Progesterone and insomnia
Progesterone and insomnia
Breast growth is going to take longer than a week to occur.
Progesterone is known to cause drowsiness in some people, but not everyone. It’s not a guaranteed side effect even if it’s common. I am not sure I would say I feel drowsy on progesterone as much as it helps me stay asleep and sleep longer when my estrogen is peaking.
It also depends on how you’re taking it, oral progesterone is mostly filtered by your liver so it doesn’t meaningfully raise your blood progesterone levels.
If you want to use progesterone, I suggest taking it rectally (just gently push the oral pill up past the sphincter using a finger; using lube is often a good idea and try to relax - it should never hurt).
I have never heard of someone having insomnia due to taking progesterone. It’s also possible the insomnia can be caused by anxious or alert thinking about whether you’re falling asleep, maybe onset by stories about progesterone effecting sleep? I know that sounds silly, but it happens to me - I can struggle to relax and just let go, I get so nervous about whether I’m going to fall asleep that I develop “sleep resistance” and anxiously keep myself up.
You might read about and implement some sleep hygiene practices:
health.arizona.edu/sites/…/Sleep Hygiene.pdf
It’s unlikely to be the source, but biology is wild - so who knows. Especially if you’re taking it orally and your liver is producing a bunch of secondary metabolites from it - those typically create drowsiness as well, but maybe your biology is different? Usually when you see “progesterone causing insomnia”, the discussion is about prog levels dropping too low or a lack of progesterone (not due to levels being normal or high).
So, I wouldn’t expect it to be the cause - have you found any evidence that shows insomnia can be a side effect of taking progesterone?
you could stop taking it and see if that helps?
oral progesterone probably isn’t helping much anyway, and even taking prog at all isn’t strictly necessary (I mean, ironically I mostly took it to help me sleep).
It depends on the dose and route of administration as to why it took 3 weeks for you to notice changes from estradiol. I noticed changes within hours to days - particularly after 3 days my mood pretty radically changes as my body stopped producing testosterone. (But I injected a significant enough dose of estradiol valerate, so the estrogen was peaking at day 3 instead of like day 7 - 8 with estradiol enanthate injections.)
I find prog definitely helps libido, but … I don’t know whether taking it orally will help with that or not (since it doesn’t raise blood levels). My experience with taking it orally is that it just doesn’t work, I think I felt a different kind of drowsy that didn’t help me stay asleep like when I take it rectally.