Hi Clovie
You are right that taking the progesterone does stimulate the bleed, but to be precise it is the falling progesterone that casues the bleed to happen.
What progesterone actually does is to prepare the womb lining for implantation with a fertilised egg - and it does this by changing the lining from "proliferative" to "secretory", in a dose dependent way. In other words the more oestrogen you have, the thicker the lining will be, so the more progesterone is needed to do its job so that all the lining can be shed.
During peri - there are sometimes anovulatory cycles - ie there is no ovulation as the ovaries begin to pack up - and it is the ovaries that mainly produce all the progesterone after ovulation. This means that you are more likely to be having too much oestrogen than too much progesterone (while your ovaries are still partially working) so if you are taking extra oestrogen, then as I understand it, yes you will need extra progesterone to prevent the lining from getting too thick.
It will explain all of this better here - in Dr Currie's article on Peri-menopause:
http://www.menopausematters.co.uk/article-perils-of-the-perimenopause.phpAs to whether you need oestrogen - the amount of oestrogen also fluctuates but gradually declines as you go through peri-menopause. I haven't read enough about levels to know whether, if your periods have started again naturally for a while, the oestrogen levels are back to normal and sufficient - but many women - myself included - found that the horrible symptoms of flushes and sweats stopped when my periods came back or even when I had just one period in a gap of no periods.
That's a bit of a long answer and more like an explanation but hope it's helpful all the same!
Holiday - now that sounds nice! Where are you going?
Hurdity x
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Topic: Utrogestan - do I really need it if I'm having regular periods??? (Read 3059 times)