I am 36 and I show many menopausal symptoms, could natural progesterone help me?

Hi Catherine,

I can only find information for women in their 40’s and 50’s, which is really frustrating for me. I am 36 and I show many menopausal symptoms (total lack of libido, night sweats, insomnia, hot flushes, depression, mood swings, etc.). I tried HRT, which improved my situation a lot, but I gave up in the face of the seriousness of the side effects. Could natural progesterone help alleviate my symptoms?

Thank you,

Collee

Dear Colleen,

It’s not unusual for women of your age (30 somthing) to be grappling with hormone imbalance. In actual fact, women in their 20s are lining up with similar, no less distressing symptoms.

I know when I turned 35 I fronted up to my physician with the very same symptoms. As was the case 10 years ago, my GP prescribed the stock standard artifical HRT which carried considerable side effects, not to mention health risks we are now only too aware of. What I didn’t know back then was that I was suffering the classic symptoms of estrogen dominance.

Estrogen dominance describes a condition where a woman can have deficient, normal, or excessive estrogen but has little or no progesterone to balance its effects in the body.

Estrogen dominance occurs mostly in industrialized countries and commonly occurs in the following situations:

• When women are on estrogen replacement therapy.
• Premenopause when early follicle depletion results in the lack of ovulation and thus a lack of progesterone well before the onset of menopause.
• Exposure to xenoestrogens which is the cause of early follicle depletion.
• Xenoestrogens are foreign substances found outside the body in the air and food that have an estrogen effect on the body.
• Birth control pills with an excessive estrogen component.
• Women who have had a hysterectomy (or tubal ligation) leading to dysfunction of the ovaries.
• Post menopause, especially in women who are overweight or suffering insulin resistence.

The symptoms you describe - lack of libido, night sweats, insomnia, hot flushes, depression, mood swings - certainly suggest you are a candidate for progesterone supplementation. And there’s no reason why you cannot source a jar of cream and start improving your health immediately. Most women self-medicate without any hiccups or subsequent health concerns. They approach progesterone replacement therapy quite responsibly.

There is a great safety margin with progesterone creams because it contains the hormone identical to that produced by the human ovary. And because you’re not going against Mother Nature, women report minimal, apparently benign side-effects. If experienced these may include breast tenderness and swelling, fluid retention or slight vaginal bleeding. Dizziness, nausea, fatigue, headaches and light headedness have been reported occasionally and usually disappear with adjustment of dose. Research has shown natural progesterone is safer than all over-the-counter pain medications currently available, and there has never been a single case of anyone being admitted to hospital due to a poisoning from this hormone.

Though I would urge you, if you can, to ask your GP to order a salivary hormone profile. These tests take the guess-work out of hormone balancing.

There are a number of early intervention measures detailed in my ebook targetting younger women like yourself that you can incorporate to get yourself back on track AND save yourself years of unnecessary heartache.