Question: Hello. I am forty-five, perimenopausal diagnosed by blood work. I have my uterus and I am taking 200 milligrams of bioidentical progesterone each night orally by capsule. I do not take anything else for hormone balance other than evening primrose oil and some adrenal support. Neither of these is new to my regimen. What is new is the administration of the progesterone orally. Previously, I was using a progesterone cream, 40 milligrams per night. All nights of my cycle, no break. Doc suggested that I needed to be more cyclical with my administration and then I try oral progesterone instead. I am doing this. I go to sleep well but toss and turn a bit more than I used to, then wake up around four thirty-five and cannot sleep any longer. My body temperature seems to be all over the place. At some nights around that same time, I wake up hot, not really a hot flash per se but just hot, but the very next night, I can have on the same bedclothes, sheets, house temperature, et cetera, and will not get hot. She has me doing fourteen days, fourteen to twenty-eight, taking the oral progesterone. My trouble is the fourteen days I have to wait to take it, I have all the trouble sleeping and all the other symptoms while I am waiting for that fourteenth day to come so I can take my oral progesterone. My question, can I take it full-time during my cycle and never take a break or does that go against all medical wisdom and/or would be bad for my body not to have a break?
Short Answer: Based on a woman’s physiology, it does make sense to only take progesterone during the second half of the month. Typically, progesterone is produced from ovulation to the period and usually peaks around day 21 of the cycle. However, many women feel better when they take oral progesterone all month long. Oral progesterone helps reduce irritability, reduces anxiousness, and can improve sleep. Because of this, we most often prescribe progesterone to be taken all month long. Sustained Release Oral Progesterone is usually very well tolerated, but sometimes it can change a woman’s cycle. Based on how the cycle changes will determine if the dosage needs to be cycled or not. For example, we might prescribe 50 mg for the first half of the month and then increase to 100 mg during the 2nd half of the month. Then we have our patients stop the progesterone during menstruation.
PYHP 101 Full Transcript: 
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Dr. Maki: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Prog

Alexis Question: 
Hi there, this forum is fabulous. Thank you. I am so confused with dosing. How much is one gram of Biet in mL – milliliters. So confusing. I use a one mL syringe. One mL is a lot of cream. It is an eighty-twenty ratio and I will split the dose. Reading that your recommended starting dose is three milligrams, how much exactly is that in cream in terms of milliliters or MLs? That cannot be three MLs, that would be three syringes. Sorry to be daft. I have tried to find the answer on Google but nothing is making sense to me. Maybe that is why I need bioidentical hormones. Anyway, Help. Thank you, Alexis.
Short Answer: 
1 gram is equal to 1 mL.
A BHRT prescription can be written in either mg/gram or mg/mL. For example, when we call in prescriptions to a compounding pharmacy, let’s say the Biest prescription is 3 mg/gram with an 80/20 ratio. This is the same as 3 mg/mL with an 80/20 ratio. The instruction we give the patient is to apply 1/2 gram, twice per day. If the patient is using a Topi-Click device, 1/2 gram is equal to 2 clicks. We like to have the patient apply 1/2 gram because they have to apply much less cream to the skin. We always recommend women apply their Biest to the inner thigh. We don’t recommend applying Biest to the arms, forearms, wrists, abdomen, or vaginally. If the patient is having any vaginal dryness, then we will provide separate Estriol (E3) prescription that can be used vaginally. We don’t like to have patients apply Estradiol (E2) vaginally, especially if they still have a uterus.
PYHP 100 Full Transcript:
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Dr. Maki: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Progress Your Health Podcast. I am Dr. Maki.
Dr. Davidson: And I am Dr. Davidson.
Dr. Maki: So it is the middle of summer, enjoying some beautiful weather.
Dr. Davidson: Gorgeous.
Dr. Maki: It is a little hard to get into the podcast room and actually sit down and record some of these. You know, summer gets a little distracting. But nonetheless, we are here. Actually, some questions came in recently that were really good. Good in the fact that they are the ones that come up a lot and we figured that these would be good to talk about.
Dr. Davidson: It would be helpful to the listeners. Should we just go ahead and start reading the question?
Dr. Maki: Yeah, let us dive into this. What is the name of the first one?
Dr. Davidson: Yeah. We always change the names of the questions, you know, just to respect the privacy of our Progress Your Health community. So this one, we changed to Alexis.
Dr. Maki: Why is it Andrea and then you said, Alexis?
Dr. Davidson: I like the name, Alexis. But I like the name Andrea too, but I like Alexis.
Dr. Maki: Yeah. Okay. Alright. This person, we will call her Alexis.
Dr. Davidson: Alexis. So do you want me to read it?
Dr. Maki: Go ahead.
Dr. Davidson: So again, this is from Alexis. “Hi there, this forum is fabulous. Thank you.” Well, thank you right back. “I am so confused with dosing. How much is one gram of bias in ml- milliliters. So confusing. I use a one-ml

