Ep.150: Progesterone Resistance
Caitlin:
Welcome to the Woven Well Podcast. I'm your host, Caitlin Estes. I'm a certified fertility care practitioner with a master of divinity degree. Each episode will cover a topic that helps educate and empower you and your fertility while honoring the deep connection your fertility has with your faith. Let's get started. Welcome
Caitlin:
Back to the Woven Well Podcast. Now we have quite a few episodes that explore the importance of the reproductive hormone progesterone. In fact, I'll make sure to link some in the show notes that explain all the good details about what progesterone is, how it works, how it's important in pregnancy, and what you may feel like if it's lower than it should be. And we teach about these reproductive hormones because the more you understand, the better you can advocate for yourself. The quicker you can know when something's not right, so hopefully the better you'll feel. And that's important to us. So I'm not going to be reteaching all the ins and outs of progesterone today, but I do want to teach you something new about progesterone. This is actually something that I just learned about this year, so it's new even to me. And it's a condition called progesterone resistance.
Caitlin:
Progesterone is a hormone that typically only increases after ovulation when the egg leaves the ovary and goes on its grand adventure. Okay? So progesterone is critical for that. Early, early time in pregnancy. It's absolutely essential in fact, but it's also important for regular cycling and reproductive health. So it helps us feel relaxed, peaceful, well rested. Progesterone is most definitely our friend, as I like to say. So obviously, if it's lower than it should be, then that's a real concern, whether you're trying to conceive or you're simply wanting to feel your best. And there are five different types of deficiencies related to progesterone production. Maybe it's not rising to the healthy level that it should be after ovulation. Maybe it rises just fine, but then it plummets dramatically, like whatever the pattern ends up being. If it's not following a healthy rise and fall in the post ovulatory phase, then it leaves behind some symptoms.
Caitlin:
Okay, this is important, but the good thing is that when you identify one of these deficiencies that causes low progesterone, it can actually be treated. So depending on the type of deficiency, you may be able to do lifestyle changes that naturally increase your progesterone production. And be sure to come back next week for our interview with registered dietitian, Courtney Warday, who's actually going to walk us through naturally increasing progesterone. So you'll definitely want to be listening for that, or your trusted restorative reproductive physician can prescribe you bioidentical progesterone to take during a specific time in your cycle. Notice all those specifics that I'm getting giving there. Bioidentical progesterone during only a specific time in your cycle, that really makes a huge difference. So you can provide support for low progesterone to help you feel better and to sustain early pregnancies. But what about when you have all the signs and symptoms of low progesterone, but your progesterone values when you go in and have your lab drawn are normal, optimal, even this is a condition called progesterone resistance.
Caitlin:
So new research suggests that it's possible for progesterone levels to be strong and consistent, and yet there's no response to the progesterone itself. The ovaries are working, progesterone is being produced, but the progesterone receptors are not responding as we would expect them to. So this condition isn't all that different from how insulin resistance works, if you're familiar with that. So when we eat food that turns into sugar, we need insulin to help it enter into our cells. Initially, this works well. Insulin is produced on schedule and in healthy amounts, but over the course of time, genetic markers or other unknown factors reduce insulin's impact on that rising glucose. So if this condition is left untreated, then the symptoms and issues caused by severe insulin resistance only continue to grow with time. Now, for progesterone resistance, research is still really, really new, but we know that women can have all the signs of progesterone deficiency, but with normal healthy progesterone levels.
Caitlin:
So this suggests that the hormone itself isn't the problem, but the receptor's ability to receive it is. So why would this happen? Well, we don't know. Maybe genetic issues, maybe chronic inflammation issues. You know, they're still trying to figure it out right now, but if you fall into this category, you're probably curious how this may affect you. So some of the symptoms you're already familiar with, anything from PMS to pregnancy loss can be a result of insufficient progesterone. It could also contribute to other reproductive issues like endometriosis, adenomyosis, uterine fibroids, PCOS, or endometrial hyperplasia. But we don't really know. We know that progesterone is really important for women. Without it, we feel the effects. And for those who seem to be resistant to it, they're looking into how best to actually treat it. Since you can't just supplement with progesterone and it takes care of everything, knowing why it happens is going to make a big difference there.
Caitlin:
And so they're working on it. They're trying to figure out why learning about progesterone resistance may not really feel like good news. And I understand that. I'm not really sure at this particular moment in time if it is good news, but I know that information can be powerful. And so even knowing about this possibility may put options in front of you one day that you wouldn't have known to ask for otherwise. And so we're talking about it and making sure you're aware of it as soon as I'm aware of it, and maybe you've always had normal progesterone numbers, but have experienced some of the struggles associated with low progesterone. At least knowing about progesterone resistance can provide you with context as you have further testing and continue to work with trusted medical professionals that help you seek out answers. So please don't hear me say that if you find yourself in this situation that you're just stuck, we can't assume that every woman with normal progesterone levels and PMS also have progesterone resistance.
Caitlin:
Okay? There are a whole host of other things that can cause similar symptoms, and you still deserve to work with a restorative reproductive medical professional who's going to work with you to investigate the symptoms you have and tailor that treatment specifically to you. It could be that your progesterone is great, but your estrogen is too high, or maybe your symptoms are being caused by an infection or a source of inflammation. So you and I can't determine these things on our own. We need our medical professionals whom we can trust. Okay? So ask them about progesterone resistance, see what they have to say, and if it could be something that's affecting you or if they're checking other possibilities out, and hopefully in the years to come, we'll get more answers and more options for diagnosis and for treatment. If you're curious to learn more about progesterone resistance and the research available, I'll link a brief study summary I wrote for natural womanhood in the show notes below.
Caitlin:
So if you're ready to learn more about your cycles and reproductive hormones, maybe you are curious about your progesterone production, then the best first step that I can recommend is to learn to chart your cycles with a formalized method, something like the Creighton system that we teach here at Woven. So I would love to walk you through this process of determining what's happening in your cycle and how that impacts your daily life. So the first step is to attend an introductory session. Make sure to link in the show notes to see our next online session, and hopefully you can join us. As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.