Deborah Maragopoulos FNP | Intuitive Integrative Nurse Practitioner
Why Is Progesterone Important?
So why is progesterone important? Let’s talk about it.
Progesterone is one of the most important hormones that your body makes, especially for women. But men also make a little bit of progesterone.
Progesterone is the precursor to cortisol — your adrenal stress hormone. With 21 carbons, progesterone is one of the largest hormones, which is one of the reasons it is so difficult to get good absorption of progesterone through transdermal creams.
But I’m going to share with you a secret to the best bioidentical progesterone available.
Progesterone naturally has an anti-inflammatory effect.
Progesterone stimulates calming GABA in the brain and nervous system. It calms the muscles, especially smooth muscles, which is why you might get a little constipated when you’re pregnant, which is a very high progesterone state.
Progesterone has to be present at very high levels in order to maintain a pregnancy and if you don’t make enough progesterone, you’re likely to miscarry.
Progesterone is produced by the corpus luteum of the ovary.
The corpus luteum is the tiny little cave leftover after an egg ovulates. The corpus luteum then becomes an endocrine gland producing progesterone for two full weeks until the next menstrual cycle to maintain the lining of the uterus and prepare the body for potential pregnancy. If pregnancy doesn’t occur, the corpus luteum stops producing progesterone and you have a period.
If pregnancy does occur, the corpus luteum’s job is to continue to produce progesterone for the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. Didn’t produce enough progesterone? You’re likely to miscarry. A woman during her reproductive years who does not produce enough progesterone has a corpus luteal defect.
Now we can tell you’re ovulating by checking your progesterone about seven days before an expected period. That would be day 21 in a 28-day cycle. Progesterone over six ng/mL indicated that you did ovulate but if it’s not over nine, you’re not producing enough progesterone to maintain the pregnancy.
Normal Progesterone levels:
Follicular phase — 0.1 to 0.7 ng/mL
Luteal phase — 2 to 25 ng/mL
First trimester of pregnancy — 10 to 44 ng/mL
Second trimester of pregnancy — 19.5 to 82.5 ng/mL
Women who have polycystic ovary syndrome do not ovulate regularly, so they do not produce enough progesterone to counterbalance the amount of estrogen they produce.
This is estrogen dominance.
Estrogen dominance can happen with any woman who doesn’t produce enough progesterone compared to estrogen. Healthy women produce 10 to 50 times more progesterone than estrogen. So whenever you see progesterone prescribed, it’s always going to be at a much higher milligram dose than estrogen because that’s what you need in order to counterbalance estrogen’s growth-promoting effect.
I like to think of estrogen as the fertilizer.
While progesterone is the gardener who knows the difference between the weeds and the roses — those tissues that need to continue to grow and those that have outlived their welcome, progesterone actually stimulates a gene called the P54. This prompts cell death when cells are no longer functioning properly or have become malignant.
It’s not just a female hormone, men make progesterone too. Progesterone is a natural aromatase inhibitor preventing men from converting testosterone into estrogen. All of my male patients who are on testosterone replacement therapy use a small amount of progesterone.
As for my female patients, progesterone has so much value in the reproductive years — to treat irregular periods, estrogen dominance, PCOS, and PMS. Progesterone helps relieve bloating, breast tenderness, and mood swings when used in the luteal phase, which is from ovulation until menstruation.
If you’re not sure when you ovulate, look for spinbarkheidt. A very sticky elongated egg-white kind of cervical mucus. When you see that mucus it means you’re ovulating and that would be the time to start progesterone.
Transdermal bioidentical progesterone is used twice a day for 10 to 14 days to help regulate menstrual cycles and minimize PMS symptoms.
If you’re using progesterone for fertility, especially if you have a history of miscarriages, then you would use progesterone from the time you ovulate through a period. But even with a little bit of bleeding, you want to do a urine pregnancy test. If you’re pregnant, you continue taking the progesterone for the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.
Now, thirty years ago the only progesterone that really worked well for women to prevent women from miscarrying was injectable progesterone. Oh my goodness, injectable progesterone in oil is very painful. I was given this to induce periods when I had runner’s amenorrhea. So I hated to subject my pregnant women to weekly progesterone injections.
