I started 100 mg of oral progesterone a little over a week ago, and I haven’t had a good nights sleep in at least 5 days. I wake up between 2 and 4 in the morning, usually within a half hour of 3. Sometimes from a nightmare, which I never used to have until I realized I was trans, sometimes I’m just awake. Last night I didn’t sleep at all so far as I can tell. I see most people saying it does the oppositw for them, just knocks them right out in underan hour, but I definitely don’t get that. I really don’t want the cause of my inability to sleep to be the prog because I’ve already noticed my boobs feel bigger, but has anyone else had this experience?
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Breast growth is going to take longer than a week to occur.
Progesterone is known to cause drowsiness in some people, but not everyone. It’s not a guaranteed side effect even if it’s common. I am not sure I would say I feel drowsy on progesterone as much as it helps me stay asleep and sleep longer when my estrogen is peaking.
It also depends on how you’re taking it, oral progesterone is mostly filtered by your liver so it doesn’t meaningfully raise your blood progesterone levels.
If you want to use progesterone, I suggest taking it rectally (just gently push the oral pill up past the sphincter using a finger; using lube is often a good idea and try to relax - it should never hurt).
I have never heard of someone having insomnia due to taking progesterone. It’s also possible the insomnia can be caused by anxious or alert thinking about whether you’re falling asleep, maybe onset by stories about progesterone effecting sleep? I know that sounds silly, but it happens to me - I can struggle to relax and just let go, I get so nervous about whether I’m going to fall asleep that I develop “sleep resistance” and anxiously keep myself up.
You might read about and implement some sleep hygiene practices:
https://health.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/Sleep Hygiene.pdf
- go to bed & wake up at the same time each day (try to vary these times by less than 20 minutes), including weekends & holidays (maybe keep a sleep diary when establishing this habit to help you keep track and create better adherence and transparency)
- don’t take naps
- relax before bed to help get sleepy
- don’t eat heavy meals near bedtime
- wait until you’re sleepy to go to bed
- if you’re struggling to sleep (like having anxious thoughts), after 20 minutes, don’t continue to lie in bed wide awake - get up and do an activity to help you unwind and make you feel relaxed and sleepy, then go back to bed once you feel sleepy
- avoid bright lights before bed - avoid screens, use a blue-light filter on your screens at night
- don’t try to fall asleep - worrying about whether you’re falling asleep can make it harder to fall asleep, so just relax and don’t worry about whether you’re successfully falling asleep or not
- reduce stress in your life (<cue ironic laughter>)
- don’t get involved in stressful activities before bed - set aside business, important conversations, etc. a few hours before bed to give yourself time to unwind
- don’t drink coffee or tea (or any other source of caffeine or stimulants) after lunch
- don’t go to bed too hungry or too full
- avoid alcohol within 6 hours of bedtime
- don’t smoke or use nicotine within 2 hours of bedtime
- engage in aerobic exercise regularly, but avoid strenuous exercise within 6 hours of bedtime (if you have restless leg syndrome when trying to fall asleep that seems related to exercise, I recommend stretching - that has helped me avoid it)
- get enough sunshine to help maintain a normal circadian rhythm
- don’t use sleep aids on a regular basis
- keep all tech out of the bedroom (no phones, no tablets, no TVs, etc.)
- only use your bed to sleep in - don’t use it to work or do other activities (other than sex)
- keep your bedroom dark, quiet, and cool - use blackout curtains, white noise machines, earplugs, eye masks
- don’t sleep with pets if they disrupt your sleep
Nightmares and strange dreams are actually commonly reported on oral progesterone. The prog is metabolized into other hormones that have a wide variety of mental effects, including feeling giddy when awake and such.
oh, interesting - yeah, maybe it’s the secondary metabolites 🤷♀️ still, I haven’t heard of insomnia as a side effect before (not that this means much, it could still be a known side effect - I just can’t find it mentioned anywhere)
I wouldn’t say my boobs definitely are bigger in the last week, but I’m definitely noticing their size being in the boob range than slightly overweight guy range more, so it might just be my brain doing brain things. In so far as sleep habits, my wife saw a sleep specialist a while back and I’ve incorporated a lot of thing she was told to do into my routine, like getting up if I cant sleep. I’ve been able to get back to sleep eventually every night except last night when I felt on the edge of sleep the whole night. I just really don’t want to find out the progesterone is the source of my insomnia before I get to see any real benefit from it
It’s unlikely to be the source, but biology is wild - so who knows. Especially if you’re taking it orally and your liver is producing a bunch of secondary metabolites from it - those typically create drowsiness as well, but maybe your biology is different? Usually when you see “progesterone causing insomnia”, the discussion is about prog levels dropping too low or a lack of progesterone (not due to levels being normal or high).
So, I wouldn’t expect it to be the cause - have you found any evidence that shows insomnia can be a side effect of taking progesterone?
A couple reddit threads, but other than that, no. The timing just seems too perfect to be coincidental.
you could stop taking it and see if that helps?
oral progesterone probably isn’t helping much anyway, and even taking prog at all isn’t strictly necessary (I mean, ironically I mostly took it to help me sleep).
I was mainly hoping it would help my libido, but it sadly hasn’t done that yet. Estradiol didn’t really start effecting me for about 3 weeks.
It depends on the dose and route of administration as to why it took 3 weeks for you to notice changes from estradiol. I noticed changes within hours to days - particularly after 3 days my mood pretty radically changes as my body stopped producing testosterone. (But I injected a significant enough dose of estradiol valerate, so the estrogen was peaking at day 3 instead of like day 7 - 8 with estradiol enanthate injections.)
I find prog definitely helps libido, but … I don’t know whether taking it orally will help with that or not (since it doesn’t raise blood levels). My experience with taking it orally is that it just doesn’t work, I think I felt a different kind of drowsy that didn’t help me stay asleep like when I take it rectally.
For me it hasn’t affected my sleep. But different people get different effects.
As for breast growth, I can’t really say for sure if it has helped, but over the last few months I feel like I’ve had more firmness than the several months before I started it. But it’s been very minimal if anything. It’s one of those things that unfortunately there is no real research to understand if it does or doesn’t make any difference, only a lot of anecdotal evidence. Anyway, it’s not quick.
Ask your doctor first, but you could try stopping for a bit to see if the sleep issues resolve or if it is something else that’s causing the sleep disturbance.
But in general, what little research there is for transwomen seems to show increasing estradiol dosages generally has been more tied to breast growth than progesterone. I had more growth when I raised my peak estradiol levels to just above 300 pg/mL by changing from 3 to 4 patches. A lot of older recommendations say to stay under 200 pg/mL, but newer ones that take into account that we don’t use the old type of estrogen with a higher cancer risk say 200-400 pg/mL. But I’m still quite small with a 34A US bra size, so I added the progesterone to see if that would help. We’ll see in a year or so.
