me deal with it?

Night sweats and Hot flashes are a symptom of menopause. Maybe your doctor can find an HRT solution that will work. :huggy:

Hi Kain99, thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I have tried almost every type of estrogen available over the past five years and none will work for me. I get hives every time I use estradiol so Vivelle Dot, Estrace, Vagifem, Bio-identical creams, etc. are no longer an option for me. Premarin was the only one I did not have a serious skin allergic reaction to. But I starting getting severe migraines after never having them before, so the neurologist I am seeing said no more estrogen. It is miserable.

Those night sweats are definitely miserable. Have you tried any herbal supplements at all? I decided to not even try HRT and just go with natural remedies. There's tons of information out there about them, and it can be a bit daunting like all the rest of the information about menopause, but it sure sounds like you have the patience to try different things.

I am using a 24-hour supplement that consists of one pill in the morning and one before bedtime. The AM one has green tea extract, ginseng extract, and black cohosh. The PM one has valerian extract, hops extract, and black cohosh. Within a couple of days of taking it, I was having fewer hot flashes. I have been taking it almost 2 weeks now and I'm still having some problems with insomnia, but I am hoping that continuing to take the supplement will remedy that and the few hot flashes I am still having. They say it takes 4-5 weeks for it to get into your system good. My doctor is happy with it since it seems to be working for me.

Coffee, for me that little bit of premarin would be probably causing the night sweats. i've always had a problem with the ups and downs as opposed to anything else regarding estrogen supplementation.

Also, i've found that elminating carbs and dairy in the evening worked tremendously for helping my night sweats.

Hope you find some relief.

6andcounting - I think you may have hit on a large part of my problem. Last night it was again time for my twice weekly Premarin cream. After reading your post, I used half of the .5mg dose (instead of skipping it altogether). I still had some night sweats and this morning some hot flashes, but they are about half the intensity of the past month. This is a huge improvement over what I had been experiencing. I just can't take that severity anymore. I am now considering getting off the vaginal cream but I don't know how to keep that area from being so painful and burning without the estrogen. I did not use any for a 3-week period in January and by February I had a bladder infection. I tend to get many of them if I do not use vaginal estrogen. I wonder if just using 1/2 of the smallest dose might be enough. That stuff is definitely stronger than I thought. I did not know it could effect me systemically like that.

coffeelatte...

Some women are very sensitive to the smallest amounts of estrogen.

I understand about the bladder infection. I don't get them...had only one my whole life and I knew exactly why I got it. Then after trying to get off all homrones, had sex with DH and whamo...the 2nd one my whole life.

have you tried vagifem? Also, one of the women had suggested Vitamin E. Might be worth a shot as well.

I got the bladder infection from having sex with my DH too, it is so frustrating. It does not take long for those tissues to thin out once I stop estrogen. I did order and have tried vaginal vitamin E suppositories, but they did nothing for me. In fact, they caused more irritation (tissue probably too thin). I wonder if Vagifem is lower dose compared to Premarin cream. I tend to get hives using estradiol so I don't know if Vagifem will ever be an option for me again. I loved Vagifem when I used it a few years ago, but I had to stop because the patch and Vagifem caused huge hives. Maybe I could try just one or two again to see what happens. I have an EpiPen now in case of a problem like that.

Oh, sorry, I see that earlier in the discussion. I wouldn't try the Vagifem again then.

Perhaps the migraines from the pill was because it was too low?? I never had migraines related to hormones (or no hormones) so I don't know if they're always due to too much or sometimes due to too little. I did usually get a bad headache on the 3rd day of trying to stop all hormones, but I don't think they're migraines.

Or perhaps estratest HS (it is also synthetic estrogens) would work for you. Perhaps the testosterone in it would somehow countereffect any migraine issues with the estrogen (i'm just putting ideas out there as I have them). Most of the time, it's pure experimentation to get it right.

Is the cream causing migraines as well? If not, perhaps the answer is to use more, not less.

Do you get the night sweats usually on the nights you use the cream? Or the nights in between? You might want to try using it every night and see how that works.

I tend to get more severe night sweats on the nights I do not use the cream. I think it is just as you said earlier, the estrogen rises a bit then falls and that creates the sweats. I wish I could just forget the vaginal stuff and go totally without estrogen because I have not had good results on it. I got higher blood sugars on estrogen and my fibromyalgia pain was greatly increased. The migraines were strange and only started after using estrogen cream for six weeks. Once I stopped, the migraines stopped (so far). I had an MRI and a MRA to rule out anything else since I had never had one before and I am 51. It has truly been a hormone jungle for me but I am slowly coming out the other side. I am going to try this 1/2 dose of cream for the next two weeks to see if it might be enough to keep the bladder calmed down without keeping me up half the night with dripping wet sweats. Men have no idea!!