Benefits of Progesterone – the Wonder Hormone

Comments: 8 | May 4th, 2018

Do you suffer from PMS, infertility, trouble sleeping, migraines, or postpartum depression? Dr. Hotze discusses the many amazing benefits of progesterone. You don’t want to miss this!

Podcast Transcription

Stacey B: Welcome to Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. I’m Stacey Bandfield here with Dr. Dr. Hotze, founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. Welcome to the program. Of course, you can always download all of our podcasts at HotzePodcast.com. That’s H, O, T, Z, E podcast.com. Okay, ladies this podcast is for you. We are talking about the miracle hormone. It is called progesterone. I cannot sing its praises enough. I’ve got Dr. Hotze here to explain more about the wondrous value of progesterone and how it can help you. Dr. Hotze. 

Dr. Hotze: Thanks. Ladies do any of you all have problems with irregular menstrual cycles, or heavy periods, or premenstrual symptoms, restless sleep, or anxiety, or panic attacks? Have problems with flu retention and weight gain premenstrually? Have problems with infertility? All of this can be related to a progesterone efficiency, a progesterone decline as women matures in age.

So, let me explain. In a perfect world, when a woman has a menstrual cycle, it’s 28 days. Day one is the first day of the menstrual period, which in a perfect world would last three to five days and be mild to moderate. During that time, when she starts to menstruate her ovaries now start to make estrogen hormone which is a proliferative hormone. It affects every cell in the body including the brain cells, not just the uterus, but it does cause proliferation of the inner lining of the uterus, which has been sloughed during the last period. That begins to build up in mid cycle when a woman ovulates. If that area where she ovulates in mid cycle is on day 14 or 15, that area is called the corpus luteum will begin to make progesterone. She continues to make estrogen, but now she’s making progesterone to balance out the estrogen to mature the inner lining of the womb preparing it for potential pregnancy.

So, the proliferative hormone is estrogen. The balancing hormone, the restraining hormone is progesterone. Those two hormones, when they’re in balance women feel wonderful. Okay? Progesterone means promoting gestation, promoting pregnancy. So, it’s the hormone that promotes the pregnancy by maturing the inner lining of the womb. Now as a woman marches through her menstrual life, by the time they hit their mid 30s into their 40s, the ovaries begin to produce lower and lower levels of progesterone. While estrogen levels may fall too, they don’t fall as dramatically as progesterone. So, they come into a problem known as estrogen dominance, or the other side of the coin is progesterone deficiency. They become deficient in progesterone.

So estrogen becomes the dominating hormone which can lead to the buildup of the tissue in the inner lining of the womb. So the periods become longer, heavier. They get cramping, breakthrough bleeding. This can cause a host of problems with the premenstrual symptoms of fluid retention, weight gain, headaches, breast tenderness, fibrocystic breast disease and other various symptoms. So, progesterone is a very important hormone that inevitably declines as a woman ages until a woman hits menopause, whether she quits making from her ovaries any estrogen or progesterone at all.

Progesterone’s a very important hormone, and as I mentioned, it begins to decline in mid-life around the age of 30, 35, 40, in that range. As a matter of fact, as women march through their menstrual life, they will have anovulatory cycles. An means not ovulating. Every month, there will be some months as women move into their 40s and towards menopause, they won’t ovulate at all. They don’t make any progesterone. That’s why they get…sometimes women will say, “Sometimes I’ll get a very heavy period and it will last maybe eight or ten days and then the next month it will be shorter and I don’t know what’s going on.” Well, one month she ovulated and one month she didn’t. One month when she ovulated, she made progesterone to balance the estrogen. The other she didn’t.

What happens is as a woman moves towards menopause, she’ll have multiple anovulatory cycles. Maybe not quit ovulating altogether and that’s when she gets these heavy, heavy periods. She gets fibroid developing in her womb. She ends up going to the OBGYN to help her and he’s always got an answer and it has to do with a scalpel or a knife. Hysterectomy is always his answer. But the reason we had that problem is because the hormones are declining and they’re imbalanced and the progesterone is deficient.

So, those can be solved, a progesterone deficiency can be solved early in a woman’s life as soon as she begins to have these symptoms, premenstrual symptoms of mood swings, fluid retention, headaches, and breast tenderness, that she gets premenstrually and these heavier periods. As soon as that happens, start taking progesterone day 15 through 28 to balance out the estrogen. That can be a godsend for a woman.

