Hi & thank you again Lori. I see I am not taking enough, although it is separated throughout the day (that is, with eating one can corn at 2 different times, when I'm hungry). Yes, my husband ground up a bunch in the coffee grinder, and it's handy in a jar in the fridge. I absolutely love cranberry juice the most (haven't tried cranrasberry - sounds great too). What a good excuse for getting it/these! I think both in themselves are supposed to be quite good for you to boot - the flavonoids (sp?) and other stuff i don't recall at the moment. I really should still try the cottage cheese too - as mentioned i think it should go down ok too. One of those people who just eats to stop hunger pangs - don't really enjoy eating. Hope you stay around - will let you know of any changes in the night sweats accordingly. Thanks again for your time. Much appreciated.

Sherrie, I had good results with a combination of hawthorne and motherwort. I believe it's sold by Solaray, although others probably make the same thing. Hawthorne regulates heartbeat, and should be taken regularly over a long period to be most effective. I took this combo for a couple of years at least. Before, my heart symptoms were a real problem. I also gave up caffeine and sugar, and once I identified foods that I reacted badly to (dairy products and eggplant, of all things), I ceased having PVCs ("skipped" heartbeats). Another thing that helped with the chest pains was Dr. Andrew Weil's breathing exercise for anxiety. It's described on his website. Relaxation CDs helped, too. I still use both of these techniques on occasion. Hope this helps. Susan

I have been using an estrogen gel for several months. It does help moisturize the vaginal tissues. I used it daily for I think a week, then cut back to a maintenance dose of once a week. I noticed a difference after a few weeks. The gel is a bit messy as it liquifies quicker than the cream, but I had a reaction to the cream. I get the gel from a compounding pharmacy. The gel doesn't tackle my other symptoms, the main one being hotflashes, so I take a low oral dose of estradiol daily. The only side effect is breast sensitivity(from the oral med), but I can live with that. I can't live with the hotflashes. I've been on HRT for several years. I tried many types of estrogen after trying natural remedies(and other meds)first with no success. I get my blood tests done regularly and take the lowest dose that stops my symptoms. I would go ahead and try the cream to see if it helps. Just pay attention to how your body reacts and let your doctor know how it's going.

Expanding on what others have said, the estrogen creams and gels for skin, as opposed to vaginal, use are prescription forms, made up by a compounding pharmacist to a prescription written by your own doctor (the pharmacist can help him with that if he is unfamiliar with how to write this kind of prescription). There are compounding pharmacists in Canada and they can make up these forms of HRT, but they are somewhat harder to locate (less common) than in the US. The main difference between using a topical cream/gel and using a patch is that the patch gives a steady release over the life of the patch (more or less) where the topicals give more of a curved effect, peaking after the dose and then dropping off till the next dose. Whether or not that makes a difference to any particular woman seems to be an individual thing: some dose with topicals once or twice a day and do fine; others have to go to multiple doses to avoid too much variation in hormone levels. The vehicle (there are a number of different cream bases, not to mention the gel) and where you put it (fatty tissue versus not) also affect the length and shape of the absorption/circulation curve. So, as with everything else menopausal, there's a lot of personal variation and you may have to experiment some to find the best one for your own body. There are, as Leigh notes, no effective over the counter variations on estrogen creams and gels.