I went through menopause at age 50. The first year I had a lot of hot flashes, so my doctor tried me on low dose HRT. Unfortunately, I had an adverse reaction just three days after starting, ending up in the emergency ward with stroke-like symptoms. After putting me through the MRI machine and determining that I didn't have a stroke, they told me to stop taking it.

I eventually reduced the hot flashes with a ketogenic diet, from about 16 a day to 4 or 5, but gained a lot of weight on the high fat ketogenic diet that I've never been able to lose. Now I just use an estrogen vaginal cream a few times a week to prevent atrophy.

On the whole, I like being post menopausal. I don't feel like I'm a prisoner of my hormones any more.

One thing you need to watch out for after menopause is hypothyroidism. When my cholesterol levels suddenly changed for the worse (I'd always had really good numbers), my doctor ran an extra thyroid test and, sure enough, I was very low. She says that a lot of post menopausal women have under-active thyroids and often they're treated for the symptoms - such as changed cholesterol levels - instead of the cause. So, now I take Eltroxin very early in the morning