Lise's Story

Mum-of-two, Lise knew her PMS was out of control when she found herself once again throwing her husband's clothes out the door.

Each month, three or four days before her period stared, she'd start feeling anxious and paranoid.

"I would feel like killing someone - usually my husband or mother," she says. She would accuse her husband of having affairs and vent her anger by doing things like throwing out his clothes. Although she realised PMS was to blame for her unreasonable behaviour, nothing seemed to help.

Then, after the birth of her fist child, postnatal depression struck.

"I sat in the house and cried for three months solid" recalls Lise, formally a registered nurse. She finally saw her doctor who prescribed Prozac. She says the drug made her feel worse and her anxiety increased so she stopped taking it.

After the birth of her second child, she didn't feel depressed again but instead suffered severe forgetfulness. One day it was so bad she lost her car keys and sunglasses, left $40 sitting in an ATM and didn't remember she'd tied her dog to a lamp post outside a shop until after she'd walked home without him.

"It was lucky I was not working on a ward administering drugs."

Then late last year she read a magazine article about natural hormone therapy. "I searched the Internet that evening and all the symptoms of oestrogen dominance fitting mine - the mood swings, the flushes, the lack of sex drive, the anxiety and foggy-headedness".

She called natural hormone therapy specialists Patient Advocates, who arranged a saliva test. The results showed her progesterone levels were low so she started using bioidentical hormones in the form of progesterone cream. "After the first day of using it, my sex drive came back with a vengeance," Lise says.

"Over the next few weeks, all the old symptoms started to go away. My thinking became clearer and I was more focused, calmer and happier. It was like I could see the light again. Thinking back, I may have had hormone imbalance for years but I never knew about it".