Dr. Tori Hudson is a Naturopathic Physician who has served at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine since 1984. She has spent 25 years working in women's health, making use of bioidentical hormones, herbs, nutraceuticals and nutrition, along with other treatments for gynecological and primary care.
Dr. Hudson is Program Director for the Institute of Women's Health and Integrative Medicine. She is Director of research, development and education for Vitanica, which is an herbal/nutrititional supplement company.
(Transcribed from video interview)
Dr. Hudson:
Bioidentical progesterone, just the basic thing we need to know first is when that term is used bioidentical or natural progesterone, what it means is they’ve take usually Mexican wild yam plant, the root, and they have extracted a compound out of that root and then they make that into a hormone that is now biochemically identical to the body’s progesterone, so that’s why we get the term bioidentical.
Whether it’s bioidentical progesterone or synthetic progesterone called progestins, these inhibit the estrogenic stimulation of the endometriosis. So you’re kind of trying to beat back the endometriosis from the way that estrogen is sort of stimulating it, the progesterone tries to say, “Hey, slow down, slow down, slow down,” and this is how birth control pills work for treating endometriosis.
Even though you’re giving an estrogen you’re also giving a high dose of a synthetic progesterone and by doing so you’re taking out, you’re giving the same dose every day and you’re taking out the real peaks of estrogen that the body would normally have and so it’s just a level dose of estrogen and then it’s this progesterone synthetic to stabilize the disease and it does it like I said.
Birth control pills work quite well for most women with endometriosis. It doesn’t cause their disease to go away, it just manages it, which in natural medicine we’re trying to manage it and treat the underlying cause to try to have it actually go away.
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Video:
https://www.empowher.com/endometriosis/content/what-bioidentical-progesterone-and-how-does-it-help-endometriosis-dr-hudson-video