Can progesterone make fibroids grow?
The late Dr John Lee, just weeks before his death, working with Virginia Hopkins completed a fully revised and updated version of his publication ‘What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause‘. In it he pointed out, “Fibroids tend to grow during the years before menopause and then atrophy after menopause. This suggests that estrogen stimulates fibroid growth, but we also know that once they get larger progesterone, too, can contribute to their growth.”
Dr Lee went on to state, “Some fibroids, when they reach a certain “critical mass” are accompanied by degeneration or cell death in the interior part of the fibroid and will have an interaction with while blood cells that ends up with the creation of more estrogen within the fibroid itself. It also contains growth factors that are stimulated by progesterone.”
‘What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause‘ was first published in 1996, and it does not contain this updated information. Back then, Dr Lee believed that “when sufficient natural progesterone is replaced, fibroid tumors no longer grow in size (they generally decrease in size) and can be kept from growing until menopause“.
Clearly, in the ensuing years, Dr Lee saw the need to ‘qualify’ his position. As well he might following eight years on the international lecture circuit surrounded by some of the brightest minds medical science has to offer, and considering feedback from women around the world using progesterone - successfully and unsuccessfully.
I think we need to be aware that the jury is still out over this issue. Yes, progesterone therapy has proved successful for some women experiencing heavy bleeding associated with fibroids. However, there have been reported cases, such as yours, Nancy, where uterine fibroids have not responded to progesterone therapy. They, in fact, grew in size.
It would appear that women with fibroids are often estrogen dominant and have low progesterone levels. In women with smaller fibroids (the size of a tangerine or smaller), when progesterone is restored to normal levels, the fibroids often shrink a bit and stop growing, which is likely due to progesterone’s ability to help speed up the clearance of estrogens from tissue.
Women who are, by all accounts, estrogen dominant do appear to benefit from progesterone supplementation in doses of 20mg per day from Day 12-26 of their cycle. Higher doses may be required initially to offset the estrogen load.
Suggested ways to lower your body’s estrogen burden:
- exercise
- stress reduction
- avoid sugars & refinded carbohydrates
- maintain high-fiber diet (supplement with psyllium or rice bran)
- lower intake of red meat
- dietary supplements
- extracts of cruciferous vegetables
When treating smaller fibroids we should be thinking in terms of keeping our estrogen levels as low as possible. And when treating large fibroids, all hormones should be kept as low as possible.
For this reason, I strongly urge women to work in consultation with a collaborative, open-minded physician to undertake regular ultrasounds that will monitor the stages of fibroid growth and determine the success of their progesterone dosage. Regular saliva assays will enable your physician to capture a complete snapshot of hormones levels.
