High Progesterone Women: Why Pill-Free, Chemical-Free Women Make Better Partners

High progesterone women have a calm you can feel. Progesterone is the hormone a woman makes after she releases an egg each month. Her brain turns it into a calming chemical called allopregnanolone, which works like a natural sedative. The catch: if she doesn't release an egg, she doesn't make real progesterone. The pill stops that from happening. Plastics and fragrance chemicals cut the progesterone phase short too. So a woman who stays off the pill and away from chemical slop is running on her own hormones. It shows in her mood, how she bonds and who she's attracted to. At the end, for fun, we look at what the old sky maths of astrology says about her.

• Allopregnanolone, made from progesterone, acts on GABA-A receptors at tiny doses and is anti-stress, anti-anxiety and antidepressant (PMID 37111278).
• Closeness raised women's progesterone, and the rise predicted their willingness to sacrifice for their partner a week later (PMID 19362559).
• In over a million Danish women, combined pill users were 23% more likely to start an antidepressant, and teenage users 80% more likely (PMID 27680324).
• Women who met their partner on the pill reported lower sexual satisfaction and attraction to him later (PMID 21993500).
• Starting the pill shifted women's scent preference toward men with similar immune genes (PMID 18700206).
• BPA and a phthalate were tied to a shorter luteal phase, the progesterone half of the cycle (PMID 26161573).
• Longer menstrual cycles synced with the Moon, and artificial light at night broke the sync (PMID 33571128).

Every month a healthy woman releases an egg. That's ovulation. The little sac the egg came from then turns into a temporary gland, the corpus luteum, which pumps out progesterone for about two weeks. That two-week stretch is the luteal phase. No egg, no gland, no real progesterone.

So a high progesterone woman is simply a woman who ovulates properly every month. That comes down to three things. She's not on hormonal birth control. She's not loaded with chemicals that mess with hormones. And she eats enough fat for her body to build hormones in the first place.

Progesterone doesn't stay progesterone. Her brain turns it into allopregnanolone, which switches on the same calming receptors that sleeping pills and sedatives work on. Even a tiny amount lowers stress, anxiety and low mood (PMID 37111278).

That's the steadiness you notice in some women. Not flat, not numb, just not running on alarm. When progesterone crashes, like right after birth or before a period, the mood often crashes with it.

Researchers paired up 160 women. Half of them shared personal things with their partner to get close. Their progesterone went up. A week later, the women whose progesterone rose most were the most willing to make sacrifices for their partner (PMID 19362559).

So it runs both ways. Closeness lifts her progesterone, and progesterone ties in with wanting to give to the relationship. That's the bonding hormone in practice.

The pill works by stopping ovulation. No egg means no progesterone gland, so her own progesterone stays low all month. Instead she gets a progestin, a lab-made copy of progesterone. It isn't the same molecule, and it doesn't rise and fall naturally through the month.

The mood data follows. In a study of over a million women in Denmark, combined pill users were 23% more likely to start an antidepressant than non-users. For teenagers on the combined pill it was 80% more likely, and the risk peaked about six months after starting (PMID 27680324).

Yes. A woman's natural cycle changes what she finds attractive, and the pill flattens that out. Women naturally prefer the smell of men whose immune genes are different from their own. After starting the pill, women started preferring men with similar genes instead (PMID 18700206).

You see it in real couples. Women who were on the pill when they met the father of their first child were less sexually satisfied and less attracted to him, and it got worse over time. If they split up, they were more likely to be the one who left. They did rate him higher as a provider, and those relationships lasted longer (PMID 21993500). So the pill picks the safe provider and kills the spark.

A woman who chose you off the pill chose you with her own hormones. That attraction is the real thing.

Researchers tracked 221 women over 706 cycles. Women with more BPA and phthalates (plastic chemicals) in their urine had a shorter progesterone phase, by up to most of a day (PMID 26161573).

BPA comes off plastic bottles, food can linings and receipt paper. Phthalates come from soft plastics, fragrance, scented lotions and a lot of cosmetics. The woman who drinks from glass, doesn't douse herself in perfume and keeps her skincare simple is protecting the half of her cycle that makes her calm.

