My GP told me progesterone was actually causing my fibroid to grow and then prescribed the Pill.

Hi Catherine,

Thank you for a great website. As you have invited us to comment, I would like to share a recent experience of mine.

Recently I went to a gynaecologist and was diagnosed with a uterine fibroid. His only treatment he could suggest was that I discontinue the progesterone cream I was using and he said he would put me on the pill which he said would reduce the size of the fibroid as progesterone was actually causing the fibroid! He also added that I could get the pill from him at a much lower charge than the pharmacy. I asked him to please supply me with some literature to substantiate his comments. After a month he sent me a list of natural herbs one could use when going through menopause!!

Obviously I never discontinued the progesterone rather instead of believing what Dr John Lee, Dr Katharina Dalton and Dr Shirley Bond suggest. However, after investigating websites dealing with this, I finally realised that doctors in general have no idea the difference between progestins and progesterone. Such a pity one must pay exhorbitant prices and get such inferior advise. Here listed below is the website which is an example that I read… I have extracted the paragraph which blatantly shows this.

Progesterone alone causes fibroid muscle cells to reproduce and grow (26). If you give progestin alone as add back therapy to women treated with LHRF, the fibroids will return to pretreatment size (27, 28). This implies that progestin supplementation alone (Provera?, DepoProvera?) will cause fibroids to grow.

Please advise readers that doctors don’t seem to know everything. What distressed me is that if I followed this specialists advice then 3 months done the line I would have returned to him obvioulsy no better, he would have probably increased the dosage….3 months later even worse then he would have probably suggested a hysterectomy…he probably would have then a new boat for Christmas for himself!!

Keep on shining,

Shelagh

Dear Shelagh,

We know that estrogen dominance causes the uterus to grow, and without the monthly balancing effect of progesterone it doesn’t have the proper signals to stop growing.

In some women this results in an enlarged uterus that presses on other organs, such as the bladder, and often on the digestive system, and generally causes discomfort and heavy menstrual bleeding. In other women estrogen dominance results in fibroids, which are tough fibrous, noncancerous lumps that grow in the uterus.

Fibroids always shrink at menopause, but the most common course of action a doctor takes when a patient comes in with a fibriod is to remove the uterus.

As I’m sure you are aware by now, birth control pills contain artificial variations of bioidentical progesterone known as synthetic progestin analogues that are, in fact, distant cousins to progesterone.

Patent medicine companies manufacture birth control pills and HRT by using USP progesterone as a building block, and then chemically alter its molecular structure away from its natural configuation such that it is NO LONGER identical to anything found in the human body.

If a GP suspects progesterone as the culprit in stimulating the growth of a fibroid in your body, what would prompt him to prescribe an ‘artificial’ form of progesterone (that he can source at a cheaper price!) … but progesterone nonetheless? It doesn’t make sense, its smacks of a conflict of interest that see the GP feathering his own nest, and it leaves you picking up the tab!

It’s my (limited) understanding that estrogen triggers cell growth and proliferation, and that progesterone in fact signals cell maturation, differentiation and cell death (apoptosis).

Yes, a number of women have managed to successfully control their fibroids with no less than 40mg/day (4%) progesterone cream as a baseline dose, while others have required an average maintenance dose of between 50~60mg/day.

Overall, an average of seven months on high levels of progesterone (ranging between 60~100mg/day, adjusting dosage accordingly) appears to be an effective timeframe to get some measure of control.

But we need to be aware that the jury is still out over this issue. Yes, progesterone therapy has proved successful for a majority of the women experiencing heavy bleeding associated with fibroids. However, there has been a couple of cases reported where fibroids have not responded to progesterone therapy. They, in fact, grew in size.

For this reason, I strongly urge women, working in consultation with a collaborative, open-minded physician, to undertake regular ultrasounds to monitor the stages of fibroid growth, and to determine the success of their progesterone dosage. Saliva assays would be helpful to capture a snapshot of hormones levels.

I thank Shelagh for her candid account. And if you have a ‘progesterone story‘ you’d like to share with us then please consider submitting a brief overview for our readers to enjoy and draw inspiration from. Simply email me with a concise account of your ‘journey’ for submission to an upcoming edition of our newsletter.