Natural Progesterone: Historical Perspectives
By: Cynthia Drasler, MBA
Throughout time, as little girls developed into women, they usually progressed through the cycles of womanhood (menstruation, pregnancy, birth and menopause) with very little difficulty or discomfort. In fact, in many Native American cultures, “menopause marked the transition into the third phase of a woman's life, corresponded to the waning moon, and was the initiation into the wise woman or elder phase of a woman's life.” (Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty. (c) 2001 by Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.)
With the emergence of the Industrial Revolution, in the early 1900s, the ease of this normal, cyclic progression through womanhood started to change. Women began to report a wide variety of ailments related to their menstrual cycles and menopause. Today, these problems have reached epidemic proportions affecting at least 50% of the women in North America (reported by Jerilyn Prior, MD, Professor of Endocrinology at the University of British Columbia). Doctors initially blamed psychological disorders, or a deficiency in estrogen for these discomforts.
In 1938, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a letter by Leon Israel, MD, (a noted gynecologist from Harvard University) stating that these menstrual and menopausal discomforts may be the result of too little progesterone in the body, which is needed to balance estrogen, and that a lack of progesterone may be causing the symptoms that women were reporting. He believed that these problems could be easily corrected by giving women natural progesterone supplements to increase the body’s progesterone levels, and not by giving estrogen supplements.
Dr. Israel’s theory was ignored until the 1950s when Katharina Dalton, MD, from England, tested his theory in pre-menopausal women. Dr. Dalton soon emerged as the leading authority on the importance and use of natural progesterone in pre menopausal women. Dr. Dalton has written many books on the importance of natural progesterone including her 1964 best seller, Premenstrual Syndrome followed by The Menstrual Cycle, The Premenstrual Syndrome and Progesterone Therapy, Once a Month, Depression After Childbirth, Premenstrual Syndrome Goes to Court, and Premenstrual Syndrome Illustrated.
In the September/October 1999 issue of, the International Journal of Pharmaceutical Compounding Dr. Dalton was interviewed. When she was asked about the best way to administer natural progesterone to women, she responded: “I am not so sure that oral progesterone is what we want, because all progesterone administered orally goes through the portal systems direct to the liver, where there are numerous progesterone receptors that metabolize the progesterone before it reaches the systemic circulation. Progesterone administered vaginally, rectally or transdermally (through the skin) goes directly into the systemic circulation.” When commenting about whether a woman can ever have too much progesterone, she said, “No, I don’t think she can. A normal menstruating woman can’t have too much because she can’t get up to that “normal” level that she has in pregnancy. Women have a colossal amount, and there’s a limit to the amount, with our present methods of administration, that we can get into the blood.”
Next, Joel Hargrove, MD, from Vanderbilt University investigated the use of natural progesterone supplementation in post menopausal women. He found that natural progesterone supplementation worked just as well in relieving menopausal symptoms as Dr. Dalton found in pre-menopausal women.
Finally, in the mid to late 1970’s, John R. Lee, MD, reported, in his book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause, that administration of natural progesterone can increase bone density levels in women suffering from osteoporosis, and that the best way to supplement the body’s progesterone levels is with a topical cream containing between 450mg and 550mg of micronized, USP natural progesterone per ounce. Dr. Lee spent the final 25 years of his life educating women all over the industrialized world about the importance of natural progesterone cream supplementation.
After discovering the life improving benefits of natural progesterone cream in my own life, I organized 2 Dr. Lee seminars - in Phoenix and Minneapolis. I recall a conversation that I had with him before one of the seminars. I asked him why he thought the estrogen/progesterone imbalance was almost epidemic in women in industrialized countries. He told me that while no one was completely sure, that he believed the problem was linked to petroleum. He told me that while the petroleum molecule is not exactly the same as the estrogen molecule, it is close. He thought that when petroleum enters the body through the lungs or the skin, the body may interpret it as estrogen, and store it in fat as estrogen. He felt that this estrogenic increase from the environment (called xeno-estrogens) somehow was damaging the progesterone production mechanism in the body, causing the imbalance that he referred to as estrogen dominance. He believed that this imbalance then caused symptoms of breast tenderness, decreased sex drive, fatigue, fibrocystic breast disease, heavy menstrual bleeding and clotting, poor concentration, headaches, infertility, irritability, mood swings, PMS, uterine fibroids, water retention or weight gain.
After that conversation, I started researching all the ways that petroleum touches our lives. It is much more pervasive than I thought. Besides the obvious gas and oil used in all modes and types of transportation and manufacturing processes, petroleum is a key ingredient in plastics, pesticides, herbicides, cleaning products and derivatives of it are used in our personal care products and pharmaceutical drugs – even in our food. It is safe to say that as a citizen of any country in the industrialized world we are almost bathed in petroleum on a daily basis. I don't know if Dr. Lee was right or not, but it's an interesting theory.
Copyright 2001 by Cynthia Drasler, MBA. If you would like to use any part or all of this newsletter to send to your own email list, please reference Cynthia Drasler and www.HealthyLivingIsEasy.com as the source of this information.
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