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Journey back to health

by Fred
(USA)

Hi,
I want to try to keep this as short as possible. My journey back to health began about five years ago. I'm now 61 but five years ago I weighed 255 pounds and I'm only 5'7" (male).

As you can imagine, my health was really screwed up. It's been a long, journey incrementally to get where I am now: 169 pounds and feeling infinitely better!

People ask me what type of diet I'm on and I quickly point out, it's NOT a diet; it's a LIFESTYLE.

Since losing all this weight (and I'll get to the progesterone thing in a moment), I've reduced the need for BP meds, now I take only one whereas before I was taking five different ones. I also no longer use a CPAP machine.

As recently as two or three months ago, I was still feeling not that great at times and I could not figure out why. It seemed to me that with all the weight I'd lost because of the garbage I'd eliminated from my eating routine, along with the types of quality clean foods I'd begun incorporating into my eating lifestyle, I thought I should be feeling far better.

At any rate, I came across this page quite by accident and soon realized that there may be something here for me. I should also point out that I began using testosterone replacement therapy at least 12 years ago. However, I do not use as much as I did when I first began using it. I started off using Androgel, but eventually, my body didn't absorb it as well as it had in the beginning so my doctor switched me to Axiron, which seems to be better.

I first learned of progesterone for men from a woman naturopath who told me I needed it. I began by applying one pump of 4 Male to my skin daily. I didn't really notice anything although at times, erections seemed to be more firm.

Segue to your website and I began to realize that for me, I may need quite a bit more. So I started adding more. I had switched to another progesterone cream that applied 17mg of progesterone with each pump, so I used it first twice per day, then three times per day, then finally four times per day. This gave me a total of 68 mg of progesterone each day.

Then I noticed that things seemed to backfire and I began having symptoms of what you would describe as estrogen dominance. At one point over the past few years, my estradiol measured nearly 60, so my endocrinologist put me on Arimedix (1mg - once per week). That brought it down and because he also prescribes my testosterone replacement hormone I have blood drawn every six months. I've seen my estradiol go up and down.

Side note: my Vitamin D levels are very good - well within the middle to the higher end of the range.

I eventually stopped taking Arimedix but didn't do much of anything else. Since the use of progesterone seemed to backfire, I backed way off on it. However, after reading more of the information you have here, I decided to bite the bullet so to speak and use up to 100mg/day of progesterone. I figured if I had estrogen dominance symptoms, I would "fight" my way through it instead of backing off. I seem to be able to tolerate the 100mg/day nicely. I have bought several tubes of NatPro, which your site says is 50mg of progesterone PER pump, is that correct? I do one pump in the morning and one pump in the evening. You seem to say that men should use between 10 and 100mg of progesterone per day. Other places you seem to say that more can be more beneficial. Why can't I do this: one pump of NatPro at 50mg/day TWICE per day and then at lunch time, two pumps of another cream measuring out at 17mg/pump for a total of 34 mg of that cream? Added together, it would give me a total of 134 mg/progesterone DAILY. How does that harm me? If TBI are treated with far higher doses of progesterone, then why can't a dose of between 100mg and 200mg of progesterone benefit men or me, in my case? I've noticed when I went to around 100mg/day, my outlook on life changed. It was as though I became more self-assured, my endurance was far more level and consistent and there was a far greater sense of well-being. You've said on your site repeatedly that if symptoms are bad, then more progesterone is needed. But is the top end for men 100mg? If so, WHY?

I appreciate your response when you get time. I hope to hear from you or read a response to this post in the near future.

Thanks for all the information you have here. It's a huge help!

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