Hormone Imbalance Symptoms are Common After Childbirth

Now this also can happen right after a woman has a child. This may happen to a woman in her 20s or 30s after children. We’ve seen it very commonly. A woman will come in and said, “I did fine after my first child, but after my second child, I never bounced back. I’ve had all kinds of problems. I can’t lose weight. My metabolism’s gone down. I’m fatigued all the time. I can’t think clearly. [crosstalk 00:06:08] sleeping. Mood swings and all that.” 

Stacey B: We hear that a lot.

Dr. Hotze: That’s because during pregnancy the ovaries are turned off. Why? Because the baby’s placenta is making all the hormones. Interestingly enough the hormone that promotes gestation, progesterone, is the primary hormone that is made in the womb. So, in the last trimester a woman makes very high levels of progesterone. That’s why women, oftentimes as they move towards delivery, they’ll all of a sudden get a burst of energy. They get this, they feel like they’re going to clean everything up and they have this glow of pregnancy. That’s caused by the progesterone.

Stacey B: However, what happens right after they have the baby?

Postpartum Depression

Dr. Hotze: As soon as they have the baby, the placenta’s delivered and there’s a precipitous drop of the hormones. Now the ovaries have to turn back on. They’ve been shut off for nine months or thereabouts and what happens then is that if they don’t turn back on and make the hormones, they might be sluggish in turning on. Then a woman can have a host of problems with fatigue. Can get the baby blues, as they call them. Postpartum depression. The next thing you know, some conventional doctor throws them on a bunch of antidepressants and begins to ruin their life. 

Stacey B: It’s tragic.

Dr. Hotze: It’s tragic. When all they need is progesterone. Let me tell you. I have five daughters and those five daughters have had 18 children. I’ve got sons with children, too. So, we have 23 grandkids, but 18 of those were born to my daughters. After every one of the pregnancies, I made sure our daughters had progesterone after every one of the deliveries. I made sure they had progesterone in the room. I said, “Don’t even tell your OBGYN. They won’t understand. Take your progesterone.” They took it starting right then to make sure they had good levels of progesterone and most of my daughters, frankly were on natural thyroid as well, and had no real problems with the pregnancies and did very well.

What happened when we put them on the progesterone, they never had any postpartum blues. They never had any…none of them in 18 pregnancies, had postpartum depression. So, we encourage women at our office here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center that are of childbearing age and they are pregnant, to make sure that they take natural progesterone after they have that baby, because there’s going to be a precipitous drop and that’s what leads to the postpartum blues or the postpartum depression.

Progesterone is Important for Fertility

So, anyway, progesterone is very, very important. Let me tell you what else progesterone’s important for. It’s very important for fertility as well. So, if a woman doesn’t make enough progesterone, if the placenta doesn’t make enough progesterone to promote the gestation, then women can have problems with infertility. In combination with low thyroid, low thyroid and low progesterone are very common causes of or caused by low levels of progesterone. So, progesterone deficiencies can cause infertility. They can cause premenstrual symptoms.

Progesterone Helps Prevent Cancer

Progesterone is a cancer preventative. In a study in 1981 by John Hopkins School of Epidemiology, they did a study of women and measured their progesterone levels. They followed these women for 20 years. The women that had low progesterone levels either due to the fact that they just had bad ovarian production or there was some mechanical reason. They just didn’t make progesterone or had low levels of progesterone. When compared to women that had high levels of progesterone, the women with low levels of progesterone had a 500% increase in their risk of cancer of the breasts and 1,000% overall in all cancers.

Progesterone Helps with Thyroid Function

Fourth thing progesterone does, it does helps with the utilization of thyroid hormones at the cellular level. It helps the cells better assimilate the thyroid hormones. Remember, thyroid hormones are what enables your cells’ power plants to produce and use energy. So, you have to have good thyroid function intracellularly, within the cell. Not just what’s in your blood, but what’s in your cell in order to enable your cell’s power plants to produce good energy. If you produce good energy, optimal levels of energy, you’re going to be a high voltage individual and you’re going to be a live wire. But if you produce low levels of energy, you’re going to be a low voltage individual and you’re going to be a slug. That’s just the way it is. So, we want to make sure in everything we do, we maximize the ability of your cells power plants, the mitochondria, to produce high levels of energy.

Progesterone Helps You Sleep

Progesterone also has a soporific or calming effect, the sleep effect. So, for women that have problems with sleeplessness, insomnia and all that.

Stacey B: It’s great for that.

Dr. Hotze: They get back on progesterone and they find they can fall asleep. It calms their nerves and they do wonderful.

