Re-Visit Hot Flashes

[Merridith]

I am ER/PR negative as well and after chemo had horrific continuous hot flashes. So I did a lot of research, (this is a few years ago now so I no longer have the links to what I found) but the upshot of the research was that if you are ER/PR negative, your cancer isn't driven by hormone production the way the positive ones are. The solution I found was to take progesterone by itself. HRT involves taking estrogen in small doses.

Progesterone acts as an antagonist to your body's natural production of estrogen. The hot flashes are caused by a momentary surge of production.

Taking progesterone kills the flashes. Dead in their tracks. I went from a flash every half hour to about 1-2 a day. Instantly. A side benefit was that I started having normal sleeps at night again and the dryness in my skin improved. (these are normal side effects)

I had to find an endocrinologist who would prescribe it, but that wasn't hard. There are basically no studies about taking this drug in this context. But there are studies that imply that this might be low risk for ER/PR negative survivors. Certainly it is lower risk than taking HRTs.

At any rate, if you have more questions feel free to contact me through this site. It will take as long as a week to get back to you as I am currently traveling in an RV across Canada.

I am six years out of initial diagnosis, and have been NED since the initial mastectomy and chemo. I've been taking the progesterone for 2 years.