Road Map to Progesterone
Precious Hormone for Sleep, Hair, and Happiness. Progesterone is your calming, soothing, happiness hormone. It acts like GABA in your brain to promote serenity and sleep. It boosts thyroid and metabolism. It is anti-inflammatory, anti-aging and makes your hair grow thick and lustrous (like a pregnant woman’s). If you can make enough progesterone each month, it will buoy you – smiling and serene – to the start of each period. If you can’t make enough, you will feel it. You will suffer PMS, hair loss and sleep problems. How can you tell if you make enough progesterone? As we saw in my ovulation post, progesterone rises steeply 2-3 days after ovulation, and peaks about 1 week before your period. You will see it as a temperature rise on a basal body temperature chart, and you will see it as a high ‘serum progesterone’ on a blood test taken about one week before your period. Serum progesterone should be greater than 8 ng/mL or 25 nmol/L. If you take the Pill or other hormonal contraception, don’t bother testing progesterone. You have none. The Pill shuts down ovulation, which shuts down progesterone. Got low progesterone? You can take natural progesterone as a cream or as a pill, or you can start to make more yourself.Progesterone is hard to make
The only way to make progesterone is to consistently ovulate each month (or to be pregnant). Ovulation is not easy. It is physiologically expensive, because your ovary must undergo a fantastic physiologic transformation into a temporary progesterone-secreting gland called the corpus luteum. This feat – the formation of the corpus lutuem – requires high energy and high amounts of nutrients like magnesium, zinc and especially selenium. The formation of the corpus luteum also requires a healthy immune system, so any kind of chronic inflammation – such as from gluten or intestinal dysbiosis – will interfere with progesterone production. Thyroid disease interferes with ovulation and progesterone. So does insulin resistance. The road to the corpus luteum is long. It takes 100 days for your ovarian follicles (pre-eggs) to journey all the way to maturity and cross the ovulation finish line. During all of those 100 days, your follicles need support. They need a healthy environment (your body), and ample nutrition. If you have had illness or a bad diet, you will see a low progesterone 3 months later.Stress steals progesterone
There is another obstacle to progesterone. Progesterone is a steroid hormone, and, unfortunately, it is the precursor to another important steroid hormone: Cortisol. When you are stressed, your adrenal glands steal progesterone to make cortisol. They take all of the hard work done by your ovaries and your corpus luteum, and they waste it as stress hormone.Your adrenal glands steal progesterone to make cortisol.
