Maintaining adequate levels of progesterone and estrogen is essential for a woman to have an iron health. We have probably heard many times words such as estrogen and progesterone, and we are not quite sure what relationship both concepts have to our health or our body. We’re going to tell you what estrogen and progesterone are, and the symptoms and consequences of having low levels of these for our health.

 What are estrogen and progesterone?  

In the body of all women, beginning with the first rule, they begin to generate estrogen and progesterone in the ovaries. These are responsible for preparing the female sex organs for a possible pregnancy. Estrogens enlarge the cervix to accommodate the baby and progesterone helps to keep the egg in the best conditions to facilitate the woman pregnancy in the best possible conditions.

Therefore, estrogen and progesterone are essential during the fertile stage of every woman. They prepare the body so that it is in the best conditions to be inseminated and able to conceive. These hormones prepare the body perfectly and, although their main function is developed in the sexual organs of women, they also have other great effects on their health in general.

Estrogens and progesterone are hormones that influence the cholesterol in the woman’s body. So, during their fertile stage and until the arrival of menopause women usually have low cholesterol to have a healthier body prepared for the arrival of the baby. In addition, these hormones are responsible for distributing the woman’s fat properly to her body, so they tend to have more accumulated fat in the area of the breasts and hips, making them more attractive for men to be able to become pregnant more easily.

 What are the symptoms and consequences of low levels of estrogen and progesterone?  

Now we know why these two hormones are so important for a woman’s body, both once she has conceived and before becoming pregnant. The time of the woman’s life in which there is a drop in estrogen and progesterone levels is menopause. At this time in her life, her body begins to readapt but this time to the fact that it won’t fecundate and house a child inside, so that as during adolescence the woman felt many changes due to the increase in the hormones, in this other moment the change will be given by her descent.

Therefore, some of the low progesterone symptoms (and also estrogen) in women are headaches, irritability, tiredness, hot flashes, fluid retention, untimely menstruation with clots and so on. Many of these symptoms occur in women during menopause and this is precisely because it is the time of their life they are no longer having the body ready to have a baby and their hormones are changing.

These hormonal changes affect not only the body but also the mind. So women who are suffering from a drop in estrogen and progesterone will feel less sexual desire, and their mood will be greatly affected. Mood swings will be very frequent and they will usually feel sad and defeated, wanting to cry or feeling sudden anger. All this can affect the sleep, which will cost them to reconcile, in addition to having possible memory losses due to so many mood swings and the inability to rest normally (before menopause).