In the Dr. John Lee book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell About Breast Cancer chapter 13 is titled “How and When to Use Natural Progesterone, The Guardian Angel of Breast Cancer.” Women suffering from endometriosis,migraines, PMS, fibroids, irregular menses and infertility may be treated successfully with safe, generic progesterone. Natural progesterone is your single biggest ally to prevent breast cancer, according to Dr. Lee.
Dr. Lee is not the only expert that believes bioidentical progesterone can help women with so many female medical conditions. What I’ve gathered is that most of the top researches and professors in Anti-Aging Medicine believe that progesterone balances estrogen dominant conditions and complaints such as anxiety, insomnia, and depression.
Why doesn’t my primary care giver know about natural, bioidentical progesterone?
The short answer; there is no money in a natural, bioidentical anything, including progesterone. There are no beautiful, smart, pharmaceutical salespersons selling generic, bioidentical hormones to doctors. The pharmaceutical industry has given hormone replacement therapy a black eye with the billions of dollars of sales by the synthetic forbidden bad hormones; Premarin, Provera, and Prempro that attribute to cancer, stroke, cardiac disease, arthritis, and blood clots. None of the physicians that profess the benefits of natural bioidentical progesterone make any money in sales.
The drug companies would rather sell drugs that treat the many complaints and symptoms of progesterone deficiency or estrogen dominance. Primary care physicians, including gynecologists usually treat the anxiety, insomnia and depression of women over 30 with an antidepressant, antianxiety, and a sleeping medication, instead of figuring out her hormone imbalance. Women’s hormones fluctuate a lot in a menstrual cycle making lab testing difficult. The dozens of symptoms associated with female hormone imbalance compound this difficulty in prescribing the correct amount of progesterone and estrogen. Gynecologists would rather do a hysterectomy to correct pelvic pain, fibroids and endometriosis instead of using bioidentical hormones. The gynecologist may try “hormone therapy” with a birth control pill recommended by their favorite pharmaceutical salesperson, which usually contain the non-bioidentical hormones. Instead of giving natural progesterone for heavy menses in perimenopause the GYN will recommend the more lucrative uterine ablation procedure. I fully support the ablation procedure to get rid of pesky periods, but please find the hormone imbalance that caused it in the first place, usually a progesterone deficiency.
Progesterone is the balance to estrogen. Symptoms of progesterone deficiency are very similar to estrogen dominance, which include anxiety, depression, insomnia, heavy or frequent periods. In healthy menstruating women progesterone slowly increases at ovulation just to skyrocket 2 days after ovulation and stays high until 2 days before the period starts. To better understand the fluctuation of hormones go to Wikipedia MenstrualCycle2.
Generally progesterone transdermal cream should be used 14-16 days a month at doses of 10-25mg a day, best divided twice a day because it only lasts eight hours. If insomnia is a chief complaint then oral progesterone at night is recommended in doses of 25- 150mg, although the transdermal is most preferred to avoid the oral absorption and burdening the liver with first pass effect.
Women with hysterectomy do need progesterone replacement if they show symptoms and laboratory tests that show deficiency. For unknown reasons the pseudo fact “no uterus, no progesterone “ for you, has been passed on from resident to intern for decades, even though there is no mention of this notion in any of the top gynecology text books.
Most women only need 20mg of progesterone a day, 10-30mg is not uncommon.
Below are recommendations by Dr. Lee for female medical conditions:
Premenstrual and menstrual migraine headache can be treated with natural progesterone 10mg cream every four hours as needed for pain, apply the cream to the neck and temples.
PMS patients should try transdermal progesterone day 12 to 26, with slightly smaller doses early to the biggest dose the last few days.
Endometriosis goes away during pregnancy when progesterone levels are a hundred times higher than in non-pregnant women, therefore natural, bioidentical progesterone should be tried for at least six months. Gradual increase in progesterone from 15mg once a day up to four times a day, 60mg a day or until the patient is pain free. Later carefully taper the dose to symptoms and labs.
Fibrocystic Breast Disease can be successfully treated with physiologic dose of progesterone 15-20mg, 15 days a month along with vitamin E 400IU, Magnesium 300mg and B6 50mg nightly.
Menopausal women can be treated with progesterone 10-15mg, 20-25 days a month.
Recommended reading; Women’s Hormones by Pam W. Smith, MD, professor of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer and What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Premenopause by Dr. John Lee, MD. For physicians read The Hormone Handbook by Dr. Terry Hertogue, a Belgium endocrinologist and president of the International Hormone Society.
Recommended web site for learning: worldhealth.net.
In conclusion, when you read articles about hormones you must know exactly which hormone was studied, bioidentical or not bioidentical. Many times hormone studies will mix the non-bioidentical with the bioidentical to make the drug companies non-bioidentical hormones look better, when in fact the bioidentical hormones drive the statistics toward the positives effects. Most times the non-bioidentical drug has enough side effects to cause alarm about all hormones. Lastly, spend a lot of time with your doctor to get the dose and timing of hormone replacement to where you feel young again!
