Dr. Phil Interview: Treating PMS Symptoms With Natural Progesterone

Dr. Phil interviewed Holly Anderson of the Premenstrual Syndrome Medical Clinic, a large clinic that specializes in treating PMS. The PMS Medical Clinic is on-target for a lot of their treatment protocols, and they advocate using natural progesterone, but unfortunately still seem to be uninformed about how transdermal creams work. The following is an excerpt of the interview taken from Dr. Phil’s website (www.drphil.com) with our comments in bold and in brackets.

Dr. Phil: What can a woman do during and before her cycle to get it under control so it's not so dramatic?

Holly: First off, she should be treated with natural progesterone. That is the treatment that is going to get rid of the estrogen dominance that is causing the PMS.

Holly: When you have estrogen dominance, it suppresses your thyroid and you're going to have transient hypoglycemia, which is low blood sugar. That's where the adrenaline is coming in and these women are flying off the handle, they're out of control and throwing things and saying horrible things. If they would eat small amounts of protein and complex carbohydrates every three to four hours, this would help tremendously.

Dr. Phil: Where can a woman get natural progesterone?

Holly: The treatment that works is vaginal or rectal natural progesterone. [Progesterone cream works just as well or better because it’s not messy and drippy! It is delivered to cells throughout the body within minutes of application.] Oral [pill] progesterone does not work for PMS. […because it stresses the liver and creates a lot of metabolites or byproducts, and also only delivers about 20 percent of the dose to the cells]. And the creams found in health food stores do not work because they're not prescription progesterone. [When you buy an over-the-counter progesterone cream from your local health food store or the web, it’s always wise to make sure that you’re getting the appropriate dose, but if it says “progesterone USP” on the label, then it’s the exact same progesterone that Ms. Anderson is using.] It has to come from a medical doctor who specializes in treating PMS. [We get letters from women every day who are very successfully using over-the-counter creams themselves to treat their PMS symptoms.] It does alleviate 150 of the different PMS symptoms, both emotional and physical: like cramps, bloating, pain, fatigue, weight gain, migraines, irritability and depression.

Dr. Phil: What is the weight impact of taking the natural progesterone? Is weight gain a side effect?

Holly: Actually, they should lose weight. Normally there is a weight gain in the two weeks before the periods because they're craving sugary foods to raise their blood sugar and they're bloated. Some women can gain three to 10 pounds every month and need different sized clothes. Some women even look like they're pregnant. This is very upsetting to women. Natural progesterone takes care of all this because it balances with the estrogen, so there's no more hormonal imbalance.

Holly also suggests that women having pain from ovarian cysts try progesterone therapy. At her clinic, they have successfully stopped ovarian pain with it. [It does work well for ovarian cysts/PCOS when it’s combined with reducing sugar and refined carbohydrates in the diet. Regular aerobic exercise also helps a lot!]

Dr. Phil: Are there any other major things you'd like to say? I know that you need to see the patient, but are there any other building block, foundational kinds of things?

Holly: There have been treatments offered by gynecologists such as the birth control pill, and that is a no-no. that is not going to treat PMS. It will make it worse, and we've seen that at the clinic. Women have been put on the pill by their doctors and come in saying they were crazy and out-of-control. The pill is another method that gives women more estrogen dominance. She doesn't need that. You can keep giving a woman more estrogen until she becomes crazy. Then it becomes so out-of-control that she might need to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and we've had that happen. [We love to hear this affirmed!]