Resources

“Perimenopausal endogenous ovarian hyper-stimulation” is the exact opposite of “The Myth of the Shriveling Ovary”: High estrogen levels during perimenopause, coupled with characteristically intermittent ovulation, can explain much of the misery of perimenopause.

Articles and magazine reports and even books about so-called “menstrual suppression” describe taking the Pill continuously or for longer than 21 days with seven days off. The advertising suggests that this is giving women a “choice” to do away with menstrual flow or menstrual problems. The Federal Drug Agency in the USA has approved one oral combined hormonal contraceptive to be taken in four extended cycles a year. These new ways of taking the Pill allow companies a new patent on old drugs and make it likely that the market for these products will expand from those who want to control pregnancy to those who want to eliminate menstrual flow.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the ways in which oral micronized progesterone therapy (taken by mouth as a pill) can be helpful for menopausal women with hot flushes, sleep disturbances or osteoporosis (menopause being one year after all flow has ceased).

In this revealing work, Dr. Jerilynn Prior teams up with Susan Baxter, a medical writer, to explain the controversy over medicine prescribing estrogen for perimenopausal women in the United States, and to detail why progesterone is actually a far more effective, and a far less risk-ridden, approach. Citing long-standing and emerging research, patient vignettes, and personal experience, endocrinologist Jerilynn Prior and writer Susan Baxter tell us how false beliefs on estrogen became entrenched in U.S. medicine and culture, and why business and politics have played a role in this erroneous thinking.