In this episode of the Natural Fertility Podcast, Dr. Jane Levesque, a naturopathic doctor and natural fertility expert, challenges misconceptions about progesterone and its vital role beyond pregnancy. Dr. Levesque reviews the hormone's impact on fertility, brain function, and overall health. She emphasizes the importance of understanding progesterone's multifaceted functions and encourages listeners to advocate for their health. Tune in for a comprehensive exploration of how progesterone influences women's health and fertility, and learn why it is crucial to work with knowledgeable practitioners for personalized care.

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Key Takeways

03:03 The Importance of Progesterone in Fertility

06:36 The Role of Progesterone in Health

12:13 The Connection Between Self-Sacrifice and Infertility

21:55 The Importance of Internal Energy and Self-Care

26:59 Importance of Hormone Analysis

Memorable Quotes

"Progesterone is not just made by our ovaries; it's also made by our nervous system, in our neuroglial cells, and it helps with brain function and neuromodulation."

"If we are stressed, it's not that the body isn't making progesterone, it's that it's making it, but it's going right into the cortisol pathway."

"Progesterone is this hormone that sacrifices itself, and if I think about pregnancy and being a mother, it's a very selfless act."

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Website - https://www.drjanelevesque.com/

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I think it's embarrassing for medical provider to say, a male medical provider at that, to say that women do not need progesterone unless they are pregnant. It shows me that there is a huge lack of knowledge and maybe it's just ignorance, maybe it's brainwashing, like, I don't know. But I was just, she sent me a text of what he said and my jaw dropped. It was just like I cannot believe. And I, the next, my jaw drops and then my heart drops because I'm like, oh my God. These poor women are told that they don't need progesterone. Pregnancy is a natural process. So if it's not happening or if it's not sticking, something is missing. After having a family member go through infertility and experiencing a miscarriage myself, I realized how little support and education women have around infertility. I want to change that. I'm doctor Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 09:00 a.m. for insightful case studies, expert interviews and practical tips on how you can optimize fertility. Now naturally, if you've been struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women's health issues, or you just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life, this show is for you. All right, ladies, today I want to give you more insight about progesterone. I'm learning a lot. I'm learning a lot from one of my mentors, Doctor Leah Hetchman. I've talked to her about her a couple of times to you guys. She is, has, she's working on her second PhD. She is an expert in fertility, reproductive health and just a fascinating researcher. I absolutely have loved learning from her. So everything that I'm learning I'm sharing with you because why not? I know you need to know this information and it's going to help you hopefully on your, to make good, informed decisions on, in your fertility journey. So progesterone is a fascinating hormone and I think most of you guys, we've talked about knowing why the progesterone is low and then how to address when it's low. But I want to kind of expand a little bit more around the actions that progesterone has. We know about it in the reproductive world that it helps with implantation and helps to sustain the pregnancy. Really important for pregnancy. Right? It's progestation. Progesterone. That's what that means. And I've recently had a patient who she tested low on her progesterone. And we're like, hey, let's write a note to your doctor, and let's see if you bring the results and you ask him for a progesterone prescription, if he will give it to you, because, you know, we've done family history. We know what's going on here, and you have low progesterone. This might be really helpful for you as we're figuring out some other things that are going on. It will kind of give the body the energy and the calmness, the coolness. The coolness, the immune system down regulation, all that jazz. So she goes to the doctor and she shows him his result, her results, and asks them to see if this is something that, like, any chance he would be open to it. And he literally goes, women don't need progesterone unless they're pregnant. Your results don't mean anything. This doesn't matter. And then he was trying to show and explain to her how the menstrual cycle works, which she was just in shock, honestly. I was in shock. I think it's embarrassing for a medical provider to say, a male medical provider at that, to say that women do not need progesterone unless they are pregnant. It shows me that there is a huge lack of knowledge, and maybe it's just ignorance, maybe it's brainwashing, like, I don't know. But I was just. She sent me a text of what he said, and my jaw dropped. It was just like, I cannot