Biochemist Dr Phyllis Bronson on why women who can't tolerate progesterone may actually be reacting to progestogens/progestins (the synthetic type of progesterone)

Phyllis has spent decades researching progesterone and mood, and her doctoral work looked at the molecular differences between body identical progesterone and the synthetic progestogens found in many contraceptive pills and older types of HRT. She joins Dr Louise Newson to share the primate study that changed how she saw synthetic hormones, and why a small change to a molecule can have such a big effect on the body.

They talk about progesterone as the "molecule of calm", how transdermal and oral progesterone work differently in the brain and why some women may simply need a higher dose. They also discuss progesterone's role in making cortisol, and why it's often the first hormone to decline, sometimes as early as your 20s and 30s.

Can you take HRT if you have endometriosis? Nicola Roberts feared it would bring her pain back. Now she takes estradiol, progesterone and testosterone and feels the best she has since she was 12.

Nicola's periods were agonising from the start, but she was put on the pill at 13 and told by nurses to take Anadin and use a hot water bottle. At 25 she was diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis, then spent years on Depo-Provera, which left her with low mood, body aches and, at 40, osteoporosis.

Dr Louise Newson explains why synthetic contraceptives aren't the same as hormones, why Depo-Provera works "like giving you a menopause straight off", and how low testosterone is linked to endometriosis. They also talk about why so few women are offered testosterone, and how changing her diet and cutting sugar helped Nicola.

Nicola closes with her take-home advice for anyone with endometriosis who has been told hormones aren't an option.

Let’s connect

👉 Track your symptoms andunderstand hormones, download the Balance app: https://bit.ly/4yZty5A

👉 More from Dr LouiseNewson: https://linkin.bio/drlouisenewson

Doctors are being taught to treat hormone guidance as if it's law, but according to retired GP and medical educator Dr Mark Coombe, that guidance is too often "at best very conservative, at worst wrong."

Mark spent two decades in education and assessment for the Royal College of GPs and founded FourteenFish, the training platform used by hundreds of thousands of clinicians. He and Louise previously built free hormone education for GPs together — education that was pulled from its hosting platform after a handful of doctors complained it didn't "run to the guidelines."

In this conversation, Mark and Louise unpack how guidance gets misused as law in consultations and courtrooms, why NICE menopause guidance mentions breast cancer over 20 times more often than osteoporosis, and why more female GPs take HRT than the general public despite so much hesitancy to prescribe it. They close with three take-home tips on why every healthcare professional has a duty of care to understand progesterone, estradiol and testosterone.

Let’s connect

👉 Track your symptoms andunderstand hormones, download the Balance app: https://bit.ly/4yZty5A

👉 More from Dr LouiseNewson: https://linkin.bio/drlouisenewson