It is often mistakenly said that there is no scientific or research reference material on the use of natural progesterone. This is simply not true, as there exists plenty of information and data in peer-reviewed medical journals but these are simply often not quoted or widely known about.
When I set up the Natural Progesterone Information Service many years ago one of the first things I addressed was the common complaint that ‘there is no proof’ of the benefits of natural hormones. Dr John Lee himself got very frustrated by this there was plenty of anecdotal proof – certainly for osteoporosis – in the ongoing improved bone scans of his patients, and also research had been carried out, but was just not well publicised.
Women would contact me in despair at not being able to persuade their doctors of the effectiveness of natural hormones and so I organised a ‘doctor’s pack’ which listed all the research papers available. It was a fairly hefty tome and when women took it to their doctors they told me of varying responses from ‘well none of this is from the UK’ as if research in other countries was invalid or ‘yes but these are not double-blind trials’. On the latter point they were correct as no one would at that time pay for such a trial. My pointing out that synthetic HRT was widely accepted without the same rigorous demands hardly made me popular either.
There has now been a lot of natural hormone research and although many doctors are now more open to looking at the benefits of such treatments – particularly after all the adverse publicity on both HRT and osteoporosis drugs that has arisen – don’t be surprised if they are not immediately convinced.
The Doctors who contribute to the bio-hormone-health debate here on this website certainly know how effective they can be and if your doctor is still dubious you could direct him or her to read some of those articles by Dr Shirley Bond, Dr Tony Coope and Dr Jeffrey Dach among others.
Here is a sample of some of the research:
“Natural estrogen and natural progesterone offer substantial clinical benefit over the synthetic hormones and should be the agents of choice for menopause.”
Obstetrics Gynecology 1989;73:606
“Due to the side effects of synthetic progestins, natural progesterone is preferred. Progesterone has proven bio-availability and no side effects making it the preferred hormone for menopause.” American Family Physicians 2000;62: 1339-46.
“Estradiol and progesterone demonstrated no increased risk of breast cancer. Synthetic estrogen (Premarin® ) and synthetic progestins (medroxyprogesterone and noresterone) all dramatically increased the risk of breast cancer. This was a ten year study of over 100,000 women, the largest and longest study to date comparing natural hormones to synthetic hormones”. Breast Cancer Res Treat 2007;101:125-134