A woman's cycle and the Moon's cycle are almost the same length. The Moon takes 29.5 days. When researchers studied years of women's cycle records, cycles longer than 27 days kept lining up with the Moon. As women got older, and when they had artificial light at night, their cycles got shorter and lost the link (PMID 33571128).

They think human reproduction used to run with the Moon, and that modern life broke it. A woman who sleeps in real dark and gets real sun is closer to that rhythm. More on light in sunlight for testosterone.

Venus is the planet of love in every old tradition, and its movement has real maths in it. Venus goes round the Sun faster than Earth, so it laps us about every 584 days. Five laps take almost exactly eight years, give or take two and a half days.

So from Earth, Venus draws the same five loops every eight years, like a five-petal rose around us. Join the five points where she comes closest and you get a five-pointed star. That's why old astrologers called five the number of Venus. The drawing below is her real path.

The woman on the cover is Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian actress, photographed in 1954. In 1955 she starred in a film literally titled The World's Most Beautiful Woman.

Far sideEarthClose pass

01 / 03 · Earth

Us, at the centre. Everything here is Venus's path as we see it.

Venus seen from Earth over eight years, drawn from the real orbital periods. Tap a point.

This part is tradition, not science. We're reading it the way an astrologer would, just for fun. The maths is real, the meanings aren't tested.

Astrologers split the sky into twelve signs. The signs take turns being fire, earth, air and water. Venus rules Taurus and Libra, and the Moon rules Cancer.

In a woman's chart, her Moon sign shows her emotions and her Venus sign shows how she loves. A Moon in an earth sign (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) or a water sign (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) is read as steady, caring and loyal. That's astrology's version of a high progesterone woman. Virgo, the maiden holding the harvest, stands for clean, careful and self-contained.

Compatibility is maths too. Take where his Sun or Mars sits and where her Venus or Moon sits, measure the angle between them, and the angle gives the reading:

Aajonus didn't want women on hormone creams or replacement. He said all the hormones will be manufactured by the glands if they get the proper nutrients, and that the main building blocks are fat and protein.

When a woman told him she needed progesterone cream to keep her cycle regular and wanted off it, his answer was simple: suck a lot of eggs, and eat some glandular tissue if she wanted.

On hormones sold as natural, he called them the same garbage as the synthetic kind, and described how so-called natural progesterone is pulled from horse urine.

Progesterone is made from cholesterol, the fat your body uses to build hormones. Eat low-fat and there's nothing to build with. Aajonus was strict and we're stricter: every animal food raw.

Raw eggs, raw unsalted butter, raw cream, raw meat and fat, organs. Warm raw milk and raw fermented dairy (see raw milk for looksmaxxing). Fresh raw vegetable juice. No salt, no seed oils, no grains, no processed sugar, no supplements, no protein powder.

If you want a calm, bonded relationship, look at how she lives, not just how she looks. These are the signs of a woman running on her own hormones:

• She's off hormonal birth control and her cycle is regular.
• She eats real fat and doesn't fear eggs, butter or meat.
• She drinks from glass, skips heavy fragrance and keeps her skincare simple.
• She sleeps in the dark and gets sun.
• She stays steady under stress instead of spiralling.
• She gets closer when you get closer, and gives back to the relationship.

Progesterone works month by month, so judge it by months. After coming off the pill, it can take a few months for ovulation to settle. The progesterone phase usually gets longer as she gets more fat, more sleep and fewer chemicals.

The signs it's working: a regular cycle, a steadier mood in the second half, and less of the pre-period crash.

For her, or for the two of you.

• Come off hormonal birth control and let the cycle run on its own.
• Eat raw fat every day: raw eggs, raw butter, raw cream, raw meat and fat.
• Swap plastic bottles and containers for glass. Don't handle receipts.
• Drop fragrance, scented lotions and heavy cosmetics.
• Sleep in a fully dark room so the Moon rhythm isn't swamped by screens and streetlights.
• Get morning sun on bare skin.
• Spend real time close. Closeness itself lifts progesterone.
• Work through what you're both carrying instead of hiding it. See Carl Jung and the shadow.

What was found, and the study behind each one.