The Pregnenolone Steal: How Chronic Giving Drains Your Hormonal Buffer | Doctor Riley

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:02][music] >> So, something's been happening in my practice over the past several years that I think really at this point deserves more of a direct conversation. I'm seeing women, smart, high-functioning, deeply committed female patients showing up with perimenopause symptoms a decade or so before they expect it to.

[00:00:29]Women in their mid to late 30s, sometimes even early 40s, coming in with hot flashes, disrupted sleep, irregular cycles, mood shifts, brain fog, and a kind of fatigue that's just different from just basic tired.

[00:00:42]They feel heavier, slower, kind of just like a wet blanket over their head.

[00:00:47]They're confused because nobody's told them that perimenopause can actually start early. So, these women assume something else must be wrong, and they go to their doctor, they get basic labs, are told their hormones look fine and normal for their age, leave without answers.

[00:01:01]But, here's what I really notice when I look more carefully at these patients.

[00:01:07]Interestingly enough, they're almost always universally helpers. So, therapists, nurses, social workers, teachers, caregivers, women who have spent years, sometimes decades, giving at a level their biology was never designed to sustain indefinitely.

[00:01:21]Women whose stress response has been running at low-grade activation for so long at this point that it's quietly been borrowing from the hormonal reserves that were supposed to carry them through this transition gradually.

[00:01:35]And that transition is arriving early at this point, not because something is catastrophically wrong, because the account has been running a deficit for years at this point, and the body is starting to really just show the math, frankly.

[00:01:49]And that's what this episode is about today. So, before we go anywhere else, I want to make sure we're working with a clear definition here because perimenopause is one of the most misunderstood transitions in women's health.

[00:02:01]Perimenopause is not menopause.

[00:02:04]Menopause is a single point in time defined as 12 consecutive months without period.

[00:02:12]Perimenopause is everything that leads up to that point, right? So, and it can last really anywhere from 2 to 12 years.

[00:02:20]During perimenopause, the ovaries, they begin to produce less estrogen and progesterone, but they do not do this in a smooth linear decline. They do it erratically. Hormones fluctuate dramatically, sometimes spiking, sometimes dropping. That erratic fluctuation is what produces most of the symptoms, the hot flashes, the night sweats, the sleep disruption, the mood shifts, the cycle changes, and the brain fog. The standard medical model treats perimenopause as a purely ovarian event.

[00:02:51]The ovaries wind down, the hormones follow, the symptoms are the result, but that is frankly wrong. It is not wrong.

[00:02:59]But, it does not account for the degree to which the hormonal systems entering perimenopause have been pre-depleted.

[00:03:06]So, for the women and female patients I'm describing, helpers whose stress response has been running on low-grade activation for years, the system does not enter this transition from a place of reserve. It enters it already depleted. So, already operating without the hormonal buffer that was supposed to cushion the transition in the first place.

[00:03:26]And you know, when you enter a demanding hormonal transition without that buffer, the symptoms come earlier. They hit harder and last longer than the textbooks say that they should. So, here's the belief I want to work with today, and it's one that I really I hear constantly in practice.

[00:03:43]This belief that this is just what happens. My body is changing, my hormones are shifting. This is aging, {quote} {unquote}. This is inevitable. I just have to get through it, and I understand why that belief system exists. I really do. The medical culture has treated perimenopause as a biological inevitability. Something that happens to women, something that should be managed or medicated, but not something to be understood at the level of what led up to it.

[00:04:12]So, perimenopause is not optional. The transition is real, and it's biological.

[00:04:19]But, when it starts, how hard it hits, how long it lasts, how disruptive it is, those things, they're not necessarily fixed. They are influenced enormously by the hormonal environment, by the overall picture that existed before the transition began. So, by how much was in reserve going into that position.

[00:04:39]And if the hormonal environment was already compromised, if the stress response had already been running the pregnenolone steal for years, which we've talked about this month, progesterone was already low, if the adrenals were already taxed, then the transition is going to feel like a cliff rather than a gradual slope.

[00:04:58]You're not just experiencing perimenopause at this point. You are experiencing perimenopause on top of years of hormonal depletion, and those are two very, very different things. One is inevitable, right? The other was not.

