Perimenopause & hormones

[Irulan]

I'll disagree with the idea that long term depression is not hereditary. Without going into extreme details, there are many depressive disorders in one branch of our family, including bi-polar, dysmthmia and anxiety disorders. We can track disorders going back four generations. All the appropriate treatment in the world hasn't fixed a chemical imbalance in my brain. It's helped a lot - I certainly function in a more healthy fashion- but 10 years of excellent therapy, while it rooted out a lot of baggage and issues, has not been able to shake the low grade depression that is a fact of life for me.
My MD psych has suggested that I wait until menopause is over to try and function without meds as it's not been working before.

I am a big fan of Dr. John Lee's work. He's very against the use of certain kinds of estrogen, and believes we have too much estrogen already (estrogen dominance). I've used the recommendation of bioidentical progesterone creams with lots of success. One of his ideas that makes perfect sense to me is that Ma Nature intended for us to have reduced estrogen as we age - so why on earth do we keep adding it back in? The environmental factors also make a lot of sense to me.

You might take a look at
Estrogen Dominance

for a perspective on this.