[itsjust4fun91]

Hi Mel,

What dr. Lee writes is true, but the words are very well chosen to protect his commercial interests. The use of diosgenin (WY, FG) to increase progesterone goes back to publications like the one I linked here:
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=8419&pid=36418&highlight=diosgenin#pid36418

There has been recent activity to check how exactly progesterone is increased:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles...figure/F1/
The figure confirms the 2003 observation: diosgenin increases progesterone in ovariectomized rats. The figure is from this article, published July 13th of this year:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21814480

There are also publications that contradict those, so I don't know which is actually true. It seems that everyone that test it comes up with different results, but personally I think why not use the real thing that you know works, rather than something that may or may not work, depending on whether you got the right one that has been converted to diosgenin or plain wild yam that will do nothing, or for that matter the studies that claim that "the human body does not possess the biochemical tools for converting diosgenin to progesterone or other steroid hormones."

Wild Yam had no effect on Menopause symptoms Study


[Poor diosgenin absorbtion by rats monkeys and humans Study

Diosgenin causes breast growth but not an increase in progesterone levels Study


Dr. Lee's dislike of wild yam may have been for commercial interest but not for the reason you would think. His progesterone cream list was a list of all the different creams from other companies that tested true to formula, so he made no money off of the creams he listed as being effective for women to use. Being assured that women use the exact thing his test results came from was the only way he could be assured that other women that tried his protocol got the same results. The last thing he needed was for a lot of women to go out and buy wild yam cream and risk women not getting the amount of progesterone needed to fix their symptoms. It would have added to the number of doubters he already had to contend with.

Anyway, Diosgenin is just the first half of the process to make progesterone cream, not finishing the process doesn't seem to change the price any, so my point is, if it's the same price why not just get the real deal so there is no question to it.

Mel

[Isabelle]

Hi Mel,

I agree with the point that if there is PC with a guaranteed progesterone content, that's probably the safest to use. What I was pointing out is that in the more recent literature, say the last ten years, there is a renewed interest in diosgenin. The idea that diosgenin somehow increases progesterone, is supported by recent literature on fenugreek. The work on pure diosgenin is only rats so far, but I trust there will be more in the near future.

I did judge dr. Lee's commercial interests to harshly, sorry for that.