She is disturbed by the concept that estradiol is the “women’s hormone” and the prevailing focus for treatment of estradiol only for women and relegating progesterone’s utility only for the uterus. Most women who have had their uterus surgically removed are only offered estradiol for hormone supplementation and can never experience relief from the progesterone deficiency symptoms.
Progesterone is a far more prevalent hormone. Progesterone is measured in units 1000 times that of estradiol. The habit of portraying the menstrual cycle with the actual hormone prevalence ignored fosters an ignorance to the importance of progesterone. Progesterone and estradiol behave in a ying-yang dance. The two hormones enhance the function of receptors for each other. They produce opposite effects. Estrogen is a stimulant. It promotes the growth of tissue. Progesterone helps cells mature and decreases proliferation. In bone remodeling, estradiol slows the rate of bone loss but it is progesterone that stimulates new bone growth. Without this constant breakdown and rebuilding, good-quality bone cannot happen.
At perimenopause, women can experience aberrations in heart rate which sends them nervously to the emergency rooms. Dr. Prior observes that estradiol levels can be at their highest during the woman’s life span coincident with progesterone becoming more and more deficient. Progesterone restores the heart’s electrical activity to normal. In the brain, estradiol increases excitation, progesterone is calmative.
One of the myths, she has identified is that if women regularly bleed each month, they produce adequate progesterone and that they have ovulated. She found that missed ovulation can be a regular event and the generous production of progesterone that should follow doesn’t happen. There are silent ovulatory dysfunctions that limit the available progesterone. Dr. Prior writes “Ovulatory disturbances include insufficient luteal phases (egg release but lower progesterone levels), short luteal phases (egg release with decreased duration of high progesterone production) or anovulation (no egg release and no increase in progesterone above follicular phase low levels)” Practitioners rarely identify these disturbances and often choose pharmaceuticals to treat the disturbed sleep, heightened anxiety, fluid retention, osteoporosis, cardiac issues, inflammation, and pain that follow when progesterone is deficient.
