Re: Testosterone, steroid and iodine

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I have suffered from fibroids for a long time, & they are generally held to be caused by high estrogen. At one time, the fibroids were totally blocking my tubes, & I actually managed to get one tube opened up after 6 months of a truly nasty diet I went on to shrink the fibroids. Then I got an allergy rash, & the dermatologist gave me an over-the-counter steroid cream to use on it. This IMMEDIATELY screwed up my clockwork menstrual cycles. I developed a "short luteal phase" (the second part of the cycle where you are supposed to be producing progesterone to balance the estrogen. When this phase is short, a fetus doesn't have time to implant before your period washes it away.)In nothing flat, my months of work to shrink the fibroids was undone, & they mushroomed back up & reblocked my tubes. (So I never was able to have a second child.) And my periods never got quite back to normal.Every doctor I talked to about this told me that steroids can mess up your hormones, but that I didn't receive a high enough dose, so this was just a coincidence. (One of them said, "You would have to be awfully sensitive for that low a dose of cortisone to affect you -- but you'd better not use it any more, just in case.)As far as I'm concerned, cortisone is definitely in the mix here.AnneOn Dec 13, 2010, at 2:37 AM, MacGilchrist wrote: Dear All, I have been reading the posts about low estrogen supposedly caused by iodine. I have had a problem recently with my testosterone and estrogen levels being low. I was pretty surprised to see that my progesterone was OK. So for me, unless there is something I haven't understood, this ruled out a liver problem. One of the things that I thought might have caused the testosterone/estrogen problem was taking hydrocortisone. I started taking HC about the time that I started to feel a bit turned off sexually. I have read that steroids can affect testosterone levels. Is it possible that this is causing me to have low testosterone and estrogen? I wonder how many people who are suffering from low oestrogen on this forum are taking HC? I would be interested to hear what people think about this. MacGilchrist