Some of my older patients take progesterone cream solely to get a good night's sleep. So I recommend taking once a day progesterone cream dose 20-60 mg/day just before sleep. This gives a very nice sleep induction, and they wake up refreshed in the morning.

One of the problems with oral progesterone is that it makes you too sleepy. Again a topical progesterone cream potency is ten times the potency of an oral progesterone. So a 20 mg topical progesterone cream is equivalent to a 200 mg oral progesterone pill dose. 90% of the progesterone pill is 1st pass metabolized by the liver. I don't know what those metabolites do, but they seem to make my patients very sleepy.

I had one patient that drove to Wal-Mart took the 400 mg oral progesterone dose, and then was so sleepy she had to ask her husband to come and get her to drive her home. The oral progesterone made her too sleepy.

John Lee, MD from "What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You about Menopause" had this to say about Progesterone cream and sleep:

"Many of my patients have volunteered that the first benefit they perceived from using natural progesterone was an improved sleep pattern. After years of unsettled sleep they now look forward to retiring each night because they know they will enjoy sound sleep and awake refreshed in the morning. This is one of the reasons I tend to recommend that progesterone cream be applied at bedtime.

Research concerning progesterone's role in brain cell function is still in its infancy. It is likely that as research progresses more discoveries of progesterone's benefits will emerge."