[00:05:11]So, let me walk you through exactly why this happens, because I believe truly that once you see the biology, the early arrival of symptoms stops being a mystery, and starts being completely logical, and then it start to something you can start to really do something with. So, it starts as it so often does, right?

[00:05:31]With the HPA axis, which we talked a lot about last month, and the pregnenolone steal, which is really a topic for this month. So, for years, sometimes for most of their adult lives, the women that I'm describing I've seen in practice have been running a chronic stress response. Not dramatic stress necessarily, but the low persistent never quite off activation of the nervous system that is always slightly bracing, always managing, always giving more than it's receiving, the cortisol drip we've been talking about this month.

[00:06:01]That cortisol drip has been running the pregnenolone steal this entire time, quietly pulling away raw material away from progesterone production and redirecting it towards cortisol.

[00:06:14]Which means that for years, progesterone has been produced below optimal levels.

[00:06:20]So, now we reach this point of perimenopause, now the ovaries begin their natural transition, they start producing less progesterone, which is normal, which is expected, right?

[00:06:33]But here's the compounding problem. For a woman whose progesterone has been chronically suppressed by that pregnenolone steal for years up to this point, the ovaries are not starting the perimenopause decline from a normal baseline, they are starting from an already depleted one. So, I hope this is starting to make sense. The drop just does not have as far to fall before it becomes symptomatic. There's not enough cushion. The buffer that was supposed to absorb the early part of the transition is just not there.

[00:06:59]So, the symptoms arrive earlier than they should, not because the transition itself is abnormal, but because the hormonal reserves going into it were already spent.

[00:07:10]And then, there's the adrenal piece. So, this is where it gets particularly relevant for people in the helping professions.

[00:07:17]So, the adrenal glands are the backup hormonal system. As the ovaries wind down during perimenopause, the adrenals are supposed to pick up some of that hormonal slack, producing small amounts of estrogen and other sex hormones from DHEA to help buffer that transition.

[00:07:33]It's almost like a little bit of a savings account.

[00:07:36]But what ends up happening when the adrenals have been sustained under sustained demand for so many years, when that chronic stress response has been running at them that high output for so long that the reserves are frankly depleted. Well, when DHA is already running low because the cortisol demand has been consuming it, what happens in this case?

[00:07:56]The contingency plan has nothing to draw from at this stage. So, the backup system is already frankly tapped out and dry. And the transition that was supposed to be gradual and buffered again becomes steep and unsupported. And that's why helpers arrive at perimenopause symptoms earlier than they really should. Not because they are outliers, because they've been running a biological deficit for so many years.

[00:08:22]And this transition is where the math really becomes visible.

[00:08:26]So, I really want to spend a moment naming what this actually looks like.

[00:08:31]Because the thing is that the symptom picture of early perimenopause and helpers often gets misread or attributed to the wrong cause. So, the sleep disruption comes first for most people, not necessarily hot flashes that come that usually comes later.

[00:08:46]What comes first is a change in sleep quality. Waking between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m., which is often the window when cortisol is at its lowest and progesterone is most needed. Sleep that is technically happening but it's not restorative sleep.

[00:09:02]And then there's the brain fog, not tired brain fog, a more persistent cognitive shift almost. Slower word retrieval, difficulty holding multiple threads, a kind of mental friction if you will that wasn't just simply wasn't there before.

[00:09:14]And estrogen supports cognitive function and neurotransmitter activity. And as it fluctuates erratically, well, so does mental clarity.

[00:09:23]And then there's the mood shifts, particularly in the luteal luteal phase, anxiety amplifies, irritability that feels out of proportion to the stimulus, a low that comes with no obvious trigger. And this is the progesterone window when progesterone should be rising to calm the system and in early perimenopause, it's not rising reliably.

[00:09:44]And then there's cycle changes. Periods that are more irregular, heavier, or that have started skipping. The cycle is the most is the most sensitive barometer of hormonal status in the body.

[00:09:55]And then there's the fatigue. Not the tired you feel after a hard week, but a deeper tired. A tired that does not respond to the way that it used to from rest. And that is adrenal depletion meeting hormonal transition. It's quite the quite the combo. The signal that the reserve is genuinely low at this point.

