12 SAD Seasonal Affective Disorder - Winter Sickness

USP Progesterone - the "Cure" for SAD?

Progesterone cream USP at the doses suggested below has no known side effects. Some history is provided to show that this is a “medical fact” and the reasoning behind the suggestion to use progesterone.

Winter Sickness - Estrogen Sickness - Estrogen Dominance

When Ray Peat ( www.raypeat.com ) moved to from Mexico, first to Montana and then to Oregon in 1966, He became very conscious of how light affects the hormones and the health. (For example, in Montana he experienced an interesting springtime shedding of body hair.) Many people who came to cloudy Eugene, (44^N, 123^W), to study, and who often lived in cheap basement apartments would develop chronic health problems within a few months. Women who had been healthy when they arrived would often develop premenstrual syndrome or arthritis or colitis during their first winter in Eugene.

Eugene may be cloudy, but the whole of the mainland UK lies further North from 50^N Land’s End to 59^N John O’Groats / Dunnet Head.

The absence of bright light would create a progesterone deficiency, and would leave estrogen and prolactin unopposed. Beginning in 1966, He started calling the syndrome "winter sickness," but over the next few years, because of the prominence of the premenstrual syndrome and fertility problems in these seasonally exacerbated disorders, he began calling it the pathology of “oestrogen dominance”. In the endocrinology classes he taught at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine, he emphasized the importance of light, and suggested that medicine could be reorganized around these estrogen-related processes. If the sparrows of Times Square mated in the winter because of the bright lights, it seemed clear that bright artificial light would be helpful in regulating human hormones.

Many of the women with the pre- or peri-menstrual syndrome told Ray that they had few symptoms during the summer months, so he began in the 1960s to examine the role of progesterone in health, because its synthesis is promoted by long days. He saw that many of the sicknesses that mainly affect women had often been described as the consequence of an excess of oestrogen. When animal experiments support the clinical reports and epidemiological evidence, as they do in the case of the "oestrogen sicknesses," the goal of research becomes understanding the mechanisms involved, and discovering the safest way to avoid or to correct the problem. In the period between 1940 and 1960, thyroid, progesterone, and vitamins E and A had often been described as anti-oestrogenic substances, and some of this information persists in classical textbooks, in spite of the efforts of the drug industry to suppress the facts by giving their financial support to journals and symposia which exclude research which uses the concept of excess oestrogen. For example, Goodman and Gilman's text on pharmacology discusses the ability of oestrogen to make animals susceptible to seizures, and progesterone's opposing effect.

The above is from http://raypeat.com/articles/hormones/h1.shtml

http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/a1.shtml

The above information was arrived at via John R Lee who has published and co-authored 5 books.

http://www.johnleemd.com - John Roland Lee's (b.27-Nov-1929 d.17-Oct-2003) web site

Oestrogen dominance is remedied by taking natural progesterone. Progesterone is only available by prescription in the UK, however it can be imported for personal use.

The key words for your browser search (Google, Yahoo, etc ..) are - progesterone cream USP john lee ray peat. This should provide a selection of web sites.

USP = United States Pharmacopoeia - this is important as it confirms that it is bio-identical to human progesterone. Artificial progesterones, which now seem to be called progestins, should not be used.

On the Web Sites further information can be obtained, basically after her family is complete a woman may need 20mg of progesterone cream per day applied to the recommended sites during the second half of her monthly cycle.

John Lee based the 20mg per day on the basis that this was the "natural amount" produced by a woman during the second half of her monthly cycle. For information, during pregnancy the placenta makes 400mg per day.

Men may require 10mg of progesterone cream per day.

http://antiagingguide.com/natural-progesterone-dosage.htm - this gives fuller details of when to apply the cream for a woman at the different stages of her life.

The following web site gives some back ground to John Lee's work http://www.sptimes.com/2003/02/25/Floridian/Estrogen_isn_t_enough.shtml

Progesterone cream USP may be the solution in many cases. If it does not solve the issue the progesterone may have been counteracted by some "other medicine."

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