HI "CAPPS"     FOR MANY YEARS, I SUFFERED WITH VERY POOR HEALTH. WHEN IN 1995, I SPENT A MONTH FLAT ON MY BACK IN BED, AND THEN AGAIN IN 1997, I SPENT THREE MONTHS ON MY BED RECUPERATING FROM ILLNESS, AND RESULTING IN MAJOR SURGERY, MY DOCTOR HAD ME ON FOUR PRESCRIPTION DRUGS.     TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT, GOD INTERVENED IN THE AREA OF MY HEALTH AND LED ME TO ANOTHER CHRISTIAN (WHO HAD BEEN FINDING DELIVERANCE FROM HIS HEALTH PROBLEMS) AT A CREATION CAMP IN COLBRAN, COLORADO.      HE INTRODUCED ME TO A WHOLE FOOD SUPPLEMENT FROM MANNATECH, INC. CALLED PLUS. PLUS IS A PROPRIETARY BLEND OF 8 COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATES (THAT HELP CELL- TO - CELL COMMUNICATION) AND DIOSCOREA (WILD MEXICAN YAM -- WHICH IS  A NATURAL PROGESTERONE.)     I WILL SHARE BELOW SOME INFORMATION THAT HE SENT ME CONCERNING OSTEOPOROSIS. I, FIRST WANT TO SAY THAT THE ADVICE OTHERS HAVE GIVEN HERE IS EXCELLENT. DIET MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN OVER ALL HEALTH  RELATED ISSUES.  WHOLE FOOD SUPPLEMENTATION IS LIKEWISE ESSENTIAL TO MAINTAINING GOOD HEALTH AND REVERSING ILL HEALTH.  I TAKE PLUS AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY. HERE IS COPIED FROM SOME OF THE MATERIAL HE SENT ME: Highlights from an interview with Dr. John Lee      "Many people consider Dr. John Lee responsible for bringing natural progesterone to the public's attention. He began using it in the late 1970's for osteoporosis and then began to discover its effects on PMS, menopausal symptoms, and more. Dr. Lee has reported his findings in several articles and two books: Natural Progesterone, and What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause.      Dr. Lee's medical research studies have been published in the Journal of American Medical Association, and he is currently teaching physicians about the benefits of natural progesterone cream, as found in Dioscorea or the wild yam plant.                                  ___________________________        On natural progesterone, osteoporosis, and more.      After I had been in practice about 20 years. I had more and more people who had osteoporosis. In 1976 and 1978, it became apparent to everybody in medicine that estrogen therapy, as we were instructed to give [for osteoporosis], not only was not working very well for their bones, but was the only known cause of cancer of the uterus.      About that time I heard Dr. Ray Pete give a talk on natural progesterone. He said, in effect, that at menopause,ovaries quit making both estrogen and progesterone. Why are you replacing only the estrogen? Mother Nature never did that; Mother Nature never anticipated that women would be on only estrogen.      Dr. Pete was telling us that this natural progesterone existed, it was available in a skin cream, it was well absorbed through the skin, it did all these wonderful things, and you could give it to people who could otherwise not take estrogen. So in my practice, I asked women who had osteoporosis tot ake the natural progesterone cream, and I followed their bone mineral density tests just to see what would happen.      It turned out that in three years time, the women typically gained 15 % more bone.  It wasn't just merely a delay of the osteoporosis, the bones actually became better.  And in the process of followng these women, I learned all the other things that progesterone did for them. They reported to me that fibercystic breasts turned back to normal. Those that had acne or hair loss, like male pattern balness, showed me that their hair was coming back. These were things that at first I found unbelievable, and yet when I researched them in our hospital library, to find references to see if anyone had studed them, I found that, yes, they had been studied and yes, they were known effects of progesterone. It was something that I was never taught in medical school, something that my colleagues were never taught in medical school. I thought perhaps I had slept through a class or something and that I had missed it.... but no one else knew about it either. We had come and gone and no one in medical school had been taught this, and they are still not taught this."  [Dr. John Lee,  "Partners" August 1996] (there is much more to the whole article, i.e.  the benefits of progesterone (natural) on PMS, for Menopause, "The Estrogen Dominance problem", Other benefits of natural progesterone, and "On the future of progesterone.)