You are here

Resources

The Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research has developed a number of tools and resources that healthcare workers may find helpful.

Documenting Ovulation with Quantitative Basal Temperature (QBT)

If our cycles are regular - about a month apart we assume we are ovulatory - meaning releasing an egg and making normal amounts of progesterone. However, ovulation is highly variable for all women. Progesterone raises our first morning (or basal) temperature a little bit. But so do many other things. Thus "basal body temperature" (BBT) charts, even with mid-cycle stretchy mucus (symptothermal methods) may not be accurate for predicting ovulation. Therefore we developed a valid and scientific use of basal temperature called "Quantitative Basal Temperature" (QBT) to assess ovulation and the luteal phase length (number of days of progesterone elevation).

Type: 
Handout

Progesterone (not Estrogen) for Hot Flushes in Perimenopausal and Menopausal Women

In less than a year, two influential articles reporting on consensus recommendations for therapy of “menopause-associated” and “menopausal” symptoms concluded that estrogen (with or without progestin) is the optimal therapy.
The purposes of this article are to propose that progesterone therapy is an equally or more effective hot flush/night sweat therapy than estrogen and to show that progesterone is safer than estrogen or estrogen with progestin (a synthetic cousin of progesterone) therapy.

Type: 
Articles
Life Phase: 
Perimenopause, Menopause

Beyond “Estrogen Deficiency”—news from Women’s Health Initiative

When the USA’s National Institutes of Health announced that the Estrogen arm of the Women’s Health Initiative was stopped early, no one could ever say again that estrogen therapy prevents heart disease. Estrogen treatment in women who had undergone hysterectomy was associated with neither benefit nor harm for heart disease and caused a 40% increase in stroke.

Type: 
Articles
Life Phase: 
Menopause

Perimenopause is a time of “Endogenous Ovarian Hyperstimulation”

Perimenopausal endogenous ovarian hyper-stimulation” is the exact opposite of “The Myth of the Shriveling Ovary”: High estrogen levels during perimenopause, coupled with characteristically intermittent ovulation, can explain much of the misery of perimenopause.

Type: 
Articles
Life Phase: 
Perimenopause

The Death of Hormone Replacement Therapy — Why and how to use Ovarian Hormone Therapy

Dr. Jerilynn C. Prior, Scientific Director of the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research, has never advocated the use of hormones as an ongoing "replacement" for menopause. She does not feel that menopause is a medical condition that needs to be "fixed". Rather it is a normal stage of life. She strongly advocates use of new term for the few women who do need therapy in menopause. The new term is: Ovarian Hormone Therapy.

Type: 
Articles
Life Phase: 
Menopause

Manipulating Menstruation with Hormonal Contraception — what does the Science say?

Articles and magazine reports and even books about so-called “menstrual suppression” describe taking the Pill continuously or for longer than 21 days with seven days off. The advertising suggests that this is giving women a “choice” to do away with menstrual flow or menstrual problems. The Federal Drug Agency in the USA has approved one oral combined hormonal contraceptive to be taken in four extended cycles a year. These new ways of taking the Pill allow companies a new patent on old drugs and make it likely that the market for these products will expand from those who want to control pregnancy to those who want to eliminate menstrual flow.

Type: 
Articles

Young Women and Osteoporosis — Good news about treatment and prevention

Osteoporosis and broken bones are an old woman's disease-right? No, that is not right! Young women do get osteoporosis-although rarely. The sooner we understand that young women can and do fracture bones and develop osteoporosis the better. We must accept that the bone we build in our childhood and teen years provides a "bone bank" from which we can borrow in older age.

Type: 
Articles

Progesterone Therapy for Menopause

The purpose of this article is to highlight the ways in which oral micronized progesterone therapy (taken by mouth as a pill) can be helpful for menopausal women with hot flushes, sleep disturbances or osteoporosis (menopause being one year after all flow has ceased).

Type: 
Articles
Life Phase: 
Menopause

Midlife Muddle - Own the Power of Naming

Dr Jerilynn Prior discusses the accurate naming of women's midlife transition and what to look for to define whether you're perimenopausal.

Type: 
Articles
Life Phase: 
Perimenopause

The Estrogen Errors: Why Progesterone Is Better for Women's Health

In this revealing work, Dr. Jerilynn Prior teams up with Susan Baxter, a medical writer, to explain the controversy over medicine prescribing estrogen for perimenopausal women in the United States, and to detail why progesterone is actually a far more effective, and a far less risk-ridden, approach. Citing long-standing and emerging research, patient vignettes, and personal experience, endocrinologist Jerilynn Prior and writer Susan Baxter tell us how false beliefs on estrogen became entrenched in U.S. medicine and culture, and why business and politics have played a role in this erroneous thinking.

Type: 
Book
Life Phase: 
Perimenopause, Menopause

Pages

Estrogen’s Storm Season: Stories of Perimenopause

Estrogen's Storm Season

by Dr. Jerilynn C Prior

New second edition available

Estrogen’s Storm Season is now available in BOTH print and eBook (Mobi and ePUB) versions!

All royalties are recieved in our Endowment fund (overseen by UBC) and support CeMCOR's research and future.

It is full of lively, realistic stories with which women can relate and evidence-based, empowering perimenopause information. It was a finalist in 2006 for the Independent Publisher Book Award in Health.

Purchase your ebook copy via our Amazon Kindle or
Google Play storefronts!

Paperback copies (with updated insert) still available here.

Join a Study:

Get Involved

Volunteer research participants are the heart of all CeMCOR research. Participants are invited to provide feedback on study processes, to learn their own results and at the end of a study, be the first to hear what the whole study found. Please become a CeMCOR research participant—you can contribute to improving the scientific information available for daughters, friends and the wider world of women+.