I’d love some feed back about my recent labs! I’ve been LCHF for 5 years, I’m what’s considered a “lean mass hyper responder” (if you’re not familiar check out the Cholesterol Code website, which is the work of Dave Feldman and Siobhan Huggins!). Basically, it means I’m very lean and active and with my primary energy substrate being free fatty acids, I have very high total and LDL cholesterol and low triglycerides. (Relative to mainstream lab values) my question is in regards to my recent results for my sex hormones, specifically estrogen and progesterone. My estrogen is “normal” at 130 but progesterone was less than .5 which is apparently “undetectable.” Not to get too verbose but a few years ago when i struggled with anorexia I had amenorrhea because of low body fat and also stress. I was able to restore my cycle, which has felt kind of unusually heavy and frequent over the past year or so. And I’m very lean still but much healthier, and I’m active as a personal trainer, and runner. However I’ve noticed some irritating symptoms lately, fatigue that seems to linger, more irritable than usual, low sex drive, feeling kind of depressed. I am 38 and have two kids. I did go through a divorce a year ago, which, all things considered, was very amicable but still obviously a huge life change. I am wondering if anyone has any experience with this situation- having low progesterone and normal estrogen, and if it could be causing some of my symptoms? When I had my labs done I’d been eating a primarily carnivore diet. Could the increased meat consumption contribute to the relative higher levels of estrogen vs. progesterone? I don’t have any “typical” signs of high estrogen, like being overweight or breast tenderness. And if my estrogen level is in the low end of “normal” is this still considered estrogen dominance? Or do I just have low progesterone?? I have been on an antidepressant and also take thyroid meds…so i know it’s not thyroid related…
