Birth control pill for hot flashes?

Has anyone here ever taken the Birth control pill to get rid of hot flashes and did it work? I have NO estrogen in my body due to being anorexic. So I am taking HRT estrogen patch(0.075mg) right now and it's not working 2and a half weeks in so I am wondering if maybe the birth control pill would work better as I think there's more estrogen in it? I just want these hot flashes and feeling hot feeling to go away and I just don't know if it is just going to need to take more time then what I'm thinking like normal people like maybe if it just needs to be a month for the estrogen patch to work to take away the hot flashes? Do you think it just hasn't been enough time and that in a couple weeks after it will have been a month that it should kick in by then? Anyone else had the experience of it taking longer than a couple weeks for the hot flashes to go away with HRT?

[MontsJ]

Hey lovely, it may be that the amount of oestrogen you are on, whatever the type, is just not enough. Some women need to take more to achieve a blood level high enough to alleviate symptoms. Depending on your age younger women typically need to be on a higher dose. It’s also variable how quickly symptoms resolve, some people find very symptoms resolve pretty quickly, for others it takes longer. Certainly on the NHS they usually tell you to give it 3 months before reviewing the dose. If you are younger you could try and get advice on increasing the dose sooner than that. I really hope you are getting good support with managing your anorexia, it’s very possible that with managing this your hormones will stabilise naturally and you can come off HRT. Easier say then done of course.

[Hidden in reply to MontsJ]

Yes I was wondering the same thing. I'm thinking that it's just that I'm not on a high enough level especially considering the fact that I'm making NO estrogen like it's not even detectable on a blood test at this point with my anorexia because the pituitary gland isn't producing any due to having anorexia. So my gyno prescribed 0.075 mg estradiol patches and I started them 19 days ago and I'm still not having any relief at all and I mean that's a pretty good dose... So she thought that I would be getting symptomatic relief in like 2 weeks at the most. But then when I saw an endocrinologist a week later she said well with your situation I think it might be more like a month before you notice any relief in hot flashes.

So I'm thinking that I'm just not getting a high enough dose and that for especially in the beginning I'm thinking she's going to really need to give me a big jolt to get my levels up any and that maybe I'm not on a high enough even there's even though there's only one more strength to go up. I messaged her about it today on my chart so I'm hoping that she will either tell me if this is normal and that I should just give it a couple more weeks before we make a change or if she will decide if she wants to you know increase it... But I'm hoping that she'll give me some relief as this is horrible. I would rather her just increase it and then if she needs to back down later on down the road but I feel like I'm not getting any relief and it's horrible to feel hopeless like it's not working when it usually works for everybody else.

[Hidden in reply to MontsJ]

I messaged the gyno yesterday and she still wants me to give it a month or more and she says maybe it'll kick in by then so she's not going to increase the dose at this time. I get back to see her December 4th so I'm hoping by then that I will have some more relief but that's only in like what less than 2 weeks so not very far away. I'm hoping by then that she'll either decide to increase it or have some answer as to what to do. I'd be okay with waiting if I just knew that I was on the right dose and that it was going to kick in and maybe another month or so.

[MontsJ in reply to Hidden]

Like you say, at least she hasn’t suggested too long before you can reconvene with her to discuss how things are going. The hot flushes are really horrible, I am waking up with them at night too and then struggle to get back to sleep.

[Hidden in reply to MontsJ]

I feel your pain and struggle as I'm going through the same thing with my sleep and hot flashes so I know exactly how you feel. Are you on any hrt? I'm just so frustrated because I know she's saying give it a couple weeks and then we can talk about it at our visit but at that point I will have been on it 4 and 1/2 weeks and I just feel like if it's not worked by then then I shouldn't we either increase it too 1 mg or if that doesn't work should we you know put me on the birth control pill like I don't know if that would work because I don't know if there'd be more estrogen than that? I know that before she wanted to try me on the patches she suggested getting something called Estroven that is over the counter... I didn't try that because it ended up that she prescribed the HRT estrogen patches but I was wondering if you've ever tried that or know of anyone that's had any sort of help with that? The other thing that I've tried before is I tried a birth control pill for one month and it did not work within that month but then again the doctor told me to give it three and I only gave it one because it made me gain 7 lb and I freaked out and just went off of it after getting frustrated of being on it for 4 weeks and it not doing anything to help with the hot flashes. Also I've tried 80 mg a day of black cohosh for 2 months and that didn't give me maybe like 5% relief. So I'm just feeling really hopeless at this point like is anything going to work? I definitely don't want to try antidepressants like I know they can give them too but I'm really sensitive to antidepressants and I'm really fearful of weight gain of any kind from any medicine so I'm already afraid to be on hormones which is why I'm already afraid of if she were to put me like on the birth control pill for instance because that have even more estrogen than what I'm taking now in the HRT but at this point I just want something to work on my hot flashes! This all is making my anxiety kick up which I'm sure makes the stress in the end the hot flashes worse but how are you supposed to not be stressed about it when the hot flashes aren't going away and you're just waiting and waiting and everybody else is acting like they get relief instantly and with me I feel like they're just trying to see if it will work but not sure...Also with my insurance I just have regular Medicare, drug insurance company will only pay for the one generic Estradiol patch in any dise by Mylan. Like I don't even have the option of changing to say a different brand which I know for a lot of people that that seems to help like say the generic doesn't work for them but then they switch to the name brand and that helps them but I can't afford to do that. I just hope something will help but I don't know what it is.