Last summer, millions of women were left in a hormone lurch when news broke about the perils of long-term hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Afterward, Christiane Northrup, alternative medicine and women’s health guru, sang the praises of natural pro-gesterone cream on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The makers of these creams are still giddy. Between the kudos on Oprah and the HRT-induced panic, retail sales for one of the largest producers of natural progesterone cream soared 41 percent.

If you’re among those who tuned in and shelled out, you may wonder whether your money was well spent. That depends. To find out if you’re a good candidate for natural progesterone cream—and what to do if you’re not—read on.

First, it helps to know a bit about progesterone’s role in the body. A hormone produced predominantly by the ovaries, progesterone teams up with estrogen to prepare the uterus for pregnancy. Once a month, if no fertilized egg materializes, progesterone’s job is to trigger menstruation.

Around age 40, hormone levels begin to fluctuate as the ovaries head into retirement. During these years, known as perimenopause, estrogen levels wax and wane as the body recruits the hormone from other sites, such as muscle and fat tissue. But progesterone levels are directly linked to ovulation—no egg, no progesterone —so as ovulation grinds to a halt, pro-gesterone production does, too.

Eventually, menopause robs women of up to 75 percent of their estrogen and nearly 100 percent of their progesterone—and that’s when the signature symptoms of “the change” really kick in: hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, anxiety, and mental fuzziness. Some women are tormented by these problems for years, while others barely notice the biochemical shift. It’s like the difference between a hormonal head-on collision and a speed bump.

No one knows exactly which hormone (or lack thereof) is responsible for which symptoms. But most Western experts think estrogen is the main player. HRT combines estrogen and progestin (a synthetic form of progesterone), but the progestin is there primarily to blunt the risk of endometrial cancer that HRT can bring. Not only does estrogen smooth the hormonal transition, but it’s also been thought to protect women from heart disease and osteoporosis. Unfortunately, the study publicized last July put the kibosh on that notion—for some women, it found, HRT actually upped heart attack risk—and also showed that HRT can raise the risk of breast cancer and blood clots.

That’s where progesterone creams come in. They’re made from Mexican wild yams, and alternative practitioners have been using them for years; they claim progesterone can do just as good a job as estrogen of curbing menopausal symptoms without raising risk for any serious disease. Retired family physician John Lee has been the most outspoken advocate for the creams, and in his book What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause, he even suggests they can protec...

Author: Catherine Guthrie

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