believe. And I. The next, my jaw drops, and then my heart drops because I'm like, oh, my God. These poor women are told that they don't need progesterone. And then here I am, right, as a fertility expert and a little bit of an influencer, sitting here talking about, you need good progesterone. And then you're getting this doctor, this authority figure telling you, no, you don't. Of course you're confused. Of course you're confused. So I really want to help to break some of those misconceptions and help you understand the important role of progesterone. And I will share my screen for a couple of things. So if you're listening to this, I'll talk through it as much as I can. If you're watching on YouTube, then you can see the screen that I'm sharing. But let's talk about all the functions that progesterone has, because it's a beautiful hormone. It is not just for our reproductive system. It is not only active in the second half of the cycle. It is in the background throughout the entire cycle. It is more dominant in the second cycle, in the second part of the cycle after ovulation. But there's actually a little spike of progesterone, right? Like it's mini spike. And that is what kicks off the ovulation to help kicks off that, you know, estrogen climb and the. For the follicle to grow, to mature, and then to ovulate. And then, of course, progesterone takes over in the second half. But progesterone is not just made by our ovaries. It's also made by our nervous system, in our neuroglial cells, and it helps with brain function and neuromodulation. So, literally, the brain changes. If you've heard about all the studies and research about how a woman's brain changes during pregnancy and postpartum, this is the work of progesterone. And if you've had the opportunity to be pregnant and to be postpartum and whether it's for better or for worse, because I've had the tough experience postpartum where I did feel the postpartum depression, if you will, and even anxiety and how much your brain changes and how much we as women, our identity changes, and it brings out a lot of stuff. It's like this curtain from our subconscious to our conscious unveils itself. And it goes, here you go. Is this something we've been storing this for you? Is this something that you want to keep as part of your psyche moving forward? Or is this something that we need to process and let go and release of? So if you've had the opportunity to experience that, but you never could point your finger to it, I hope that this helps you solidify that. But to validate that, because I remember going through that experience, and I have a patient who's going through that right now, and I feel so fortunate to be able to help her and to help her understand that the issues that she's feeling now is not because of the postpartum period, and it's not because of the pregnancy, actually, things that she has been going through and suppressing for all of her life, the fears of death and the fears of, you know, just extreme anxiety about her health is not. It's being exaggerated by the depletion in nutrients, but it's really this, her body trying to recalibrate post pregnancy, and she's stepping into motherhood, she's never going to be the same person, you know, that she was. And so it's really beautiful to see that. And it is the work of progesterone, essentially, is what it's doing. So progesterone is made by the brain. This is why when we have low progesterone, we have PM's. Pmdd, right. Like severe postpartum. Not postpartum, but menstrual cycle, depression and anxiety, and you feel like you turn into a completely different person. So not only does this neuromodulation and this change in the brain happen during big events like pregnancy and postpartum or even puberty, and, you know, menopause, when we're speaking about big changes in the woman's life, but in reality, we're seeing those changes through the cycle, right, because our hormones change throughout the cycle. And so how fascinating is it to be a woman? And I know that some of you are listening to this and you feel really frustrated with your hormones because there are all over the place, and maybe you've never had good levels of progesterone, and so you do not know what that feels like. But it's such a fascinating process. And if we can start to unravel why you've never had a good progesterone levels in the first place or why you have other hormonal imbalances, because, let's face it, we can't just have one hormone that's out of balance. It is this domino's effect. And if you have thyroid issues, if you have testosterone issues, if it's FSH or lH, or if it's blood sugar, inflammation, cortisol, pineal gland, like, all these things are going to be impacting one another. It's the, it's a domino's effect, and that's why we can't just fix one and then not fix the other. But progesterone tends to be at the center for a lot of things because it's this kind of hormone that sacrifices itself for other hormones to go in place. And I will share the chart with you in a second so you can have a good visual. But I want to finish off the other kind of main things that the, that progesterone does. So we know it has help. It helps us with the reproductive