I was able to compound progesterone suppositories but vaginal insertion can sometimes irritate the cervix causing cramping. Honestly, I could not get good progesterone absorption until I started working with a gifted compounding pharmacist. He made, by far, the best base for hormones that I had ever used before. It absolutely changed my work with infertility, PCOS, perimenopause, menopause — in fact ALL my patients who needed progesterone.
I shared clinical feedback with my pharmacist until he was able to formulate the base to get an incredibly high absorption of progesterone in a transdermal cream. A true transdermal cream delivers the hormones through the skin and depots into the subcutaneous fat to be absorbed systematically into the blood.
Most over-the-counter products are not true transdermal creams.
In my 30+ years of clinical experience, not even compounding pharmacists have been able to make transdermals that compare.
There’s nothing over the counter that compares to this transdermal cream base that we created together. For decades, I used this unique transdermal formula to treat my patients with infertility, who threatened miscarriage, for PCOS, estrogen dominance, menopause, perimenopause, and postmenopause.
Progesterone is the first hormone that depletes when you start to go through the change known as perimenopause. By the time you reach menopause, estrogen and progesterone are both depleted. And within ten years postmenopause, testosterone is down.
Progesterone is incredibly important to ease perimenopausal symptoms — irregular periods, brain fog, moodiness, breast tenderness, and bloating.
While you’ll need estrogen when you’re menopausal, with highly absorbable bioidentical progesterone to upregulate your estrogen receptors, you will need much less estrogen.
Without adequate progesterone, you may feel anxious, moody, or irritable. You may have irregular periods and you won’t sleep as well. You’ll have hot flashes, night sweats, and brain fog. You may have more inflammation including neuropathies joint pain, and muscle pain.
Progesterone affects everything. Progesterone helps you maintain a healthy stress response so you make enough cortisol to handle your stressors. If you don’t have enough progesterone, you may suffer from adrenal insufficiency or adrenal fatigue.
Progesterone is vitally important. It helps to protect you against estrogen-mediated cancers including melanoma, breast cancer, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, and uterine cancer.
If you’re using estrogen replacement therapy, you need progesterone.
What’s the best way to take progesterone?
While progesterone can be taken orally, the best way to take progesterone is through the skin — with a transdermal cream.
Progesterone cream is over-the-counter. With a prescription, you can get it compounded by a compounding pharmacy. That’s what I did for years for my patients because I never found the over-the-counter progesterone that had a predictable enough absorption to treat my patients.
Once I started working with my own compounding pharmacist, we developed a base that was highly concentrated in a liposomal formula that was actually transdermal. Most over-the-counter progesterone creams try to mimic the base compounding pharmacists use called Versa base. Yet, none were able to get the concentration of progesterone, and more importantly the high absorption rate, and the effectiveness that we were able to achieve.
Unfortunately in 2019, my pharmacist retired from compounding to work as a homeopathic provider. While I was very happy for him, I could no longer could get the good progesterone. I tried using other compounders. Some of my patients tried over-the-counter progesterone. I even had to go to prescribing micronized progesterone capsules, which had side effects.
None of the creams, not even the compounds, had the absorption needed, so we had to use an incredibly high dose to get enough progesterone in order to counterbalance estrogen.
My patients just weren’t doing as well.
I spoke to my compounding pharmacist about manufacturing our formula. Except the pandemic hit and we could not find a manufacturer who would take us on with the supply lines down.
But I am so delighted that after three years we finally have the good stuff!
Gen-Pro is the same exact formula that I helped create with my trusted pharmacist that I’ve used in thousands of patients very successfully.
Gen-Pro is highly concentrated.
Each 0.2ml pump delivers 25 milligrams of USP-grade micronized progesterone from wild yam in a highly absorbable liposomal base. You will not find a more concentrated progesterone over the counter. In fact, you will be hard put to find a more concentrated progesterone from compounding pharmacies.
The most popular brands of progesterone cream contain 400 to 500 milligrams per ounce.
Gen-Pro is 3750 milligrams per ounce, incredibly concentrated.
Gen-Pro is a true transdermal cream.
The liposomal base with organic essential oils of lemon and rose helps enhance absorption of the progesterone. A transdermal cream doesn’t just stay in the skin. It’s absorbed through the skin and into the subcutaneous fat to be absorbed into the bloodstream for a systemic effect.
