I don't want to get involved in any controversy, but I will just comment on my experiences with progesterone. Everyone is different, so my experiences are not meant to be treated as any kind of “proof†of anything.
When I first began getting meno symptoms, I was fearful of “HRT†because of all the negative things people were saying about it. I always told myself that there was no way in hell I would ever use it. Famous last words.....
Around this time I'd seen an episode of Oprah where she, and Suzanne Somers, were extolling the virtues of compounded bioidenticals. Being an American show, they were pretty much saying that the only way of getting bioidenticals was to have them compounded, and made no mention at all of the fact that "bioidenticals" are in fact FDA approved and available "off the shelf".
Being completely ignorant of anything to do with hormone treatments, I believed them. In America, and to a slightly lesser extent in Australia where I live, bioidentical hormones equals compounded hormones, and vice versa. Most doctors in Australia look at you strangely when you ask about “bioidenticalsâ€, even when you are talking about estradiol and progesterone, because they aren't categorised as being anything more than hormone treatments. The only doctors who bother with the term are the ones who prescribe the compounded hormones. This is why I am always very concerned when I see references to “bioidenticals†without further explanation, because in different countries it can mean different things.
Anyway, a friend of mine was seeing a doctor who prescribed compounded hormones, so I made an appointment to see him. The only thing he prescribed for me was compounded progesterone cream. Immediately I felt wonderful, and thought I'd found the Holy Grail. That lasted for exactly two months. Then my symptoms got much much worse. When I went back to that doctor, and asked him about estrogen, he basically told me there was nothing wrong with what he'd prescribed (prog), and that all my menopause problems were psychological. Now I'm not saying that all doctors who prescribe compounded hormones or progesterone only treatments are arrogant whackos, but that guy certainly was.
Anyway, I went to another GP, who prescribed a proper HRT treatment (Livial from memory) and everything was wonderful again. I've had a lot of ups and downs since then, but nothing that has really been related to the type of HRT treatment I was on.
However, recently I tried using Utrogestan as a continuous method, and pretty much exactly the same thing happened. I felt fantastic at first, but after about 6 weeks, everything went really bad. Basically what happens is that my body seems to like the prog initially, but then gets overloaded with it and reacts badly. So for me continuous progesterone of any kind is a big no-no. I know for me I need estradiol, and progesterone is just a necessary evil.
It seems so many women have a huge variation in how they react to progesterone. Some get on quite well with it, especially Utrogestan, and find it sedating. Others find it revs them up or gives them other side effects. My body doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind. Sometimes it likes it, other times not. It's just a crap shoot each time I use it. I've just recently finished 12 days of Utrogestan, and had insomnia the whole time, and I'm still waiting for things to get back to normal even though it's now 3 days since I stopped it.
So I guess what I'm saying is that if anyone has only started using a progesterone only treatment, make sure you are on it for at least a few months before you know whether it is right for you, because early signs can be very positive, but they can soon change once your progesterone levels get too high. If you've been using it for a while and it's working, then that's great.
However, the OTC progesterone cream industry has become a mega-million dollar industry, and the information provided by these manufacturers are sketchy at best, and there is certainly rarely any cautionary information provided on their websites. There is a lot of concern over women who use these progesterone creams, because most of them use them without medical supervision, and are self-medicating without having anyone check their hormone levels.
Through another forum that I'm on, I come across this problem a lot, and the effects of unsupervised progesterone use is wide-spread and very scary in its ramifications.