system, with a fertilization, implantation, you know, sustaining the pregnancy. We know now that, okay, it's support for our nervous system and this neuromodulation and mood regulation, memory, like, nervous system health in general. And the other two pieces is it's our immune system modulation and the gut microbiome modulation. And I think those two things go hand in hand because, let's face it, like 80% of our immune system is in the gut. But really, our gut dictates everything. If we're walking bacteria, if we're walking bugs and we have dysbiosis and our gut is not working well, it's going to transfer into everything else. And from the immune system perspective, the reason that progesterone does what it does, if it supports implantation, what needs to happen in the immune system of the female is it needs to be down regulated to accept a foreign quote unquote object. And it honestly needs to even do that to accept the sperm. So that, but because it is a foreign DNA, and then that fertilization happens, and then for the embryo to nestle its way in and to implant. So progesterone helps with that. It helps to down regulate the immune system. So youre not as reactive during that time. And so if right before your period, youre the kind of person that feels like youre always just about to get sick, that flu like symptoms, thats actually a sign of low progesterone and imbalance in the immune system, that you probably have some pathogens that are hanging around. Now that the progesterone is starting to come in and trying to decrease the immune system function or modulated more the body, essentially, it's not doing that because the progesterone isn't there modulating it. So the immune system is having a quote unquote party, the infection is having a party, and the immune system is trying to bring it down. So it's very like I can speak about each topic for a long time, and I'm not. I need you guys to just kind of understand the overview. When we're taking progesterone orally, it's going to have more of a bigger impact on our nervous system, more on the gut microbiome, more on the immune system modulation. When we're taking progesterone as a suppository, as a vaginal suppository, you're going to notice more impact on the reproductive system. And I find that most women need just a little bit of both. And so what I want to share with you guys today is to help you understand why progesterone, like, how, why does it sacrifice itself and why do so many women who have infertility are also struggling with having low progesterone? And so this is the Dutch is a test that I use often to help understand the steroid pathways and how the body is metabolizing. And breaking down hormones. But this is a chart that they have for, it's a provider resource, but I'm pretty sure you can find it online as well. It's just steroid pathway and dutch testing. And I use it quite a bit to just help my patients understand hormones and what's happening with hormones and why progesterone is such a hot commodity and just even the energetics of the hormone, you guys. And this is, I just learned this from my mentor where it's like, progesterone is this hormone that sacrifices itself. And if I think about pregnancy and being a mother, it's a very selfless act. It's. You're literally sacrificing your body to this tiny little thing to just take over and take exactly what it needs. And then, of course, bringing this baby into this world and then keeping it alive for the first couple of years, it's a very, like, it's a very selfless act. And I wonder how much that's connected to when we as women feel really depleted and we're giving out all of our energy to everybody else and not keeping enough for ourselves. And therefore, the body cannot, does not have enough of this progesterone. And so it's the sacrificing hormone, if you will. If we as women are sacrificing all of our time and energy towards everybody else except ourselves, this is when we start to struggle with infertility. And again, it's just something that I'm seeing clinically, and I'm trying to kind of create a picture of, like, well, what is it about this person that's making them go through this journey? And usually it's this people pleasing, sacrificing themselves for everybody else except themselves. But we need this hormone to make babies, and we definitely need it for good health, but we need it to make babies and to have healthy pregnancies. High good levels of progesterone in that first trimester are associated with neurological development for the baby. So the better the progesterone levels, the better nervous system function that the baby will have. And then when the mom has really low progesterone levels in the second, in the first trimester, the chances of developing, whether it's things like autism or even adhd, any other behavioral issues, is much, much greater when that progesterone level isn't elevated. So it's a very important hormone. And that's why I get so mad when practitioners who are in the place of authority are telling women that you don't need this, and they're putting them down and they're gaslighting them, where in reality, we as women, deep down, know that, like, something is wrong here, you