Hi gravity3
I'm far from an expert on this (and a guy) but I do want to kick in that the concerns about starting HRT well after menopause may be exaggerated? Our integrative cardiologist / functional medicine doctor helped my wife get started on bio-identical hormones for the first time around age 70. He was not greatly concerned with the "time limit" that seems to say you have to do this within 10 years or so of menopause. He did have my wife do a test each year or two to confirm that her body was using the hormones "properly".
Again I admit to having no great knowledge on women's hormones but I'm suspicious whether the fears on late start female hormones are not yet another way in which modern medicine has got it wrong about women and their bodies.
If anyone has dug into this, like where does this time limit come from and how solid the evidence is for it and so on I'd love to hear about it. Not that I need another health topic to dig into. I'm overloaded already.
Best of luck to you.