Dr. Tabatha Barber explains progesterone steal: chronic stress forces your body to use progesterone to make cortisol instead, leaving you short on progesterone after 40. This can trigger early menopause and mimic estrogen dominance, even when estrogen levels are normal.
That's called progesterone steel, and that is the major driver of having low progesterone after 40. That will send you in to early menopause. More than anything is this cortisol steal that's happening that's continuously robbing your progesterone. And so your estrogens, they're over here being made and your progesterone is being used for cortisol. And so you get out of this balance and you get into a state of what feels like estrogen dominance, even if your estrogen levels aren't outright crazy high on their own, because progesterone keeps estrogen in check.
