How Much Progesterone Do I Need For Osteoporosis?
There are recommended dosages for osteoporosis outlined here. However, women do vary in their individual needs and the late John Lee, MD always advocated that women were the best judges of what they needed.
Dosage if you are premenopausal
You should be having reasonably regular periods and ovulating regularly. If this is happening you should be producing enough progesterone yourself to prevent osteoporosis and there should be no need to supplement. whether if you have a low bone density for your age shown through a bone scan then ask your doctor to take either a blood or saliva test for progesterone in the second half of your cycle.
This will show whether or not you ovulating and whether or not you are producing sufficient progesterone. If you are ovulating and hormone levels are normal, then you need to look for other causes of osteoporosis. You may need a medical practitioner to help you to do this as it can be difficult to diagnose. As you are premenopausal, you do not want the progesterone supplementation to confuse your ovaries and interfere with ovulation.
For this reason you should use approximately 20 to 30 mg of natural Progesterone cream daily (a quarter teaspoon) from the day on which you would expect to ovulate until the day before you would normally expect your period to start. Ovulation normally occurs 14 days before your period starts. This is so even if you have a cycle that is longer or shorter than the average.
Post menopause dosage
Postmenopausal women do not have to worry about ovulation or fitting in with the menstrual cycle, and they would use approximately 20 mg of natural progesterone cream. This should be taken daily except for 6 days each calendar month. The reason for this break is to prevent the progesterone receptors from becoming blocked. The simplest way to do this is to decide on an easily remembered time, like the first week or the last week in the month, and use that as your free week.
If a postmenopausal woman is only using natural progesterone for osteoporosis, and not for any other menopausal symptoms, then she can use the cream just once a day. If there are other symptoms as well, then it is more effective to split the dose and take it twice a day to maintain steadier blood levels of the hormone.
