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Balance your life and
your hormones from thirty to fifty.
This book is a complete source book of information on pre-menopause. What
Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Pre Menopause, by
Dr. John R. Lee, covers the areas of PMS, fibroids, fibrocystic
breasts, weight gain, fatigue, endometriosis, irregular
or heavy periods, infertility, miscarriage, and other pre-menopausal
symptoms caused by hormone imbalance.
Get valuable information on Premenstrual syndrome (PMS),
the single most common complaint of premenopausal women.
Topics also covered in this book include stress, birth control
pills, hysterectomies and cancer.
Dr. Lee has been a leader in the research, education and
treatment of estrogen dominance. He has pioneered new, natural
and effective ways to approach the life changes brought on
by pre-menopause and menopause.
Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is by far the single
most common complaint of premenopausal women.
Current estimates are that severe PMS occurs in 2.5 to 5
percent of women, and mild PMS occurs in 33 percent of women.
PMS was first described in 1931 as a "state of unbearable
tension," a description most women can understand to a certain
degree. Some women have PMS from the time they begin having
menstrual cycles but for most, PMS begins in the premenopausal
years, around the mid-thirties, and becomes increasingly
severe as the years go on.
Although it's possible to create a list of dozens and dozens
of PMS symptoms, the most common are bloating/water retention
and the resulting weight gain, breast tenderness and lumpiness,
headaches, cramps, fatigue, irritability, mood swings, and
anxiety. In women with severe PMS, irritability and mood
swings can become outbursts of anger and rage. By definition
PMS symptoms occur in the two weeks before menstruation and
sometimes for a few days into menstruation. You should know
right up front that there is no magic bullet for PMS. A little
bit of progesterone will help a lot, and in some women it
solves the problem, because it offsets the effects of environmental
estrogens and anovulatory cycles, but PMS is a multi-factorial
problem that needs to be handled on many physical levels
as well as on the emotional level.
Stress is almost always involved in PMS. Stress increases
cortisol levels, which blocks progesterone from its receptors.
Therefore, normal progesterone levels do not mean that supplemental
progesterone is not needed. Extra progesterone is necessary
to overcome the blockade of its receptors by cortisol. When
a woman discovers she has a handle on controlling her PMS,
it will help her manage stress better. Then lower levels
of progesterone will work normally again. For years it was
assumed that since PMS symptoms occur when progesterone levels
are normally relatively high, that it was progesterone that
was causing the symptoms. Theoretically, symptoms could relate
either to elevated progesterone levels or progesterone deficiency
(estrogen dominance). Elevated levels of progesterone are
unlikely since, during pregnancy, progesterone levels are
10 to 20 times higher than normal mid-cycle levels and similar
symptoms do not occur. Progesterone deficiency (estrogen
dominance) is much more likely since many of the symptoms
correlate with estrogen dominance symptoms, most notably
water retention, breast swelling, headaches, mood swings,
loss of libido, and poor sleep patterns.
A woman's response to her own cyclical hormones is extremely
individual, and this is part of the reason that it has been
so difficult to pin down the causes of PMS. Estrogen levels
that cause anxiety and bloating in one woman will have virtually
no effect on another. A woman who sails through an anovulatory
cycle with hardly a ripple is in complete contrast to the
woman who is plagued by migraines or anger premenstrually
when she doesn't ovulate. Birth control pills and premenopausal
hormone replacement therapy (HRT) will cause a long list
of side effects (including PMS) in many women, while others
will say they feel fine. This is why it's so important that
you become familiar with your own body and your own symptoms,
and don't let anybody tell you that what you're experiencing
is "just an emotional problem," or that an antidepressant
or tranquilizer is all you need.
Excerpt from; What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Premenopause:
Balance Your Hormones and Your Life from Thirty to Fifty,
by John R. Lee, M.D., Jesse Hanley, M.D. and Virginia Hopkins.
Copyright, Warner Books 1999. This material may not be reproduced
in any form without written permission of the authors.
Supplemental
Reading:
About the Author, Dr. John Lee, M.D.:
International Authority on Natural Progesterone
John R. Lee, M.D. is internationally acknowledged as a
pioneer and expert in the study and use of the hormone progesterone,
and on the subject of hormone replacement therapy for women.
He used transdermal progesterone extensively in his clinical
practice for nearly a decade, doing research which showed
that it can reverse osteoporosis. Dr. Lee has had a distinguished
medical career, including graduating from Harvard and the
University of Minnesota Medical School. He retired from a
30-year family practice in Northern California a few years
ago and ever since has been writing and traveling around
the world speaking to doctors, scientists and lay people
about progesterone. Dr. Lee has taught a very popular course
on "Optimal Health," at the College of Marin for 15 years.
He is the author of the best-selling book, What Your Doctor
May Not Tell You About Menopause: The Breakthrough Book on
Natural Progesterone (Warner Books, 1996), the new What Your
Doctor May Not Tell You About Premenopause: Balance Your
Hormones and Your Life from Thirty to Fifty (Warner Books,
1999), and editor of the John R. Lee, M.D. Medical Letter.
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