Top Three Reasons You Need Progesterone

Hormones can be a scary thing for a lot of people. No-one gets nervous taking extra vitamins or minerals, and people are even comfortable dosing up on anti-oxidants and super foods. As soon as we mention supplementing hormones though, a sense of apprehension begins to encroach.

Although we normally think about progesterone along with testosterone and oestrogen as one of the major hormones for regulating sexual and reproductive function, there is so much more than this to progesterone. In today’s oestrogenic world, we find progesterone supplementation vitally important for most of the clients we see on a day to day basis.

Progesterone Helps Alleviate Topical Allergies

Are you affected by hay fever, allergies or eczema?

While the only long term solution to these problems is to fix the stomach and gut, progesterone can play a valuable role in the short term management.

Normal pharmaceutical or medical treatment for these conditions involves the use of topical steroid creams, such as cortisone. Prolonged usage of synthetic, steroid creams however have been linked to a number of adverse health outcomes, including conditions as diverse as diabetes, acne and osteoporosis. Much of this is due to the resulting hormonal imbalance.

Natural progesterone provides the body with the raw materials it needs to make it’s own steroid hormones in a balanced way. It is this balance that prevents many of the negative side affects associated with pharmaceutical steroidal use.

We typically use natural progesterone supplements to provide short term relief to skin allergies and eczema while fixing the underlying digestive imbalances.

Progesterone Helps to Improve Cholesterol Levels

Has the doctor been telling you to get your cholesterol levels down? Fortunately there are better options than the use of cholesterol lowering medications, or statins.

While we need a certain amount of cholesterol, reducing levels that are too high is a great way to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease and even diabetes. Generally to do this a doctor will prescribe some form of statin medication. Prolonged use of these however, has been associated with poor mental health as we age and even reproductive problems for the younger amongst us.

Natural progesterone supplementation provides a safe natural alternative that can be used to lower cholesterol levels quickly and easily. A number of recent studies have shown the ability of supplemental progesterone to help the body both lower cholesterol levels, and to help maintain the correct ratio of the good form of cholesterol to the bad form of cholesterol.

As a side benefit, one of the roles of progesterone is to regulate the rate at which the body burns fat for energy. Increasing progesterone levels has been shown to increase fat burning helping anyone attempting to lose weight or tone up.

Progesterone Reverses Osteoporosis

I know, I know… conventional medical wisdom suggests that the only way to reverse or prevent osteoporosis is to increase calcium levels and to drink lots of milk. Did you know though, osteoporosis rates typically increase in countries with high milk intake and are lowered in those countries with lower milk intake?

Progesterone is an important hormone in the body for regulating bone formation and metabolism, or basically the rate at which new bone is produced and old bone is disposed of. Increasing progesterone levels can help to increase the rate at which our body forms and rebuilds bones. This in turn leads to stronger, denser bones.

In many of our clients affected by osteoporosis we have had great success using progesterone supplementation. Just as importantly the results on bone density from progesterone supplementation are quite rapid. One study showed as much as 7% increase in bone density after one year of supplementation.

How Wide Spread Are Progesterone Deficiencies?

One frequent question we get asked is, “Does everyone need progesterone?”.

Many of the reasons for using progesterone supplementation simply would not exist if our hormones were maintained in the correct balance and ratio. The simple fact of the matter is they aren’t. Our world is highly oestrogenic, every day we are exposed to external sources of oestrogen from:

• dietary oestrogens, either naturally occurring or artificially added in the form of pesticides;
• plastics and chemicals used in the manufacturing process;
• synthetic chemicals in cosmetics and household products;

All these external oestrogens, combined with our bodies own natural production and oestrogen produced in fat cells leads to large imbalances that can only be corrected through proper hormone detoxification and progesterone supplementation.

We regularly test our clients hormone levels using a non-invasive salivary hormone test. If you are concerned about your hormonal balance, or feel that you could benefit from progesterone supplementation, contact us today to find out more.

It is important to be careful when choosing a natural progesterone supplement, as not all are equal. One of the more common ingredients used in the production of natural supplements is Yam extract. Our body naturally does not contain high levels of the enzymes necessary to convert this into the bio-available, active ingredient needed for progesterone formation.

We recommend a practitioner only progesterone cream that, while based on Yam, has been pre-exposed to the needed enzymes to convert to a form that is usable by our body.