See if you know what hormone in your body is responsible for all of the following:
✓ If you don’t have enough of it, you’ll almost always get monthly PMS
✓ When you don’t have enough of it, you may have a hard time falling asleep, OR you may be waking up in the middle of the night with your mind racing, and you won’t fall back to sleep for several hours
✓ You may get heavy periods, fibroid tumors, breast and/or ovarian cysts without enough of this hormone
✓ With insufficient levels of this female hormone anxiety, panic attacks, and depression can plague you every day
✓ If you’re menopausal, without it you’ll be hot flashing and night sweating
✓ Fluid retention, endometriosis, infertility, miscarriages and premenstrual migraines are very common with low levels of this hormone
✓ Your doctor has most likely never tested you for this hormone and yet it is critical to overall well-being for any woman
So, what is this mystery hormone? It’s progesterone. Probably 4 out of every 5 women that come in to see us for health issues have low levels of progesterone — and the sad thing is that it is so easy to test with a simple, routine blood test. But for some reason, your doctor just won’t test you for it. And if they do it’s almost comical. Here’s why: at one local lab in my area, the range on the blood test for progesterone ranges from 0 to 400. So accordingly, even if you are at 0, you are within the “normal” range. So your doctor tells you everything “looks good” on the labs, but you still feel lousy.
Four years ago at our clinic, we kept track of how many women that came in to see us were prescribed antidepressants for many of the symptoms mentioned in the above test you just took. Unfortunately, 72% of these women are on at least one antidepressant, when they could have gotten a prescription for bio-identical progesterone and been fine. Besides, there are no side effects with natural progesterone, but there are many side effects from taking antidepressants. (Yes, of course there is a time and place for antidepressants—but they are grossly over used, especially when there are other wonderful alternatives.)
Let’s look at a short patient case history. Megan came to our clinic with several health issues. She is 37 years old, 4 children, and works part time in a law office (notice the stress load already?). Her chief complaint was her PMS issues, along with nearly severe menstrual cramping and bleeding. She had had two breast cysts, and over the past two years had had several panic attacks (aka anxiety attacks). Her biggest concern was her sleep. She said she wakes up in the middle of the night and “can’t seem to turn her brain off”—we call it “racing mind syndrome”. Her thoughts just keep going and going. Two hours later she finally falls asleep again, but then the alarm goes off—and she feels trashed for the rest of the day.
We ran a simple panel of tests on her hormones (tests that no doctor had ever run on her before) and it showed that she was making very little progesterone and her thyroid was low. Having low progesterone and low thyroid can make life miserable. We put her on an oral form of natural progesterone taken at bedtime, along with some natural thyroid, and WOW what a difference in her life! (Watch other bio-identical hormone stories here: www.utahwellnessinstitute.com)
She immediately noticed a much improved quality of sleep, which gave her more energy for the days. The biggest thing she saw was a huge decrease in her anxiety levels: more emotionally level throughout the entire month, and, if she is like most other women using progesterone, she’ll probably never have a breast cyst again.
What to do? Get your progesterone levels tested. And don’t be satisfied with “low normal” on your tests. After all, do you enjoy living life in a “low normal” way? I didn’t think so . . . .
(Dr. Robert Jones is the Clinic Director at the Utah Wellness Institute in Draper, Utah. He just published a FREE DVD that explains hormone imbalances. You can get the free DVD at www.utahwellnessinstitute.com or call 801-576-1155.)