Posted by barbaracat on September 25, 2005, at 17:07:59
In reply to Re: natural progesterone cream??, posted by tiffanywp on September 18, 2005, at 18:53:40
I second the progesterone suggestion. Emeritas is probably the gold standard. You can give it a try to see if it makes a difference because I doubt you'll get much encouragement from any conventional doc.
Most women in their late 30's to mid-menopause start to become estrogen dominant because of a drop in progesterone. It takes an unfertalized ovulation cycle to shed the lining of the womb and progesterone is crucial to this shedding. If there's no ovulation, estrogen continues to merrily build up the womb lining preparing for a pregnanacy. Progesterone opposes estrogen, and is a calming and soothing hormone. Estrogen can produce anxiety, crying spells, muscle aches and weight gain. As if that's not enough, the fact that progesterone is not there to inhibit it, it keeps building in the endometrial lining and breast tissue. It's not estrogen that plummets in the years prior to menopause, it's progesterone.
Don't expect your regular MD or OB/GYn to be hip to this theory. Conventional medicine relies on blood tests which do no good in measuring how much hormones your cells are actually taking in. Saliva tests are a much more reliable method but even if you find an enlightened MD who believes in them, most likely they're not allowed to order them. I've found out about my severe hormonal imbalance from my naturopath. My progesterone was zilch, nil, and I had a high estrogen count. I also was bleeding post-menopause and having panic attacks and a wired insomnia. I had a pre-cancerous condition in my endometrium and the remedy was not fun. It could have been avoided if some tests were taken instead of just handing out the standard hormone doses.
This is not the whole story as to my mood disorders, but once I got my hormones balanced it made all the difference. In fact, I'm on progesterone only now since it is near the top of the hormone pyramid so to speak, and cascades down to convert into all the other sex hormones.
Transdermal cream or sublingual drops of bioidentical hormone are the only way to go. Please don't get talked into oral synthetics like Provera. Lexapro may help with the symptoms, and may end up being a good stop gap measure until things are sorted out, but how much better it is to get to the root of the cause. Good luck - BarbaraCat
> > Have you read anything about Dr. John Lee?
> >
> > He has a website with a test/quiz that you can take to see if you are possibly suffering with estrogen dominance. If you are, it can cause panic attacks and maybe natural progesterone cream would be helpful.
> >
> > My best friend swears this stuff saved her from hormone hell.
> >
> > I hope you feel better soon!
>
> thanks spriggy for answering my ??s on both forums - i checked this outt and will bring this up at my OB tom. i know they will push lex. i hope i can resolve this w/out an ssri
poster:barbaracat
thread:555852
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050924/msgs/559508.html