Progesterone Fertility Guide
There is plenty of information about progesterone and menopause, but when searching for information directly pertaining to fertility progesterone and taking progesterone during pregnancy, there are only bits and pieces to be found. Here, we’ve consolidate all of the most current studies and information about using fertility progesteron for boosting fertility and maintaining pregnancy.
How is fertility and progesterone connected?
Progesterone is a hormone in the body that is released right after you ovulate and decreases before your period begins. Here is an illustration that shows how your hormones function monthly…
What does progesterone do?
Are you progesterone deficient or estrogen dominate?
Too much estrogens in the body
One of the main reasons women are progesterone deficient is because they have too much estrogen. Estrogen dominance can happen from many reasons. Commercially raised meats and dairy contain large amounts of estrogens. Pollution and stress mimic estrogen at the estrogen receptor sites. Eating a large amount of processed soy products can also mimic estrogen. Pcos and endometriosis can also have an estrogen dominate action.
Symptoms of estrogen dominance: |
Not enough progesterone in the body
There are many signs that may show up in the body if you do not have enough progesterone in your system at the correct times during your cycle.
Symptoms of progesterone deficiency: |
Hormone Testing
There are hormone tests that you can take at home and send off to a lab to see if your hormones are balanced. You can also go to a midwife, naturopath or doctor and request a hormone test.
OR
Dr. John Lee was very adamant that testing for hormones and progesterone should be done through saliva testing, not blood testing (almost all doctors will test the blood).
You can order a saliva test that you take at a certain time in your cycle and send away to a lab. They mail back the results and you can find out if you have hormonal imbalances. You can order FDA approved home female hormone tests here.
What you can do for progesterone deficiency
There are a couple of very effective and natural ways to balance a progesterone deficiency. First is to realize what the underlying cause of the imbalance is and work on that also.
1. Take sublingual progesterone for fertility
Taking sublingual “under the tongue” progesterone is the best form for absorption.
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The natural progesterone I have found to be the best form to take in is “under the tongue” sublingual drops. These drops instantly dissolve, go directly into the blood stream, bypassing the liver and kidneys which can dilute their potency.
These drops are safer, less expensive, and more effective than the cream. It is virtually impossible to overdose on sublingual progesterone because it does not come into to contact with the fatty tissues and get stored up.
Directions for use: For regular use to balance excess estrogen or increase your progesterone, take from the day after ovulation until menses. If you don’t know when you ovulate, many women ovulate aroud days 12 -14 of there cycle.
*Do not use if you are on birthcontrol or taking hormones already.
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2. Take vitex
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Taking vitex helps to balance your hormones and promote a healthy cycle…
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Vitex Extract (Chaste Tree Berry) helps to improve a short luteal phase. It supports the endocrine gland which encourage progesterone and estrogen balance in the body. Dr. John Lee recommends using daily for up to 3 months, even during your period. Stop usage once you get pregnant.
Directions for use: Just 10-15 drops of vitex extract, taken 2-3 times a day for the first two weeks of your cycle can improve many women’s imbalances.
However, unlike, powerful hormone drugs, vitex works slowly to normalize the body. Maximum benefits are often achieved after 6-12 cycles with vitex.
3. Reduce your exposure to xenohormones
We have become estrogen dominate and estrogen overload from all of the excess estrogen in our foods and environment.
Reduce your exposure by avoiding these xenohormones producers:
-Solvents and adhesives- These enter the body easily and can be found in paint/varnish, nail polish and in dry cleaning.
Solvents can damage a developing fetus and should be strongly avoided by pregnant women, in any amount.
-Car exhaust
-Almost all plastics
-Meat from conventionally raised livestock (non-organic)- They feed them estrogenic drugs to fatten them up. Eat only organic meats and dairy products.
-Petrochemically derived pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides
-Emulsifiers found in soaps and cosmetics
-PCD’s from industrial waste
Can you take too much progesterone?
It is difficult to create an overdose of progesterone at one time, but overtime the use of progesterone creams can create a progesterone overload and put the hormone system out of balance. This is one of the reasons the sublingual natural progesterone is the best form to take.
Progesterone creams have created a great breakthrough for many women maintaining healthy pregnancies that may not have been able to do before. The issue with the progesterone cream lies here; Progesterone is fat soluble and with repeated applications of the cream to the skin it can build up in a woman’s fat tissue. Overtime this creates disruptions with other hormones.
Excess progesterone can also exhaust the receptor sites and causes them to not be as sensitive any longer. Symptoms of too much progesterone are: depression, mental lethargy and newly large breasts.
The natural progesterone I have found to be the best form to take in is “under the tongue” sublingual drops. These drops instantly dissolve, go directly into the blood stream, bypassing the liver and kidneys which can dilute their potency.
These liquid drops are safer, less expensive, and more effective than the cream. It is virtually impossible to overdose on sublingual progesterone because it does not come into to contact with the fatty tissues.