Question: What are symptoms of thyroid problems in females?
Short Answer: There is a wide variety of thyroid symptoms in women. Some of the more common are fatigue, weight gain, constipation, and dry skin. Based on our experience, we have noticed many other hypothyroid related symptoms as well. These symptoms include heavy periods, infertility, anxiety, low libido, hair loss and low mood.
PYHP 099 Full Transcript: 
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Dr. Maki: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Progress Your Health Podcast. I am Dr. Maki
Dr. Davidson: And I am Dr. Davidson. 
Dr. Maki: So it is officially a little bit past the beginning of summer in Washington, although looking out the window right now, it certainly does not look like summer. It is raining kind of heavy right now. 
Dr. Davidson: I would say even though it is supposed to be summer, it seems like spring has officially started because it is really beautiful with the little deer out and the flowers are blooming, and I think it will clear up a little bit later. 
Dr. Maki: Yes, you know that I sent you the picture you saw but for the listeners, I was sitting here, you were upstairs and I was looking out the window and I saw a female deer and then she just took a picture of it. You know, that is great. A deer walks through the yard all the time and then she moved and there is a little, literally like a little fawn, a little Bambi right next to her and kind of following along and she hit the little white spots on the side and there. Eating little weeds in the yard and they walked over to the little garden over there and ate some things out of the garden. 
Dr. Davidson: I was so happy to see that picture because I saw that little fawn a couple. I think a couple of weeks ago right after it was just born with its mom walking through the driveway and then I did not see them again and well, little baby still. Okay, so it is really neat to see him or her a little bit bigger with those little white spots on the bum. 
Dr. Maki: Yes, right. That was that was nice. You know, we do not see the deer hardly at all winter long and then it seems like June, I remember where we lived. Now we moved in here lack last year and June came literally like June first I will send, the deer came almost every day. We are having deer come through the yard and sure enough, here is June again. I do not know where they go.
Dr. Davidson: Only because we do not cover up our garden beds. So we basically are growing a garden to feed deer. [laughing] Which is fine. 
Dr. Maki: That is okay. 
Dr. Davidson: They need to it. 
Dr. Maki: That is all right. Make sure the little one gets the gets a meal here and here and there. So on today’s episode, we are going to talk about thyroid. This is a question, this is actually a specific question from somebody

Question: 
What diet is best for Perimenopause?
Short Answer: 
One of the most common complaints we get from women in perimenopause is unexplained weight gain. Their lifestyles have not changed in years, but all of a sudden, their weight keeps increasing. And if they try to lose the weight, their efforts fall short and often gain more weight in the process. An observation we see quite often is that many women are still tyring to “eat less and exercise more.” This might have worked when they were 25, but for women in their 40’s, this weight loss approach often seemed to backfire. Women in their 40’s typically have a good deal of stress already, so trying to exercise the weight off only adds to their stress. This makes the weight loss process very frustrating, if not seem impossible.
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PYHP 098 Full Transcript: 
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Dr. Maki: Everyone thank you for joining us for another episode of the Progress Your Health podcast. I am Dr. Maki.
Dr. Davidson: And I am Dr. Davidson. 
Dr. Maki: So on this one, we are just going to dive right in, and we of course have a lot to talk about. We cannot not talk about perimenopause or menopause without discussing diet and weight loss at least to some extent. Would you agree with that?
Dr. Davidson: Absolutely when women, hit their 40s, they especially perimenopause and menopause. They always say it is like I put on 10, 12 pounds overnight like it, just where did it come from and they will point right to their stomach. I have had women, I love them dearly they will even grab their stomach and say, “I have never had a belly before where did this gut come from?” And things are different, of course, we all know obviously from when we are twenty, to when we are forty, to when we are sixty, we are always changing but it definitely comes from the change in hormones. 
Dr. Maki: Yes, right and believe me that is very complicated and you and I, we have been doing this a long time and we certainly do not have all the answers when it comes to diet and weight loss and especially perimenopausal weight loss or menopausal weight loss for that matter. But the purpose of this episode is to kind of just shed some light on some of the observations that we have noticed and in some ways what does not work for people, we do know some of those things. Everyone is still trying to follow the same advice eat less, exercise more all the time. They are just trying to basically starve themselves and exercise a bunch and that strategy right there and we will kind of dive into that, what that strategy looks like little bit more specifically but that strategy clearly does not work. And in some cases that actually make their situation worse, they actually gain more weight. They are exercising five, six days a week and their weight is going up. 
Dr. Davidson: Yes, you will see that I mean granted I was a child of the 80s. I remember the 80s and the 90s, if you were going to go on a diet, you

