Things You Need To Know About The Importance Of Progesterone
What is Progesterone?
Progesterone is a sex hormone that is involved in sexual development, reproduction, and so much more. It’s essential for things like mood regulation, sleep, cognition, relaxation, bone health, and maintaining a healthy blood pressure. As an important female sex hormone, it’s needed for more than just reproduction, so let’s look at some of the specific things it does:
Prepares a woman’s endometrium for implantation of the egg
Helps to maintain pregnancy
Develops mammary glands used for lactation
Reduces uterine contractions during pregnancy
Acts as the “relaxing” hormone and helps with cognition and mood
Improves & maintains bone density and strength
Eases anxiety and facilitates memory
What are the signs of low progesterone?
Progesterone levels wax and wane throughout a woman’s menstrual cycle. The goal is for the progesterone levels to increase after ovulation to be able to sustain a pregnancy. There are many women who experience low progesterone though prior to perimenopause and menopause. When progesterone is low, we can find ourselves in a state of relative estrogen dominance. If you want to learn more about estrogen dominance specifically, head over to this article. Therefore, we can see symptoms related to PMS related to the excess estrogen in relationship to progesterone. The following are signs and symptoms of low progesterone:
Changes in your mood including anxiety and depression: progesterone is responsible for making neurotransmitters, including GABA (gamma amino-butyric acid), which promotes a calming effect especially at night.
Hot flashes: if your progesterone is low, sudden spike in estrogen can cause a hot flash.
Infertility: if you have low progesterone, it may be hard to get pregnant since progesterone thickens the endometrium lining for the pregnancy to occur.
Irregular menstrual cycles: If your cycle is too long or short, you may have low progesterone levels.
Migraine headaches: progesterone can play a role in the length and severity of migraine headaches.
Weight gain: low progesterone can cause weight gain because your ability to burn fat reduces and your metabolism slows down.
Reasons You Might Have Low Progesterone
STRESS! Your body will always choose to protect itself by creating the stress hormone called cortisol over making progesterone for procreation. Too much cortisol blocks progesterone receptors which means you cannot effectively use the progesterone you are making.
Too much exercise: if you’re exercise regimen is stress-inducing, that can negatively impact progesterone levels.
Hypothyroidism: pregnenolone is the “mama hormone” that makes the sex hormones. To make pregnenolone, there needs to be enough thyroid hormone. If your thyroid levels are not optimal, you may not be producing enough pregnenolone; therefore, you’re likely not producing enough progesterone!
Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS): PCOS is lack of ovulation or anovulatory cycles. When we ovulate, there is a structure called the corpus luteum, which produces progesterone. If you don’t ovulate, you don’t release progesterone. This dynamic is often paired with higher than normal testosterone which adds to the hormone imbalance found with PCOS.
Age: usually around the age 30-35, progesterone starts to decrease naturally. We start to ovulate less.
Elevated prolactin: prolactin is the hormone that triggers lactation, but this level can rise in non-lactating women as well. High levels of prolactin can interfere with progesterone production. If you have high levels of prolactin and are not lactating, you want to get this evaluated!
Estrogen Dominance: this occurs when a woman produces too much estrogen in relationship to progesterone. This can happen during premenopause, perimenopause, or menopause. Read more here.
Simple ways to boost progesterone:
Eating foods with zinc
Taking a B complex supplement
Eating a whole food, healthy diet
Decreasing stress levels by using proven techniques
Getting between 7-9 hours of sleep per night
30 minutes of moderate exercise per day
If you think you’re having signs of low progesterone or estrogen dominance, we would love to help you figure out the root cause and help you to feel better!
Written by Virginia Conner, PA-C
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Written by Virginia Conner, PA-C