Using natural progesteron
Dr. Lee recommends that progesterone begun to be used right after ovulation, which is usually day 12 in our cycles (twelve days after menstruation), and ending usage once menstruation begins. When you get pregnant, stay on the progesterone. Read below for pregnancy instructions.
Inducing ovulation using progesterone
Dr. Lee had a number of patients in his practice that had been unable to conceive because they were not ovulating. For two to four months he had them use natural progesterone from days 5 to 26 in the cycle (stopping on day 26 to bring on menstruation).
Using the progesterone prior to ovulation effectively suppressed ovulation. After a few months of this, he had them stop progesterone use. If you still have follicles left, they seem to respond to a few months of suppression with enthusiasm — the successful maturation and release of an egg.
His patients, some of whom had been trying to conceive for years, had very good luck conceiving with this method.
Preventing miscarriage using progesterone
Low progesterone during pregnancy can cause recurrent miscarriages. Progesterone is responsible for creating a healthy environment in the womb by creating a healthy uteral lining. It also reduces the chances of blood clots and immune system responses to the fetus as a foreign substance. It is the pregnancy hormone.
If you feel this might be your situation try to get your hormone levels tested before using the progesterone, than get tested again to make sure your levels are high enough.
There has been great success from people I personally have spoken to and have heard of many midwives swearing by the sublingual progesterone. For this situation you will want to use the sublingual progesterone from right after ovulation until your menstrual cycle, or if you get pregnant continue use.
Make sure to have at least two bottles on hand, because running out could cause a big drop in progesterone which may cause the menstrual cycle to begin.
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Progesterone for endometriosis
If you have endometriosis, Dr. John Lee recommends using progesterone from days 8 to 26 of your cycle, to reduce the effects of estrogen on the body (estrogen stimulates endometrial growth). Take a short week off to refresh your receptor sites. He has had success with this controlling symptoms within six months. Once the outbreaks of endometriosis are tolerable reduce the usage to days 12 till menstrual cycle.
Progesterone Use During Pregnancy
Natural progesterone is safe to use during pregnancy and may likely prevent many first trimester spontaneous abortions but should be used with caution in nursing as it may stop lactation. In the first trimester of pregnancy progesterone production is the sole responsibility of the ovaries and these often fail to produce sufficient to maintain the pregnancy. By the second trimester the placenta itself is responsible for producing progesterone and it hikes the level of this hormone to 486% higher than the non-pregnant norm.
Synthetic progesterone drugs, not being natural progesterone have side effects that if used to maintain the pregnancy may do damage to the baby.
If you are taking progesterone and get pregnant you must continue taking progesterone until at least the 16th week. I personally would not stop if I had seriously low levels to begin with. But it is best to work with your health care practitioner if this is the case. They will continuously monitor your levels to make sure they are healthy for pregnancy.
Studies of interest
Babies born from mothers who used natural progesterone during pregnancy were larger, smarter and calmer
Research by British hormone researcher Katherina Dalton, M.D., indicates that babies born to mothers who used natural progesterone during pregnancy are normal–and, in fact, are larger, calmer, and smarter.
Also in her 1968 study she found that none of the women receiving antenatal progesterone experienced toxemia during the pregnancy. In her control group, more than half experienced toxemia. It was used from conception to delivery.
“Progesterone babies” are smarter, walk sooner and have a higher chance of getting into college
In an article published in 1968 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, Dalton studied 60 children at the age of one year. Twenty-nine of these were born to mothers who used supplemental natural progesterone during pregnancy.
The mothers of the other 31 did not use any. Over 90% of the “progesterone” children were standing by age one, compared to only 60% of the “non-progesterone” children. Also at age one, over 60% of the “progesterone” children were walking, compared to about 35% of the “non-progesterone” children.
Even more significantly, Dalton followed a different group of 79 children and related their school grades to whether their mothers had taken natural progesterone during pregnancy. She used a scale from 0 to 100% to measure their scholastic achievement in various subjects at school.
This scale did not reflect actual grades received, but was an arbitrary method of measuring success.
In all cases, “progesterone” children did better than the “non-progesterone” children, but in some cases the results were astounding! She also discovered that the best results occurred when the progesterone was started before the 16th week of pregnancy. Math skills were three times as high (60% to 20%) in progesterone children, and this was only for those whose mothers took it before the 16th week.
For mothers who took it after the 16th week, the scores were 30%, still a 50% improvement over non-progesterone children.
Progesterone children scored much higher than non-progesterone in verbal reasoning skills, academic subjects, and significantly better in physical education and English. In fact, the only skill where non-progesterone children scored almost as high as the progesterone children was in crafts.
Finally, children whose mothers used natural progesterone were about seven times more likely to gain entrance to a university than their non-progesterone counter parts. A possible reason for the apparent increase in IQ and academic performance seems to be natural progesterone’s ability to retain glucose in the blood stream, thus elevating it.
Since the fetus’ developing brain needs all the glucose it can get, natural progesterone allows more to reach it, and it may develop more than the brain of a baby whose mother did not take supplemental natural progesterone.