know, when we need to fire that doctor and go on to the next, because it's like I said to me, I think it's embarrassing. So let me take you through this chart so you guys understand why progesterone is a thing that doesn't last very long in the body. It's pretty high up on the chart. So we go, cholesterol is what everything starts with. So we need to have good cholesterol. Those hdl levels are really, really important. So that's your right. High density lipoproteins, they're really important because not only every single cell in your body requires it, like your nervous system function, right? It's surrounded by these cells. But our hormone production is dependent on cholesterol. So when I see women on statins to decrease their bad cholesterol and nobody's looking at their good cholesterol, and they're struggling with premature ovarian failure or they're struggling with infertility in general because they have no hormones left in their body. This is why cholesterol is the backbone. And then we go into pregnenolone, and then literally it breaks down into progesterone, or the 17 oh pregnenolone. And progesterone could then further break down into the alpha, into the beta pregnenol or 1708 oh, progesterone. And so if you're looking at this, then you could see that 17 oh progesterone goes into cortisol. It goes into cortisol. Cortisol is your stress hormone, ladies. So if we are stressed, it's not that the body isn't making progesterone, it's that it's making it, but it's going right into the cortisol pathway. You can also see that progesterone feeds into the enderstendion, which then feeds into testosterone, which then feeds into estrogen. And so if there is a high demand for any of these hormones, because progesterone is so high up, it's just feeding, eating into these cycles. And sometimes for estrogen, we have estrogen mimicking endocrine disrupting chemicals. They're all usually estrogen mimicking, and they create a lot of havoc in the body and almost this overproduction. Yeah, of progesterone. Sorry, of estrogen. And this poor progesterone is just going in and feeding into it because of the dysregulation of a bunch of enzymes, essentially, and poor detoxification, poor liver function. The little things that you see on the side is all enzymes. So the three beta HSD helps the pregnellone to go into progesterone and then to go into, you know, the cy p eleven, b one, and Cyp 21. They help to go from the 17, oh, progesterone into cortisol. And so these enzymes are going to be very critical for liver function. Now, this doesn't, this chart does not have everything. It's a good look. But then there's, of course, the vitamins and the minerals that are required. This is where I look at methylation. I don't want to take you too deep down the rabbit hole, but what I want you guys to understand is that when we're chasing this progesterone levels and we don't understand this picture is a lot of the times I have women all the time, oh, I have estrogen dominance. I have estrogen dominance. I have. I've been treating estrogen dominance for three years. Where is the estrogen dominance coming from? Is there a bacterial overgrowth? Is there inflammation? Is there blood sugar regulation? Maybe we need to support you with progesterone to help the body just learn and understand what progesterone feels like. So then the whole pathway and the whole system can come down. But when I say progesterone sacrifices itself, that's what I mean, is that it literally goes down whatever pathway we need. And so if we are not managing our stress, if we are not sleeping enough, if we have raging inflammation, if we have poor liver function, we're not pooping enough, we recycling that estrogen, then the hopes of that progesterone balancing, you know, you can eat all the food in the world to support progesterone production, but if we don't put out the fire, it's not really, you know, it's not going to feel very effective. And of course, I have many women come to me, and whether it's working with me one on one, or through the group program, where they're just like, oh, it's low progesterone. I need to take care of my low progesterone without obviously being able to zoom out and say, whoa, I didn't realize all of these things were impacting my low progesterone. So just like I said, endocrinology, I gave hormones and male hormones are the same as female. Yes, we have different hormones, but in terms of the concept, it's like, it is a domino's effect. It is a domino's effect. If you have dysregulated blood sugar and if you don't know if you do because you don't think that you do, but if you're carrying extra weight, you probably have some sort of level of blood dysregulation. Now, I've tested many women and men and myself where I'm not carrying very much extra weight at all, but I have dysregulated blood sugar, and so how does that show up on me? It's, yes, there is a little extra weight, but all it's easty symptoms. And whether it's actually getting yeast infections or getting these flaky skin or having brain fog or having sticky poops and not moving, digestion is just not moving. Well, you feel like you're in a fog all the time. That's still signs of yeast overgrowth, which is