The Benefits of Progesterone

HORMONE BENEFITSOESTROGEN SAVES HEARTSUp to this decade, scientists had little idea how oestrogen protects your heart. Now evidence is pouring in from every direction. Research shows that oestrogen enhances the growth of new blood vessels, oestrogen causes blood vessels to relax and increase blood flow, and oestrogen increases one clot-dissolving factor in the blood and also reduces the blood-clotting factor, fibrinogen. It's a v-e-e-e-e-ry busy hormone.

PROGESTERONE WINSOestrogen is the dominant female hormone during the first half of a woman's menstrual cycle. Progesterone becomes dominant during the second half of the cycle. In mid-cycle, when the egg is released from the ovary, the corpus luteum forms and releases progesterone. Progesterone then triggers changes in the lining of the womb to prepare it for pregnancy. Progesterone also inhibits the action of oestrogen, which otherwise would stimulate the immune system to destroy a fertilized egg as a foreign body. This progesterone miracle of protection, without which we would not exist, goes on every month of a fertile woman's life. Progesterone is the primary control agent that keeps oestrogen in line.

At perimenopause everything changes. As oestrogen levels begin to fluctuate and lose synchronicity, so do progesterone levels. Research in New Zealand shows that the number of ovulatory cycles declines by 40% during perimenopause.

The progesterone phase of the menstrual cycle also becomes shorter? Together, these phenomena reduce female progesterone levels dramatically.

After menopause it gets worse. On cessation of menstrual cycles, a woman loses two-thirds of her remaining progesterone. Within six months blood levels decline from a viable 1.60 ng/ml to a barely functional 0.5 ng/ml.

Despite these clear findings, current health authorities have no policy to restore progesterone. It beats me that they are then surprised when oestrogen replacement runs wild. Obscure rationalizations flow back and forth across the medical journals that remind me of talks between Eeyour and Piglet. No one is listening and no on is home. Meanwhile, millions of women suffer.

THE PROGESTIN DECEPTIONIt's a medical disgrace that the Physicians Desk Reference contains no progesterone for hormone replacement. Pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell it because, as a naturally occurring chemical, they can't patent it. Instead they have invented profitably patentable progestins, also called progestogens, man-made mimics of progesterone that never existed in Nature, and have no natural place in a woman's body.

Some physicians make no distinction between progesterone and progestins. They even seem to think that progestins are an "improvement" on progesterone. Such arrogance! If you are concerned to achieve hormonal health, always, always realize the clear distinction between molecules that form part of Nature's magnificent design, and molecules made by the puny hand of man.

Progestins do perform some of the functions of progesterone. They prevent overgrowth of the endometrium, for example, by causing the wild cells to shed. That's why they are added to oestrogen replacement therapy, to prevent endometriosis and subsequent endometrial cancer. All well and good, but the chemical keys of man made progestins don't fit the locks of Nature, so they cause all sorts of trouble elsewhere.

PROGESTINS WHACK EMOTIONSMedical scientists have known about the emotional horrors of progestins since the mid'60s, when they were first added to oestrogen to prevent endometrial cancers caused by the early contraceptives.

Progestins, especially medroxyprogesterone, are also notorious for causing irregular menstrual bleeding, bloating, and breast tenderness. Not the sort of effects that put anyone in a good mood.

In contrast, natural progesterone has calming, even sedative effects on brain function. Veterinarians often use progesterone implants on mares in hunting, show-jumping, and cross-country riding, because it keeps them calm, reduces the tendency to shy, and reduces horse pre-menstrual-syndrome.

In women progesterone has been used successfully to treat pro-menstrual-syndrome since the 1950s, when a British physician first showed that pre-menstrual-syndrome is a hormonal disorder. Correctly given, progesterone eliminates the anxiety, irritability and depression common to pre-menstrual-syndrome. The only side-effects are beneficial - increased libido and euphoria.

MULTIPLE BENEFITS OF PROGESTERONEThis natural hormone has all the chemical keys to fit exactly into the sequence of the hormone cascade. Because they lack many of these keys, your body cannot convert progestins into anything useful.

One clear example of progesterone's wide-ranging functions is the reproductive cycle. During pregnancy, the placenta manufactures 20 times or more the normal level of progesterone in a woman's body. One major reason it does so, is to damp down oestrogen dominance would cause the fetus to be rejected as a foreign body. Now you know why progesterone injections are often used to prevent miscarriages.

Medieval midwives used to use mistletoe berries to prevent miscarriage, because mistletoe, properly grown and gathered, contains effective levels of natural progesterone.

The extremely high levels of progesterone produced naturally during pregnancy have no toxicity at all. On the contrary, they benefit the women in multiple ways. The fresh bloom of pregnancy that makes her look so good, for example, is a rejuvenative effect of progesterone on the skin.

DOSAGE AND TIMINGProgesterone is difficult to dissolve, so absorption via the oral route is very unreliable. In an attempt to overcome this problem, the hormone is pulverized into the finest of powders, called micronized progesterone. But most of it is still destroyed or excreted, either directly or in its first pass through the liver. Sublingual progesterone pellets or oils overcome this problem, but are not yet available to most folk. There is a much better way.

Progesterone in a moisturizing cream base is easily absorbed through the skin. No commercial products are available yet, but compounding pharmacies can make the cream on prescription from your physician. It works a treat.

Sensing the growing demand, numerous companies in the nutrient supplement and cosmetic industries, have flooded the market with creams containing diosgenin form the wild yam species Diascorea, and extracts of black cohosh, fenugreek,and other herbs that contain steroid precursors of progesterone. They are all bogus. The human body does not have the enzymes necessary to convert vegetable steroids into progesterone, and the amount of actual progesterone in these plants in negligible.

It's true that progesterone is made commercially from the diosgenin of wild yams, but your body can't perform that chemistry. A good job too, otherwise your hormone balance would be at the mercy of the hundreds of plant steroids in our normal daily food.

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