Progesterone for Moods, Anxiety and Panic Attacks

It also is very important in mood swings. So, as women’s progesterone levels fall and they have estrogen dominance and progesterone deficiency, this is when women begin to have these panic attacks, these anxiety attacks.

Stacey B: Hear that a lot, too. 

Dr. Hotze: I know women, they end up going to their doctor. They throw them on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications, sleep medication. No woman has anxiety attacks or panic attacks or mood disturbances because they have low levels of antidepressants, low levels of anti-anxiety medication, or low levels of sleep medication in their body.

Stacey B: Amen.

Dr. Hotze: When you felt well, you weren’t on all these foreign chemicals that are toxins and poisons, which poison your cells and are toxic to your body, cause your mitochondria, your power plants to produce low levels of energy and make you sicker, quicker. These things are not helpful and they’re not the cause of your anxiety, your panic attacks, or sleep disturbances. It’s a change that’s occurring in your body and it can be easily corrected by replenishing your body with natural progesterone.

Bioidentical Progesterone is the Natural Solution

Bioidentical. When we say bioidentical what we mean is that it is identical to the molecule that your ovaries made. It’s the same identical molecule, so your body thinks it’s the same. It’s really an antiaging hormone, if you think about it, because we age. You lose your hormones. If you want to have a better life as you mature and you age so you feel young, you want to make sure you replenish your hormones. This goes not only for females, but males as well.

Fluid Retention and Weight Gain

Women get fluid retention and weight gain very commonly around their premenstrual. This can start one or two days before. It can go all the way if we work back a week, even two weeks. As soon as they hit mid cycle they start having these problems. Well, progesterone is a natural diuretic. It causes the relief of any fluid retention in your body.

Progesterone for Brain Healing

Another important effect and benefit of progesterone is in brain healing and in brain injuries. As a matter of fact, people that have concussions and brain injuries, there are many doctors, neurosurgeons and other trauma specialists that give IV progesterone to the patients. It helps relieve the swelling in the brain.

Progesterone for Migraine Headaches

Finally, for those individuals that have migraine headaches or headaches, particularly for those headaches or migraine headaches that occur premenstrually, it’s not because you have low levels of Imitrex or Cafergot in your body or some other $50 pharmaceutical drug. Those drugs don’t solve the problem of the migraine. Migraine headaches can be caused by low levels of progesterone, progesterone deficiency. So, if you have migraines that are cyclical and occur routinely right around your menstrual cycle or just before, then those are more than likely going to be hormonal. If you have migraine headaches that occur anytime during the month, that can be due to low levels of magnesium.

You can tell us a little bit about that because when we had…what was the doctor’s name? Magnesium Miracle? Oh, Dean. Carolyn Dean.

Stacey B: Carolyn Dean.

Dr. Hotze: We had Carolyn Dean on. She wrote the Magnesium Miracle and I had Stacey read this several years ago. I said, “You know, Stacey. She had had problems with migraines.” I said, “Have you tried progesterone?” “Yeah, but it didn’t really work.” “Well, maybe it’s magnesium. Here. Dr. Dean talks about magnesium being a common cause of migraines. Why don’t you try it?” How often were you having migraines?

Stacey B: So, I was having them a couple times a month basically, at least.

Dr. Hotze: Were they debilitating?

Stacey B: Absolutely, they were debilitating and I had to take a pharmaceutical drug or at the time I thought I had to take a pharmaceutical drug, just to mask the symptoms so that I could just stay at work.

Dr. Hotze: What were you taking?

Stacey B: I was taking Zomig, which is a triptan drug. There was no generic. So, I had to pay $50 per pill. I had sort of resigned myself to that. That I would have to take that for the rest of my life even though it had side effects of stroke and different things. I know stroke was one of them.

Dr. Hotze: At least you didn’t have a migraine. You just had a stroke.

Stacey B: Yeah, exactly. So.

Dr. Hotze: She didn’t die of a migraine.

Stacey B: For people out there with migraines, if you don’t think there’s any other way, you are going to try these pharmaceutical drugs. I’m very grateful that it turned out to be a deficiency in my body of magnesium. I know that the progesterone helped as well. I think they both worked together.

Dr. Hotze: Well, listen. The magnesium, and I recommend 800 to 1,000 milligrams a day…

Stacey B: That’s what I take.

Dr. Hotze: Magnesium glycinate or magnesium citrate. So, this has been about two years, right?

Stacey B: Two or three. I’m starting to lose track. I haven’t had a migraine or had to take a pharmaceutical drug.

Dr. Hotze: In the last three years, how many migraines have you had?