driven by high blood sugars. And then there's probably something else that's driving the blood sugar. But we need to understand what's happening in our body so then we can make these right choices when it comes to our treatment plan and actually feel like we're moving forward. Yeah. A lot of the times, people are coming to me and they're on this treadmill, and they're like, I don't even know what's happening anymore. Get off the treadmill. Stop. Let's assess. Assess data, get labs done. Look at everything all at once. So then you could say, whoa, this seems important. And, of course, you might not know that. This is why I recommend you work with a practitioner. But, like, in my fertility 101 program, this is what I try to teach you. So you could see it. You could see that, wow, this is really important. I need to address this first before I go and start, you know, freaking out about my progesterone. So the. And the reason that it's usually low, like I said, with women in infertility, is I think that there is this characteristic of sacrificing yourself, this people pleasing, that I'm not worthy. Everybody else comes before me. That after decades of doing that, like, guaranteed, if you're a people pleaser, it's not something that you just started a year ago. It's something that's been ingrained in you, and you think that's the way that you receive love. And so it's. And maybe it's the way that you do receive love from some of the people that are close to you. And so you're afraid if you stop pleasing those people, you will no longer receive their love, and that means you will be abandoned. And that's even worse. So you rather just please the person and continue to drive yourself into the ground. That's the thing we need to unravel. That's the thing we need to unravel, because I promise you, the people that love you only for the fact that you're pleasing them are not the people that are going to help you flourish in this life. And you will develop disease. And whether it's infertility or autoimmune disease or cancer or whatever, you're not living your true self. Yeah, you're trying to patch it up. There's fear. There's a much deeper fear, and that's where we people pleasing, and that's why all of our energy is going somewhere else instead of us. And I think if you have a pit in your throat now or a pit in your gut, and you're like, oh, my God, that's me. It's okay. Take a breath. Sit with it for a second, but realize that youre. Your physical expression, your physical body, is showing us exactly what's going on on the inside. And I think you have to work on both. You have to work on the inside. You have to work on your psyche, your mental and emotional state, but you also have to support the body physically. So then you can have the energy and the vitality to make the changes that you're going to need to make and to overcome the pathogens to help the body detox, all of the jazz, and then eventually transferred into making a healthy baby into, like I said, it's a selfless act. It takes a lot of energy. And most women that are coming to me, they're exhausted. They're exhausted. They have bags under, or they're super anxious. They can't even let themselves feel exhausted, you know? So that energy needs to be internal. It's like a fountain of energy that needs to be coming through your body. And if you don't feel that, if it feels like, oh, my God, I'm just overwhelmed, and I'm just doing stuff. I don't even know what it's like to slow down. Down. I invite you to slow down. I invite you to slow down. I invite you to do some lab work and get a really good assessment on yourself, because you are worth it. It is worth it for you to figure that out, not just for the fertility purposes, but for, honestly, the rest of your life. This is an investment to make into yourself for the rest of your life, not just something that oh, once I'm through this fertility journey, I don't have to do any of the stuff. It's like, no, I have two babies and I still continue to work on myself because my babies reflect things back to me that I need to work on. And I want to be able to help them work through their things as they're coming up absolutely. Already. And whether it's physical, mental or emotional, being a parent is really challenging. And when you have no idea why you are the way that you are or what you do or how the body works, seeing your child being in discomfort is really painful. And I think the thing that's even more painful is not knowing what to do or how to help them and take them to a doctor who doesn't think that progesterone is important for women. To me, it's like, not acceptable, you know? So we need to learn about ourselves and advocate, and we're just in this era, if you will, where if we're not speaking up about it, if we're not educating ourselves, then we're falling into rabbit holes that are very, very detrimental to our health, to our fertility, to our relationships, to everything. And so I invite you to educate yourself and to make a different decision to make sure that you're actually climbing out of the hole instead of falling deeper in. So the last thing that I want to talk to you, is it the right thing to supplement for you? Because the