Why do women take bioidentical progesterone? Is it necessary to supplement with this synthetic progesterone if you have menopausal symptoms? What is sold as bioidentical progesterone originates as Diosgenin, a steroid saponin found in several plant species. It takes a huge amount of chemical processing to turn it into a plant sterol version similar, but still very different from the progesterone we make for our needs from cholesterol. John R. Lee is largely credited with pioneering the use of plant sterol progesterone as a hormone replacement therapy. As John R. Lee wrote in his book on Natural progesterone, the Multiple Roles of a Remarkable Hormone, in 1996, nature did not make a mistake with women and menopause. He wrote the mistake was in our diet. The mistake is in our diet, but it is because women are told not to eat the animal fat from which we synthesize steroid hormones all our lives.