Stacey B: I really haven’t. Every once in a while I’ve had a bad headache. Stress related, very minor.

Dr. Hotze: You think about that and you had migraine headaches for how long?

Stacey B: Well, all my life.

Dr. Hotze: Okay. You think…

Stacey B: I’ve had it all my life.

Dr. Hotze: Ever since? Was it since puberty?

Stacey B: Since I was a child and then I think once I became an adult, it just…there were different triggers as I got older.

Dr. Hotze: So, anyway. Stacey is a prime example of a woman who, you know, for decades was on medication to treat a migraine headache, but it doesn’t cure the problem.

Stacey B: No, it never would cure it.

Dr. Hotze: Remember, something’s causing the problem. Rather than treating the symptom or masking it with a band aid drug like all the conventional doctors do, get at the root problem. You think magnesium…compare the price of magnesium compared to Zomig.

Stacey B: Exactly. I mean, it’s amazing. Then the magnesium has so many other benefits too. I mean, it’s just

Dr. Hotze:  Well, anyway. Magnesium is something you should try and it can be a Godsend. It’s inexpensive. I wonder why the doctors and pharmaceutical companies aren’t pushing magnesium.

Stacey B: Because they can’t patent it. That’s why.

Dr. Hotze: They can’t patent it. Can’t make any money on it. The other thing that can cause migraines, by the way, is food allergies. Common foods: wheat, corn, egg, milk, yeast, and soybean are the big six, but any food can cause food allergies. One of the food allergies, very commonly, is migraine headaches. So, if progesterone doesn’t solve the problem or magnesium, it may be a food allergy on that.

So, those are some of the benefits of progesterone and I hope that you, if you have any of these symptoms or want to correct any of the problems that we talked about…let’s just review what we talked about. We said that progesterone is very important…we didn’t talk about bone health.

Stacey B: We devoted a whole show to bone health recently.

Progesterone for Bone Health

Dr. Hotze: Recently. So, bone health, it helps promote bone regeneration and that’s very important to help prevent osteoporosis and osteopenia. It is a very important hormone. So, here’s something else. You had mentioned, I know, in that previous podcast that you had osteopenia in your 30s and we got you on progesterone…

Stacey B: And vitamin D.

Dr. Hotze: Vitamin D and magnesium. All that.

Stacey B: That helped as well.

Dr. Hotze: How long did it take to correct it?

Stacey B: Let’s see. I had it done when I first came in. That’s when I found out I had osteopenia. Then they put me on the vitamin D and the progesterone and the other vitamins. Then I took it again in a year and it had been reversing. So, that’s really encouraging that in just a year of taking it to see those results. It was very encouraging.

Dr. Hotze: Remember, progesterone is important to help prevent infertility and help maintain good pregnancies, and to help resolve PMS, which is caused by low progesterone…to help prevent cancer, to strengthen thyroid function, to strengthen bone health, help you with your sleep, help you with fluid retention and weight gain…to help you heal brains particularly if you had an injury. It can be used for that. It’s very important for moods, anxiety, and depression. It can help relieve that because it calms you. Finally, if you’ve got migraines and headaches, it can be a Godsend. So, that’s one of the key ingredients.

As a matter of fact, I would say at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, we really built our health and wellness center, I’d say what really grew it, were two key ingredients and that was natural progesterone. When I started giving that back in 1996, it transformed women and they loved it. It just changed their lives. The other thing was natural thyroid. So, those two components have been a huge part of building the practice. So, if you’re not on natural progesterone and you’re suffering from any of these symptoms of difficulty thinking, poor sleep patterns, weight gain, you’ve got fatigue, you’ve got body muscle aches, you’ve got irregular periods, you’ve got fibroids, you’ve got fibrocystic breast disease, you’ve had infertility problems, migraine headaches, you’ve got osteoporosis, any number of different problems. If you have these it may be that a tincture, a little progesterone, could go a long way to helping restore you to your health and wellness.

Stacey B: Well, Dr. Hotze, thank you for being such a visionary, too, and recognizing years ago the positive impact it would have on women. Now you know why I was so excited at the beginning of this podcast about the benefits of progesterone. It’s so easy. If you’re out there thinking, “Do I have symptoms of low progesterone? Would that be able to help me?” So easy to go to our website HotzeHWC.com. That’s H, O, T, Z, E, H, W, C.com and take our symptom checker. Then you can also call our office for a free consultation at 281-698-8698, as well. It’s a pleasure having you here today. We are so glad you joined us today here at Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution.