Ch5 - Estrogen Deficiency & High Progesterone

[Marylou]

Hi Lara and forum!

I have just read through the Hormone repair manual and a couple other perimenopause books and I couldn’t find anything about what I’m going through except that high progesterone can wreak havoc (Dr Lee) and the need to soothe your nervous system (Dr Briden Ch 5). I’m 41, a survivor of hormone and stress induced Postpartum Psychosis and am clearly in some sort of perimenopause but not typical of what’s normal.

I have a long history of hormone imbalance and high stress (ptsd and abuse- very hard to soothe). Prior to pregnancy I think I fit more of the estrogen dominance/ anovulatory cycles and PCOS. I had very few periods each year and when I did had significant PMDD. I used IVF to have my babies and the progesterone shots didn’t bother me. However since pregnancy and my two births everything has changed.

To cut to the chase, I have a consistent 5-6 week cycle but somewhat light with spotting and spotting in between and significant stress, depression and reactivity issues. I felt good for about two weeks in the middle. Despite having a history of classic PMDD- my depression (lately severe) , anger, anxiety and mental confusion now come with a vengeance for about a week and a half after my bleed. I went to a functional endocrinologist in my area and she did a 28 day saliva test, which only captured the first 4 weeks of my cycle. Still, I was floored to see very high progesterone numbers and very low estrogen numbers, with estrogen undetectable the week after my period now. I understand the difficulties about the testing but the results did seem to match my experience over the past year. (However, when I take progesterone I have the anger and impulsivity of PMDD - but my progesterone numbers were high enough that my endocrinologist thought a low dose of estrogen would be enough but that’s usually a big no no by itself I have read)

I’ve been scouring books and article to try to understand why I am “backwards” and I was surprised to discover that your adrenals also produce progesterone, especially in times of high stress of which I have had a very very lot of over the past 4 years especially.

Below are some of the resources I have found that have seemed to (unfortunately) match my experience. I don’t hear many reproductive doctors or Jerilynn Prior talking about this and the ones who do don’t publish what they are doing to help regulate it at least that I can find. I’d love to hear any thoughts and experiences with something like this from anyone in this forum. Thanks so much!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5146195/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... idlife?amp

https://www.focusih.com/estrogen-depres ... -hormones/

[Lara]

In my experience, saliva is a not a good way to measure progesterone (I used to order saliva tests, but no longer do). So, a high salivary progesterone reading is likely a mistake or inaccurate result.