Thursday, October 22, 2015

Progesterone Deficiency

Hormones. Oh lovely hormones. They can make you feel wonderful or miserable.

I mentioned before that I have premature ovarian failure. It's being managed - or so I thought. Back when I was diagnosed in 2011, the treatment they prescribed was birth control - a dose of estrogen and progesterone. As a result, I stopped having night sweats, hot flashes, etc. Life normalized. I began dealing with the fact that I wouldn't be able to have another child naturally; on my own.

Fast forward to 2015. I have been taking the pills without a break all throughout this time, and I was starting to wonder if I should be taking a break. (Was it healthy to just keep taking them)? I was also interested as to what my hormones levels were presently. It was more of an interest though, and it was only after some gentle prodding by my acupuncturist that made me decide to look into it further. So I got some blood tests done at MetaHealth here in Calgary, and the results were a wee bit surprising. It seems as though my estrogen levels are fine (at the post-menopausal level, thanks likely to the birth control) but my progesterone levels were in the basement. They were barely registering.


The naturopathic doctor asked me a bunch of questions relating to progesterone deficiency and things began to make more sense; like my anxiety. She has prescribed some progesterone cream to use (which I will pick up today) so I am really excited to start using it. It's amazing how you can 'normalize' to symptoms so that they become just a reality you deal with.

Some of the things I am hoping progesterone cream will help with:
  • general menopause symptoms (without going into too much detail)
  • reduction of anxiety
  • restoration energy levels
  • stimulation of bone growth (helping ward off osteoporosis which is common for my diagnosis)
  • fibrocystic breasts (already had my first mammogram at 35)
I share this because I think it's always a good idea to re-visit blood work, or even get second opinions if you know something is 'off' in your body. We ran two more additional tests last visit as well; DHEA and iron, just so we could get a bigger picture of what is happening. I will find that out later on today as well.


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Tips for Managing Stress & Anxiety (plus a smoothie recipe!)

Read my latest blog post on You Ate:  https://youate.com/tips/september-stress-autumn-anxiety/ And my smoothie recipe!