Progesterone

Hi Everyone,

If you have your uterus removed, do you still need
progesterone ?

I'm a little confused by this. I had a hysterectomy
a long time ago and I was given just estrogen,
( I'm on the Vivelle .05 ).
I was told that because I no longer had a uterus, I did not need progesterone.
But by reading some of the messages on the board here,
I'm wondering if I couldn't benefit from it .

I had started having problems with hot flashes, breast
soreness, mood swings.

I cut my patch down from a full patch to approx. a little more than half. I'm not sure how much estrogen that delivers.

My breast soreness is gone, my mood swings have
improved tremendously.
At times, I still tend to get somewhat weepy, and I still get
an occaisional hot flash. But it doesn't last long and they are few and far between. At least for now anyway.

I have been on this adjusted dose for about two weeks
now, so I want to see what happens on the long term.

I was just curious if I could benefit from the progesterone cream as well.

I appreciate anyone's thought on this .


Laura

Hi Laura,
I had my hysterectomy July 13 2009 at the age of 36 because of a strong family history of ovarian cancer....
my hot flashes started immediately after surgery. My moods got a little wacky and I had a ton of anxiety! I went to a Dr that deals with compounding pharmacies and all natural hormone replacement. I have been on natural progesterone cream for abt 5 months now and what a difference! I feel great! The dr. explained that your body needs progesterone, it does a lot of things for you. I would suggest you read up on it. I only take a small amount, but it immediately helped me with sleeping, anxiety, moods, hot flashes, and even dryness. Thru bloodwork I discovered I do make a small amount of estrogen naturally so the Dr didn't want to mess with that because of my family history. I only take progesterone. I feel great. Just thought I'd give you my 2 cents worth. Best of luck.

Hi kbennj,

Thanks so much for your reply.
I think I will take your advise and read up on this.

I have an appointment with my doctor at the end of this month, so I will talk with him about it also.
I had wanted to talked with him anyway about the possibility of having all my hormone levels checked.

I don't think I have ever had that done. I always go for my complete physicals every year, but I do not think they check for that.
I honestly never paid that much attention to it, I guess because I wasn't having any problems.
Now small problems seem to pop up every now and then,
so I am trying to educate myself a little.
This web site and everyone here has really helped.
There is so much information here, it is amazing.

I'm not sure I like this geting older stuff

Well I have heard taking only estrogen is never good. You need something to balance it. Long term use will cause problems. I would stick with all natural bioidentical hormones from a compounding pharmacy. Not all Dr.s use that. Don't do anything synthetic.
Ideally, you would want to mimic your natural cycle, but like I said, I seem to produce a minimal ok amount of estrogen. So just taking progesterone cream 2ce a day (morning and night) is perfect for me. I read Suzanne Sommers book AGELESS and that really goes into detail about the hormones and what they do. Dr John Lee also has done research on this. While Suzanne Sommers is quite the fanatic and i would never want to be like that, some of her points are very well researched. Get the books from your library and see what they have to say. Hope they help! It is very confusing and overwhelming....

Hi

Here are some links to info which may help you:

Progesterone Benefits

Progesterone: do I need it?

Good for you for wanting to learn more!


Kay

Thanx Kay.
I read the links you sent.
Extremely interesting.
Good Lord, I wished I had found this web site a long time ago.