Question: 
What supplements are good for Perimenopause?
Short Answer: 
The conventional treatment options for Perimenopause are limited. Most often, women are offered birth control and other habit forming medications. None of those options are very effective in providing women relief of their symptoms.
PYHP 097 Full Transcript: 
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Dr. Maki: Hello everybody. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Progress Your Health podcast. I am Dr. Maki. 
Dr. Davidson: And I am Dr. Davidson. 
Dr. Maki: So on this episode, we are going to continue our talk about perimenopause. We are going to talk about some of the supplementation that we use in helping people deal with some of the symptoms of perimenopausal. 
Dr. Davidson: Exactly. We have talked about perimenopause many times in other podcasts and blog posts as well. Like we always say, there is really not a lot of answers out there, especially conventionally. The last thing you want to do is take habit-forming or ineffective medications, but at the same time, we also want to have some help so we can kind of transition and feel good during this time of perimenopause. 
Dr. Maki: Yes, right. Now conventionally, like we talked about the past, really, the only options for this window, this demographic, this ten-year span, ten-plus years span for women. 
Dr. Davidson: Possibly.
Dr. Maki: Yes, right. Let us say from forty to fifty, if we just kept it to that, but I think there is an overlap into the late thirties and even the early fifties. So we are looking at a really good solid decade. In some ways, a really highly productive time frame for women where they need to be on their game. They have lots of things, are juggling lots of different parts of their lives and we hear it all the time. Women get to this certain point and all of a sudden, their bodies just stop cooperating. They cannot sleep. They have anxiety. They are irritable. They are gaining weight. They have all these things that are happening that they have never really experienced at that point. They really do not know what is going on. They go to their gynecologist. They go to their primary care doctor and no one really has any answers to be able to help them. 
Dr. Davidson: Yes. Like you were saying, probably the most common medication is birth control pills, which the last thing you want to do is be in your forties taking birth control pills. So, that is kind of frowned upon. I mean antidepressants, a lot of doctors will offer perimenopausal females antidepressants. And they will say, “Well, I am not depressed. Sure, I do not feel well. I am irritable. I am not sleeping. I have a lot of brain fog. My short-term memory is not right.” They have a lot of these symptoms but it is not necessarily a disease. So, a lot of conventional practitioners do feel like their hands are tied. Even like anti-anxiety medications are extremely habit-forming. The last thing you want to do is put somebody on some kind of prescripti

Question: 
Why Is Perimenopause so awful?
Short Answer: 
We work with a good number of women in their 40’s and most of them do complain about how difficult Perimenopause is for them. As female hormones begin to decline, but stress levels are high it can cause a wide variety of symptoms. The most common perimenopausal symptoms are weight gain, irritability, and insomnia.
PYHP 096 Full Transcript: 
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Dr. Davidson: Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Progress Your Health Podcast. I am Dr. Valerie Davidson and I am here joined with my co-host, Dr. Maki.
Dr. Maki: Good morning. How are you today? 
Dr. Davidson: I am doing great. Thanks. 
Dr. Maki: We are experiencing a little bit of almost a torrential downpour this morning. Looking out the window, it is, unfortunately, raining a little bit too hard.
Dr. Davidson: But it is not that cold. So June, June in Washington, Western Washington. What do you expect?
Dr. Maki: Hopefully the sun will come out later this afternoon. So in this episode, I think that we are going to answer a question but it is not an actual specific question. We actually wrote a blog post a while ago. Why is perimenopause so horrible? So we are just kind of playing off that a little bit. That is a blog, this is going to be a podcast, obviously. Why is perimenopause so awful. The same idea, just a little bit of a different title. As of the last few years, I think, the perimenopausal demographic, women in their late thirties to early fifties is probably the majority of the people that we see on a regular basis.
Dr. Davidson: I think you know with perimenopause, it is a little bit of an under-represented, I guess, demographic because it is, you know, it is not menopause but it is not your typical PMS. It is somewhere right in between. So a lot of times women sort of getting blown off and perimenopause is exactly what it sounds like before menopause. It can happen, you know as late as you are in your late thirties and it can last even you know, thirty or early fifties depending on how a female’s ovaries are performing, and when they decide to retire or work part-time or work full time.
Dr. Maki: And their stress level.
Dr. Davidson: And their stress level exactly but I always kind of you know, I do not want to make it so negative. You know, why is perimenopause so awful or so horrible. It is not a negative thing but a lot of women will say that to me like, “This is really awful, what do I do? I cannot stand it. Nobody else can stand to be around me.” But it really has to do with those hormone imbalances. So working on those hormones is completely different in perimenopause than it is with menopause. 
Dr. Maki: Yeah, right. Conventionally, in the medical community, no one is really equipped or prepared to deal with it. Given a woman in her late forties birth control to deal with her menstr