It is not unusual for pregnant women to experience morning sickness during the first three months of pregnancy. This nausea and vomiting is caused by estrogen when progesterone, the hormone that normally blocks the effects of estrogen, is inadequate. At the start of the second trimester, the placenta starts putting out large amounts of progesterone, which normally eliminates the nausea and vomiting. However, some women continue to vomit through their entire pregnancy, a condition known as hyperemesis gravidarum. Not being a gynecologist, I have not seen women in my practice at the time they exhibited this condition. But a number of my women patients report having had this problem during their pregnancies.
I have noted that the majority of these women have a creative type ADHD, which means their brains require more fuel than a “normal” brain. Most of these women are progesterone deficient to begin with. As a result, they experience fairly intense nausea and vomiting in the first trimester due to unopposed estrogen. They go into the second trimester with their brains starved for fuel, so their bodies are pouring out adrenaline to raise glucose levels required by the brain. Unfortunately, this outpouring of adrenaline also induces nausea and vomiting and suppresses the appetite. To exacerbate matters, these women are still putting out large amounts of estrogen, which may also contribute to the nausea and vomiting.
A review article titled “Nausea and Vomiting in Pregnancy” in the October 14, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine says that “the cause of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy is unclear.” However, knowing how adrenaline affects the body provides a reasonable explanation of the cause. We know that in certain stressful situations, when the body is likely to produce excess adrenaline, some people experience nausea and vomiting. Examples include performers just before going on stage, professional athletes before going out on the field, and trial attorneys before giving their opening remarks. So overproduction of adrenaline is likely a key factor in women with hyperemesis gravidarum also. I suspect that giving women suffering from this condition high doses of bioidentical progesterone via vaginal suppositories, along with transdermal progesterone cream, would significantly relieve their symptoms. If nutrition with low-glycemic carbohydrates, either orally (if possible) or via tube feedings, is added, the problem could possibly be eliminated in 24 to 48 hours. Three other obstetrical complications that also seem related to high adrenaline are preeclampsia, toxemia of pregnancy, and gestational diabetes. Both preeclampsia and toxemia of pregnancy, which are extremely serious, often necessitating early termination of the pregnancy, are associated with hypertension. It seems reasonable that adrenaline and insulin are causing the rise in blood pressure. I also suspect that women with these complications are not producing a sufficient amount of progesterone during their pregnancy. Adrenaline and insulin presumably play key roles in gestational diabetes just like they do in regular diabetes. At the time of this writing, the FDA has just approved use of a synthetic progestin to prevent premature births. The cost of this drug is about $1,500 per week. The good news is that compounding pharmacies can provide the identical preparation for about $95 per week. The bad news is that the FDA has made it illegal for compounding pharmacies to compound it. However, there is still a silver lining to this story. Physicians can offer their patients an even better option, namely, bio-identical progesterone in the form of vaginal suppositories and topical cream. The FDA cannot block compounding pharmacies from dispensing bio-identical progesterone suppositories or cream because drug companies do not provide them. Bio-identical progesterone is natural and does not cause the serious side effects that synthetic progestins cause. It is also the least expensive as well as the most effective option.
Cyclical vomiting syndrome, which is similar to hyperemesis gravidarum, is another condition for which the medical establishment cannot identify a cause. One of my patients, aged 47, had this condition. He told me that every morning of his life he would wake up and vomit. When he was a child, every time he got excited, he would start vomiting and couldn’t stop and would have to be hospitalized. And again, the only possible explanation for this type of vomiting is adrenaline. On his first visit he sat across the desk from me, clenching the arms of his chair. It was fairly easy to observe that this man was pouring out adrenaline. I applied some progesterone cream to his forearm, and in less than ten minutes he leaned back in his chair and stated that in his entire life he had never felt so good.
