Many women experience fibroids, which are a result of excess oestrogen, and although they don’t necessarily have to cause a problem, they can become one.

A lot of women do suffer from fibroids around their thirties and forties and they can be a real nuisance. Women’s hormone expert Dr John Lee proposed that to reduce fibroids a supplemental progesterone regime should do the trick, provided the fibroids are small.

What are fibroids and how can you treat them?

Fibroids are round, firm benign lumps of the muscular wall of the uterus, composed of smooth muscle and connective tissue, and seldom do you just get one. In size they start small and grow to something the size of an orange, but can get much bigger. The most usual consequences are painful or irregular periods and heavy bleeding, often accompanied by pain.

The usual option offered is a hysterectomy, and many women, depending on their age, opt for this. If you have a highly skilled surgeon they can just remove the uterus intact, but this is not usually the case.

Prevention is the best option, so tackling oestrogen dominance is the first step because fibroids are produced by excess oestrogen and their growth is stimulated by it.

Ensuring that you have adequate supplies of progesterone is a priority, so establish this by checking your symptoms, or with a blood or saliva test. By using natural progesterone regularly you may be able to shrink the fibroids in size without resorting to surgery.

Once menopause is under way the fibroids will begin to shrink naturally, but if you are around ten years or so off your menopause you need to be aware that you are probably having anovulatory (non-ovulating) cycles and so you are producing much less progesterone than before but still the same amount of oestrogen.

To check for this, have a blood or saliva test to check progesterone levels the week following your usual ovulation date. A low reading indicates lack of ovulation and the need to supplement with natural progesterone.

If you experience any of the common signs of oestrogen dominance you will want to keep an eye out for fibroids and take action sooner, rather than later, to avoid surgery.