Important Facts Regarding Sleeping Pills

Have you been given sleeping pills to help with your sleep, pills that leave you spaced out, like you're moving in slow motion and not fully rested? Being unable to sleep is critical, resulting in loss of memory, ineffective work habits, and increasing irritability. Starting within their early 40's, women are in commonly plagued with sleeping problems. The answer is really quite simple. About ten years before menopause, ladies progesterone levels start to plummet. This sets them up for sleepless nights. Progesterone, natural progesterone which is soy-based, not the peanut oil pharmaceutical progesterone Prometrium, provides improvement in sleep, dramatic decrease in irritability (who wouldn't be irritable if you cannot sleep and remain exhausted), decrease in headaches and the reduction in the signs of estrogen dominance. Besides natural progesterone, NOT synthetic progestins like Prempro or Provera, has now been shown to reduce breast and uterine cancer, reduce cholesterol and reduce heart disease. And additionally, it makes you feel better!

Sleep medicines don't deal with the real underlying causes of why women are having trouble sleeping as they get older. The major reason is really because progesterone levels are so low. Progesterone is like nature's Valium, it really is the Feng-Shui of hormones providing calmness and relaxation, factors critical in falling asleep.

With girls who are either perimenopausal (which may be up to ten years before menopause), menopausal, or suffering from surgically induced menopause (hysterectomy), the progesterone levels can drop to such low, immeasurable level that ladies simply cannot sleep drugstore. It often takes women per hour or even more to get to sleep or they find themselves waking up throughout the night.

So, just how does bio-identical hormone replacement therapy help?

When natural progesterone is taken as a pill, versus within the cream, it travels to the brain and interacts with the GABA receptors. These receptors when activated naturally promote sleep and help patients reach the restorative sleep (REM sleep) more quickly.

How does hormone replacement with progesterone differ from taking sleeping pills with regards to the quality of sleep a woman might expect?

Sleeping pills are synthetic, not natural. There is nothing natural about them, and as a result of that the natural restorative REM sleep is never achieved. Oh yes, sleeping pills should help you get to sleep, however they don't get the quality of sleep achieved naturally. When I treat women experiencing sleep issues in their 40's and 50's, sleep undoubtedly affected by progesterone levels, among the most typical response I hear after starting progesterone is 'This is the best sleep I have ever had'.

I have seen patients experience results quickly. Sometimes in the first 1 or 2 doses. They often can't believe how rested they are once they wake up and need to get rid of their sleeping pills right away.