In the six years (as of this writing) since his first visit, he has not had one episode of vomiting. The letter he sent to me clearly delineates the agony he suffered from hyperadrenalism and the effectiveness of treating excess adrenaline with bio-identical progesterone cream:
“For all those who have not experienced the symptoms of ADHD, there are absolutely no words to describe how bad, truly bad, life was before I first came to Dr. Platt a year and a half ago. I had been on a nine-month merry-go-round of treatments, tests, and scans, all to no avail. Some $18,000 later, an entire staff of doctors could not tell me why I was suffering from fibromyalgia. Every single inch of my body hurt. I could not get out of bed in the morning without extreme pain, I mean PAIN. When I opened Dr. Platt’s book (The Miracle of Bio-Identical Hormones), I found all of my life’s agonies described on the pages in front of me. What makes me this way and how to fix it, all right there in black and white. I had just lost my job due in part to all these symptoms. My new bride of a year and a half was packing her bags, and frankly I was seriously considering jumping off a bridge. I now know that my adrenal glands are very active, and the one thing that a CT scan showed me is that my adrenal glands are three times larger than the average person’s. After reading Chapter 15 I realized that I have ADHD. How someone can remain undiagnosed at 47 years of age baffles me.
The effect that adrenaline has on so many parts of the body simply amazes me—how it affects hypoglycemia & blood sugar, the endless cycle of adrenaline versus sugar. In Chapter 15 Dr. Platt addresses adrenaline and its effects on the body in many ways. I counted 27 in just this one chapter. Adrenaline was killing me…. My wife and I made an appointment to see Dr. Platt. Feeling at the end of our rope, we booked the flights to California. My mood swings were out of control at this point. Like a clock’s pendulum going tick-tock-tick-tock, mine was going: aggression, depression, aggression, depression…. We sat across the desk from Dr. Platt, ranting and raving about all the symptoms, all the tests and aggravations. My wife and I often speak simultaneously, so the doc was getting more than his fill apparently. “Do you want all this to go away?” he asked me in the most sincere way, like he just fixed people’s lives every day. Thirty years of agony and this man says, “DO YOU WANT THIS TO GO AWAY?” He took progesterone cream and spread it down the length of my forearm. “Now rub that in,” he said. We conversed a while, looked at some blood tests, etc. Ten minutes or so passed. He says, “How do you feel?” The first thing that came to mind was what I was not feeling…. No adrenaline…. I was calm. I was sitting still, perfectly still….
ADHD is a hyperactivity disorder. This comes from too much adrenaline. Too much adrenaline attaching to over 15 million neuro-receptors in the brain equals aggression. Waiting too long in line……Aggression The waitress forgot my drink……Aggression Someone didn’t live up to my expectations……Aggression
My life has always been a battle to calm the aggression…. He put that cream on my arm and it was all gone…. Every single symptom GONE. In the days following I noticed: No more vomiting in the morning. No more debilitating fibromyalgia. No more afternoon fatigue. Most of all, I am CALM today. It’s great to just sit still…. Every single symptom was gone in 10 minutes…. What can I tell you about my friend, Dr. Platt? He has shaken the medical community with his knowledgeable, brutal honesty about how medicine is practiced in our society, how power is abused by our drug manufacturers. He questions the ideas of practitioners who treat the symptoms of disease, not the underlying problem. Make the symptom go away and you’re OK. The understanding this man has of bio-identical hormones and the human body’s reaction to hormone imbalance is astounding. There is no doubt about it! This man saved my life. Not only am I alive today, but I have a quality of life that 30 years of medical treatment and antidepressants could not give me.”
“No, It’s Not a Miracle…It’s Dr. Platt.”
[Excerpt from my book “Adrenaline Dominance.”]
Dr. Michael E. Platt has been a pioneer in the research and advancement of the therapeutic use of progesterone cream for use in managing adrenaline and hormonal imbalance. Dr. Platt is considered an important pioneer in observational, functional, alternative, and allopathic medicine focused on bio-identical hormones and adrenaline overload. His three books “The Miracle of Bioidentical Hormones”, “Adrenaline Dominance” and “Platt Protocol” have received 11 literary awards.