Suggested progesterone cream dosage & usage
Menopause
Women who have already entered menopause prior to their hysterectomy will benefit from 20mg of progesterone (delivered by a 2% cream) taken three (3) weeks in each calendar month, making sure they break from cream for a period of one (1) week.
This break from cream each month is important to ensure your progesterone receptors do not down-regulate from incessant application of cream. If you do not break from cream for at least 5-7 days each month, you will begin to lose the benefits, requiring more cream to be applied to get half the benefit.
Incidentally, breaking from cream each month shouldn’t give cause for concern because once you’ve established adequate levels of progesterone in the body, this will carry you through the seven day break without incident.
Pre-Menopause
If you’ve had a hysterectomy and managed to keep your ovaries, and they are healthy, chances are you will not experience any significant changes to hormone fluctuations post surgery. At least, not for a number of years anyway. In these circumstances, hormone replacement therapy is generally not required.
If, however, your ovaries have been inadvertently damaged during surgery, they may not continue to produce adequate amounts of hormones which could lead to hormone imbalance shortly afterwards.
You will need hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to help resolve the immediate loss of hormone production resulting from the removal of your ovaries.
As stated above, progesterone can be converted in the body into estrogen and testosterone, so supplementing with just 20mg of progesterone (2% cream) three (3) weeks out of four (4) each month might be enough to put things right again. But, for some, maybe not.
In order to get a handle on you hormone fluctuations post surgery, you may need to apply 20mg of cream 4-5 times A DAY, which adds up to a dosage of roughly 100mg daily (10%). If this is what your body needs initially, then stick with it.
If, inside three months, high levels of progesterone are not resolving hot flashes, vaginal dryness or flagging libido, then reduce your progesterone dosage gradually back down to around 40>60mg a day as you begin to introduce very small amounts of estrogen and/or testosterone.
Some women need maintenance doses of 40mg> to remain symptom free, some do not. Therefore, don’t be afraid to experiment. If you notice an improvement when you apply more cream then stick with what works. Your objective ought to be achieving a dose that’s right for you that sits as close to physicological levels (20mg) as possible FOR YOU.
What you don’t want to do is create a state of ‘progesterone excess’ in the body. You are attempting to mimic nature. If you body’s not utilizing the available progesterone circulating in your body - determined by salivary hormone profiles - then reduce your dose.
As a general rule, you have a considerable safety margin with progesterone, making it almost impossible to accidently poison yourself. For the record, the only known ’side effect’ of bioidentical progesterone supplementation is increased sleepiness.
