Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In the late summer of 2011 my body and mind started to crash. I couldn't think straight, couldn't remember things, couldn't sleep. My ability to exercise was gone. I always felt like I was having an off day whenever I did anything. I thought to myself: "Is this what it is like to age?" I was only 37 years old and I felt like I was breaking. I had always led a relatively healthy life: eating out of our garden every summer, mountain biking, hiking, snowboarding (all the typical Colorado mountain sports). Yet, I definitely had some issues. I had three years of being overworked and stressed. I nursed my mother back to health after her brain surgery had gone awry. Managed a brother's life while he was in a coma for three months, all the while working more than full-time as a teacher and yearbook sponsor. During this stressful time, I did start to drink more and more alcohol and not eat as well. I put on 20 pounds, yet was a size 12 and carried my weight well. By the spring of 2011 my family was able to care for themselves, and I decided it was time to care for myself. I informed my principal that I would not be the yearbook sponsor the following year because it was like an additional full-time job on top of teaching, and I decided to lose those 20 pounds that crept up on me. The problem was I decided on a quick and easy fix to the weight gain. I decided to do the HCG diet. Great results, lost 21 lbs in 21 days. . . . but three months later is when I crashed. Please keep in mind that several of these symptoms had actuallly been present in me for many years, but like most people you don't pay attention to it because it's not that bad. The point is, it wasn't merely the crash diet that caused my problems; it just made them worse. For years, probably since my late twenties/early thirties I had trouble falling asleep and staying aspleep, had intense periods and cramps, super dry skin, slight hirutism, anxeity, night sweats, bladder infections, infertility, mid-cycle pain. But that fall the symptoms went from registering as a 2-3 to an 8-10. Plus, I had more symptoms to add to the list: inability to control my emotions, crying for no reason, not wanting to live, and my hair started falling out. Desparate, I started my journey back to health with my family practioner who ran all the bloodwork I requested to rule out hypothyrodism and any other glaring signs of doom. After all came back within "normal" range(and yes I did enough research to know that the ranges were too broad and many women still need treatment who are in the "normal" range for hypothyroidism), and him offerring me sleeping pills and anti-depressant pills, I knew he wasn't going to help me. I next saw a nutritionist who did a biofeedback on me, and she told me that she felt my problems were rooted in vitamin and mineral deficiencies. She placed me on an 80% raw diet; I temporarily eliminated wheat and dairy. I was slowly feeling better, but my hair was still falling out and my symptoms were still registering too high for me to not want to continue to search for answers. That's when I came across information on Dr. John Lee and his information on hormone balance. When I looked at the list of symptoms for women out of balance, I could check off 70% of the items on the list. Thus, I immediately read three of his books and found a doctor who knew how to work with bioidentical hormones in October of 2011. I started off using the recommended dosage of 20mg a day, 14 days out of the month, and immediately started to notice a difference; however, my symptoms still persisted, especially the hair falling out (it actually increased some, but I had read this was normal so I didn't give up), so I asked if I could up my dose to 40mg a day. I did that until December of 2011. Then, in January of 2012 I found out I was pregnant!. After ten years of being infertile, my husband and I had finally conceived and my progesterone levels were normal. I had them tested the past 3 years and once a month starting in October 2011, and all my ob/gyn kept telling me was that they were declining and I wasn't ovulating on my yearly bloodwork, but that's normal for a woman my age. Well, what he failed to tell me is that when you fail to ovulate, it creates a cascade of failing to ovulate in the future, which eventually leads to estrogen dominance and symptoms of perimenopause (all of which I had). The stress and the crash diet also fueled the fire and sent me into an endocrine hell, but if it wasn't for the progesterone cream, I don't think I would have snapped out of it like I did in December. In October 2011 my progesterone on day 21 of my cycle was 10 and by December 2011 my levels were 20, which is the optimal level in order to conceive. Over those three months I tracked my symptoms and their severity and with each week things got better until it was the last week in December, it felt like the window was finally wiped completely clean. When I returned to work I could run circles around my colleagues. My ability to think was back to where it used to be, I had energy, could sleep. I still wasn't sure if my hair had stopped falling out or was growing in, but everything else was so much better that I had hope. Now, it's July, my hair is definitely growing in and thickening, I'm 8 months pregnant, and as a 38 year old I have not sufferred from all the pregnancy woes that my other 5 girlfriends have and I feel I owe that to the healthy diet, vitamins and minerals, and progesterone cream. All I can say is the majority of all Western doctors rely on pharmacueticals that actually cause more problems than they are worth, really aren't knowledgeable at all in healing people, and are playing a role in making Americans some of the sickest people in the world. None of what conventional doctors tried to do for me was going to make me healthy, it was only going to mask the problem. It's a shame that it is ignored to find the root of the problem, which for me was low progesterone levels and a lack of vitamins and minerals. I never write reviews, but it was because of the reviews I had read on the cream and the books about bioidentical hormones, that I had the guts to step out of conventional medicine and seek the alternative. It was well worth it! I feel that I am healthier than I have been in over a decade!