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Advice for nipple pain? (startrek.website)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/womensstuff@piefed.blahaj.zone
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Hey guys. I'm in peri and am on progesterone 300mg nightly and estradiol 0.025mg patches twice weekly. My nipples are unbelievably sore. Seriously they feel like fresh bruises, even the pressure of fabric from a shirt or bra can be painful. My GYN said this is common with progesterone and recommended evening primrose pills, but like an idiot I didn't ask what strength or how often. Do you have any experience with this or advice? Please and thanks - it's making me extremely cranky 😬

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[–] [S] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Yeah I was surprised when she mentioned evening primrose as well, but I'm at my tits' end so I figured I should at least look into it. I did find a paper on PubMed indicating that evening primrose and Vitamin E as combination or standalone therapy could help with cyclical breast pain so plausibly it could be helpful. However that seems to be contradicted by the review article you shared.

I started at 100mg progesterone and that wasn't enough. Tried 200mg for a while and that helped to some degree with the brain fog and night sweats but I was still having long periods of sleeplessness at night. So on her recommendation I went up to 300mg. She said I could technically take up to 400mg but 300 seems to be the sweet spot for symptom relief. But I do think the nipple pain coincides with the increased progesterone.

Thank you as always for such a detailed and well thought out reply! If I figure out a solution for this I'll be sure to share it with you. We deserve better in life than perpetually sore nips!

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    prog definitely helps with sleep for most folks

    I have to take my prog rectally, it turns out the liver filters out most of it when taken orally and you get very little increase in blood levels as a result (read more here), so you might consider trying 100 - 200 mg rectally and see if that helps the sleep issue for you. Personally I find oral is less effective for my sleep than rectal administration, but that varies significantly from person to person.

    Night sweats and brain fog screams low estrogen, though - I would have tried increasing estrogen for those symptoms, not progesterone. Maybe see if you could get a cream that would allow you some flexibility in dose timing and amount, then once you know what works you would know a better long term stable dose for your patches. Sometimes low enough estrogen can cause sleep problems too, so it may not be a problem solved by taking more prog if you just need a bit more estrogen.

    I'm so sorry you're going through this, but I'm also happy you're staying invested in finding a solution and not just trying to tough it out 💖

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