last thing I want you to do be like, I heard this podcast and now I need to be on progesterone. Three things that you guys need to check to make sure that this is the right next step for you. The first thing is you need to test. Yeah, you need to see if progesterone is actually an issue for you. I've had women who struggle with infertility, with terrible progesterone levels, and I've had women who've had pretty good progesterone levels, even though they're struggling with infertility. So you need to test it. We're not just going to put you on progesterone, and you also need to test to know the numbers of it. And ideally, you would test a couple of times in the second half of the cycle just to get an idea of what is happening with your progesterone. So it's a bit more, it's a concrete answer versus, like, I heard it on a podcast, stop doing that. I'm giving you the podcast information because I want you to educate yourself so you can ask better questions now. So then you can just go and find another thing and try it on your own. You could do it if you want to, but it's just going to waste more time. You need to do the testing. The second thing you need to do is you need to make sure you have a good understanding of your family history. So as a practitioner, that's something that I do with my patients. I want to understand the cancers that the woman has had in her, on her side of the family, including siblings, including aunts and uncles. Obviously the mom, the dad and the grandparents were looking for any reproductive sort of cancer, breast cancer, obviously being a big one. Ovarian, uterine, cervical, the cancer risk. We don't want to go onto hormone therapy without understanding the risk of the cancers and more specifically of the. If they're ER positive or pr positive, right. ER is more estrogen, pr is progesterone. So if you don't understand that and your blood starting to take hormones and you are not working with a practitioner who is monitoring things for you, and then you still have high levels of inflammation and oxidative stress, we can create a whole lot of mess for ourselves. So I, when I say that, like how do you know if you need to supplement with it? You need to work with the practitioner who can then tell you if that's the right thing for you to do or not. The next thing is going through, through. The third thing is what I would recommend is running a dutch hormone analysis, the thing that I just shared with you. I want to see how you're breaking down hormones in which way they're going with the enzymes, especially like estrogen. If there is a higher risk of cancers, are you breaking down into a pathway that's more detrimental and is, you know, with estrogen that's associated with cancer versus not. I think it's really important to have as much information as possible to do that good analysis, to do good family history before you jump into supplementing with something that can be so magical but can also cause issues if it's supplemented at the wrong time, the wrong dose, you know, the wrong prescription. I always say right place, right time, right person, because like I said, we can get into a mess if we're not doing this well or doing it right. So I hope you guys find it helpful. I think that progesterone is a beautiful hormone. We need it. We don't just need it for pregnancy. You need, when you haven't had good progesterone levels and then you get it, you're just like, oh my God, is this what progesterone is like. So it can be really magical, but you want to make sure that you are doing it with the right help, with the right support, with the right dose, and it is the thing that you actually need. Because your progesterone levels might be okay, but if you just work a little bit on your stress, boom, that progesterone goes up. Or maybe it's a bit of the gut microbiome or getting rid of infections. Again, everybody is different here. So I hope you guys found this podcast helpful. I love learning more. The more that I will learn, the more that I will share with you because I think this information needs to get out there. So if you have somebody that you know is going to benefit from this podcast, please, please, please send it to them. I highly appreciate it. Every listed matters and if you can rate this podcast, I would appreciate it as well. It helps with the visibility and helps to get that podcast out there. Last but not least, if you want to fill out an application to work with me, whether it's in a group setting or in one on one, click the link down below and let's see if I'm the right person to help. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening. To read the full show notes of this episode, including summary, time stamps, guest quotes, and any resources that were mentioned on the episode. Visit drjanelevesque.com podcast and if you're getting value from these episodes, I'd love it if you took two minutes to share it with a friend. Rate and leave me a review@ratethispodcast.com. drain the reviews will help with the discoverability of the show, and who knows, I might share your review on my next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in and let's make your fertility journey your healing journey.