Dr. Louise Newson

You can't produce a new hormone.

So what some people do is they supplement with natural progesterone.

So they might take Xoli or they might use a Mirena coil, which is a synthetic progesterone in a coil.

But the coil, some of the hormone leaks out through the blood supply and the uterus into the rest of the body.

So then they'll still take something like utergestan, you know, the natural body identical progesterone as well, which is fine because some of that will get into the receptors and help, you know, give the beneficial effects of progesterone.

And sometimes testosterone, because a lot of women, you know, it blocks their testosterone too.

But, you know, trying to get Zoli in the NHS is hard because it's more expensive.

It's relatively, I mean, it's not hugely more expensive, but there is still some resistance because no one likes spending money on women, of course, but they don't.

take into consideration all the trips that people have going back and forth for the side effects to cheaper contraceptives.

Yeah.

So again, let's just go back to some basics first.

Some people might know and others might not know that our hormones actually come from cholesterol.

Cholesterol is good for us.

It's not as bad as people make out.

So cholesterol converts to progesterone and progesterone is a real mother hormone.

It's really important and been underrated for far too many years.

So progesterone then converts to different, some of you might have heard of anopragnolone, which is a very calming hormone.

It converts down to testosterone.

Testosterone gets aromatized to different types of estrogen, including estradiol.

But progesterone also can convert into cortisol, our stress hormone.