How wise you were not to go on HRT! I did and it caused many/most of my problems. I was on it for over 10 years and it depleted my body of B vitamins and unbalanced my minerals and made me even more estrogen dominant. There's research now to show that this is the case and yet the doctors don't seem to know how it unbalances the body.
I had a severe case of a chronic illness four years ago (IC) and healed myself of the major symptoms through books I found on the internet when conventional medicine said it couldn't do anything for me except give me pain killers and anti-depressants. When I saw my doctor a year and a half later and she said I was a changed person, unrecognisable from the hysterical wreck I had been, I said that my illness had been caused by toxicity, vitamin and mineral depletion and hormone imbalance. She, who is a very good doctor by all conventional standards, and much sought after, said those were terms which aren't used in mainstream medicine. Sigh.