Hormones and breast cancer

If you have been diagnosed with breast cancer, you are not alone because over 55,000 women are diagnosed every year in the UK .

Breast cancer will almost always affect your hormone balance. For example, some types of breast cancer require treatment with chemotherapy. This can cause you to go into menopause. If you have hormone positive breast cancer, you will need treatment to lower your estrogen level. You may be given long term medications and you may experience menopause symptoms and other side effects on these treatments.

If you are diagnosed with breast cancer while taking HRT, this may be stopped abruptly which may cause you to have rebound menopause symptoms.

After your initial breast cancer treatment

So after your breast cancer treatment you may experience symptoms or health effects related to hormone deficiencies. These include symptoms related to menopause.. Other effects include osteoporosis or brittle bones.

If you take HRT after breast cancer it can increase your risk of secondary breast cancer over time. So your breast cancer specialist is unlikely to recommend this to treat your symptoms.

Better care for breast cancer survivors

There are many treatments that can help your symptoms which don’t include HRT. So it is important for you to be able to get better access to support with these types of treatment.

You should be able to access support and advice through your GP surgery. However at the moment this is not widely available. I really want to help to to improve support for cancer survivors in the NHS.

I support the Prevent breast cancer charity.