[00:10:12]You know, and if you're in your mid to late 30s or early forties and recognizing yourself in this description, you're not imagining it.

[00:10:19]You are not too young for this and you are definitely not alone.

[00:10:23]And here's what frustrates me the most about the way this conversation usually goes.

[00:10:29]Women show up with the symptoms. They are told they are too young for perimenopause. They are told their labs are normal. They are told it's probably stress or anxiety or sleep or depression or any of the other explanations that acknowledge the symptoms without actually explaining them.

[00:10:45]I get this all the time.

[00:10:47]What nobody tells them is that their biological transition they are entering has been years in the making. That the hormone environment that they are bringing into this transition, well, frankly, it's been shaped quietly and measurably by the cumulative cost of how they've been living to this point. You know, you've been to doctors that were actually reading a basic panel and saying you're fine. They weren't lying.

[00:11:08]They're not lying, but they weren't misinformed, to put it that way. But they weren't asking the question that really mattered, which is not where your hormones are today at a snapshot view, but where they've been trending for the last five years and why. And that's the question that really changes the conversation. That is the question that turns confusion into information and information, well, that's where healing really begins.

[00:11:31]I want to be careful here, though, because I think there are just two unhelpful responses to everything that I've just described.

[00:11:39]The first unhelpful response is panic.

[00:11:43]The idea that damage is done, that the deficit is too deep, that there is, you know, really nothing to influence anymore, that is just simply not true.

[00:11:51]The hormonal system is responsive and robust. The adrenals can rebuild. I am living proof of that.

[00:11:57]Progesterone can be supported. The stress response can be retained. The body is not in a fixed state. It's in a dynamic one, constantly changing. And the second unhelpful response is bypassing the biology to get to the supplements.

[00:12:12]Looking for the protocol that will fix the numbers without addressing what is really draining them. That approach works partially and temporarily, but frankly, it's expensive and it's a waste of time.

[00:12:24]And then the drain actually eventually wins. So, the path that actually moves the needle starts upstream. It starts with identifying what is still feeding the cortisol load, the chronic accommodation, the background activation, the years of output without replenishment, because until that drip slows down, anything you add to support the hormonal system is fighting a current that hasn't been addressed. And from there, we move on to regulation.

[00:12:51]So, genuinely retaining the HPA axis.

[00:12:55]And then there's the restoration piece, the gut, the liver, the adrenal reserves, the progesterone. This is the sequence. It is intentional and it works, not quickly, but measurably, trackably, in the labs over time, you know? And you did not arrive at early perimenopause because your body failed you. I promise you. Your body is not the enemy here. You arrived here because your body gave everything it had for a very, very long time, and the reserves just simply ground low. The gas tank is low. That is a solvable problem. It requires addressing the right things in the right order, though.

[00:13:28]And I want to say something to the women who are listening to this and are recognizing themselves and feeling underneath the recognition a kind of, frankly, grief.

[00:13:39]You know, there's the grief of having spent years trying to figure it out what was wrong, of being told your labs were normal when your body was clearly telling a different story, of managing and pushing through and performing fine, {quote} {unquote}, while something was quietly shifting underneath. You knew it all along and you weren't wrong.

[00:13:58]That grief of not being recognized and heard is valid, and I don't want to rush past that.

[00:14:03]But I also want you to hear this. The fact that you can see the pattern now, the fact that you have been You now have a language for what your body's been experiencing, that is not a small thing. That is the beginning of something different, and that's where you take your power back, and you do not have to remain a victim.

[00:14:19]You did not do anything wrong. You were running the best program you had, frankly. You were showing up for everyone who needed you the way you were built to do, and the way you're naturally just so good at doing, and your body responded the way bodies do, by prioritizing survival over balance. Now it's asking for something back. Not perfection, just attention. Just the same quality of presence you give everyone else, tuned inward. Finally tuned inward for long enough to actually see what's there.

[00:14:49]Your body is telling the truth, and it has been for a very, very long time, and now you have more of the language and the context to hear it and understand it.

[00:14:59]The world, frankly, needs what you have to give, and you need to be well resourced to give it. We are in this together, all you helpers out there and everyone else. Take care of yourself.

[00:15:09]I will see you next week.