Gen-Pro, “the good stuff” as my patients refer to it, is now available to you!
Gen-Pro — the transdermal progesterone cream I’ve trusted to balance and heal thousands of my patients with the same USP-grade micronized progesterone used in prescription progesterone prescription compounds.
This product is incredibly cost-effective. You would spend twice as much on most other over-the-counter products to get the same amount of hormone and have to use at least quadruple the amount of cream.
For instance, 100mg of Gen-Pro is only 0.8ml of transdermal cream vs. 1 1/4 tsp of 6ml of the leading brand.
How do you apply Gen-Pro?
Gen-Pro is best applied on the inner thigh. Your inner thigh has vascular-rich subcutaneous fat for best absorption and systemic delivery. In most cases, Gen-Pro is applied twice daily to get good systemic absorption with 24-hour coverage.
Now, if you’re trying to regulate your menstrual periods, if you have PCOS, irregular periods, or are perimenopausal, use four pumps or 100 milligrams of progesterone twice a day starting at the time of ovulation for two weeks.
If you’re menopausal, you’re going to use one to two pumps twice a day all through the month, taking a three-day break every month.
Why would you do that?
Because it takes 72 hours to clear your receptor sites.
You’ve got about nine months to take progesterone constantly before your hypothalamus says it’s time to deliver this baby. Only in pregnancy would you be making progesterone daily for 40 weeks. So take 72-hour breaks from progesterone each month and you’ll get way more effectiveness, as your cell receptors won’t become resistant.
For women using estrogen replacement therapy, the rule of thumb is for every milligram of estradiol, you need about 100 milligrams a day of progesterone. When you start using progesterone with estrogen in menopause, it’s not unusual to have vaginal bleeding. Not really periods, but breakthrough bleeds that usually settle down after a few months or so if your balance of progesterone to estrogen is right for you.
Once you get your symptoms under control, you will need to start tapering your dose so that you’re not having menstrual bleeds. For perimenopause, you use as much as you need during the two-week luteal phase. Some of my premenopausal patients need a little extra progesterone in the first half of their cycle, maybe once a day before bed to help them sleep better and to calm them.
How to use Gen-Pro
Menopausal — two pumps (50mg) twice daily, stop three days per month to clear receptor sites.
Perimenopausal — four pumps (100mg) twice daily starting day 12 of a menstrual cycle for 10–14 days.
Premenstrual — four pumps (100mg) twice daily for as needed in the second half of the cycle.
Secondary amenorrhea — eight pumps (200mg) twice daily for ten days to induce period.
Corpus luteal defect — four pumps (100mg) twice daily from ovulation through the 14th week of pregnancy — adjust the dose according to serum progesterone levels.
For men using testosterone replacement therapy, it’s recommended to use about 5 to 10 milligrams of progesterone for every 80 to 160 milligrams of testosterone. Since the Gen-Pro pump delivers 25 milligrams, use it once 2–3 times weekly, according to how much testosterone replacement therapy you’re using.
Progesterone is a natural aromatase inhibitor that helps to prevent your testosterone from converting into estrogen.
Gen-Pro ingredients
Gen Pro uses USP-grade micronized progesterone sourced from wild yam. The transdermal liposomal base includes the highest quality ingredients — organic lemon oil and rose oil.
Gen-Pro is made in the USA and is non GMO, paraben free, soy free, petroleum free and never tested on animals.
Gen-Pro is manufactured in an FDA approved lab. The chemical-sounding ingredients are what really make up the liposomal base. You’ll see similar-sounding ingredients in other progesterone creams, but it really matters how those ingredients are mixed together. My compounding pharmacist perfected it and the formula has outperformed all others my patients tried.
Gen-Pro is the only transdermal progesterone I trust.
I formulated this amazing highly absorbable progesterone in a liposomal transdermal base with my trusted pharmacist for my beloved patients.
And now Gen-Pro is available to you!
About the Author — Deborah Maragopoulos FNP
Known as the Hormone Queen®️, I’ve made it my mission to help everyone — no matter their age — balance their hormones, and live the energy and joy their DNA and true destiny desires. See more about my story here…
