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Questions and Answers   Frequently Asked Questions and Answers About Progesterone by Elizabeth Smith, M.D. I stopped my estrogen and started my progesterone. Now, I have hot flashes. Suddenly stopping your estrogen,"Cold Turkey", will result in hot flashes one month later as the estrogen washes out of your body. Instead cut your dose to 1/2 of your normal dose and slowly taper off your estrogen over a period of 3-4 months. If you don't want to take the prescription estrogen, you can take estriol 0.3 mg/day to 0.625 mg/day or Maca 4 capsules/day three weeks out of four. Estriol is a natural estrogen that is a weak estrogen. Estriol will block the effects of the more potent Estradiol. You can discontinue the estriol slowly decreasing it over a period of 3-4 months. For more about hot flashes see page 121 of What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause. I've been taking Progesterone for several months now. My uterine fibroma (myoma) is still there. Why? The most common reason is that xenoestrogens (using plastic wrap in the microwave oven) are not avoided. Women still drink coffee and still use plastic in their microwave oven. Occasionally, we see patients who have avoided the xenoestrogens faithfully. There are two possibilities. One, the xenoestrogen may still be stored in the body fat. In this case, exercise and sauna can help get the pollutants out of the body fat. A physician who does biodetoxification may be found at www.aaem.com. Secondly, the patient may be one of the few 5-10% of patients who do not absorb progesterone well through the skin. In this case, prescription oral progesterone may be used 200-400 mg/day or Maca 4 capsules per day. Also the progesterone cream that she has used may be improperly formulated with some estrogens. See Failures. Isn't estrogen good for the heart? Shouldn't I be taking estrogen for my heart? In a nutshell, physicians were misled into believing that estrogen was good for the heart. The primary article cited is a 1991 New England Journal of Medicine report known as the Nurses' Questionnaire Study. Out of 121,700 female nurses 48,470 were included in the study. Essentially, sick nurses with diabetes (29.6% more), nurse smokers (29.5% more), and heavy nurses (53.1% more- body fat) were put in the control group NOT taking estrogen replacements. The healthy nurses were the ones taking estrogen replacements. In other words, the healthy nurses took the estrogen and the unhealthy nurses did NOT take estrogen.  This led to the FALSE conclusion that estrogen is good for the heart.  For a more detailed discussion see page 188 of What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause. The highly regarded Framingham study showed no benefit for the heart with estrogen use. Other studies have found increased heart risk from estrogen use. The federally funded HERS study showed no benefit of estrogen on the heart. See the news release. Does the estrogen that my physician prescribes increase my chance for breast cancer? Yes. The question is by how much. A 1995 New England Journal of Medicine(1) article used the group of Nurses in the Nurses' Health Questionnaire's study. They found that women using estrogen for 5 years or more had increased risk of breast cancer of 41%. For women using estrogen for 5 years or more and 60 to 64 years old the increase was a whopping 71%. The breast cancer death rate increased 45% for women taking estrogen replacement 5 years or more. Read the abstract here. 1. New England Journal of Medicine 1995 Jun 15;332(24):1589-93.