HORMONES
Estrogen – Fights Cancer and Alzheimers?!
“Estrogen can fight cancer? I thought it caused cancer.”
This is the puzzled question I get from my patients when we discuss healthy estrogen metabolism. When you figure out how estrogen breaks down in the liver, you quickly learn that while the type of estrogen you take makes a big difference - what your body does with that estrogen, makes all difference in the world.
Whether you take it or you make it . . . estrogen must break down in the liver. Once in the liver, it faces different pathways or opportunities for breakdown. It can break down in a healthy, good way or it can choose a bad path.
When estrogen breaks down in the healthy, good way, it makes substances that balance hormonal symptoms (such as PMS), that resolve hormonal challenges (such as bad mammograms, lumpy breasts, ovarian cysts, and abnormal menstrual periods) and that prevent and fight cancerous changes in the body. These substances are shown to be protective for estrogen sensitive tissues (breast, ovarian, uterine and cervical tissue) as well as lung and colon tissue as well.
In all fairness to the popular press, when estrogen follows the bad path in the liver, many undesirable situations arise. These toxic metabolites create greater risk for bad mammograms, lumpy breasts, ovarian cysts, abnormal menstrual bleeding and estrogen-related cancers. We don’t want that!
When a woman suffers from PMS, ovarian cysts, fibrocystic breasts, bad mammograms, uterine fibroids or endometriosis – she may be breaking down her estrogen in an unhealthy way in her liver. Re-directing that activity can deliver health and reduce risk going forward.
Did you know, that as men age . . . they make more estrogen and they tend to process it more down the bad pathway in the liver? Not only does this increase the risk for breast cancer in men, but it aggravates prostate health. 80% of men are found to have some degree of prostate cancer, on autopsy. Prostate health is an important health issue for the men in your lives.
Targeted nutritional support can direct the way your estrogens break down in your liver (to fight for you instead of against you) and can optimize the way estrogens (and fat-stored toxins) leave the body through gut elimination.
Did you know that if you get estrogen going within the first ten years after your last period (or your last dose of hormone replacement therapy) that it has been shown to be preventative for Alzheimers?
My recommendation? If you choose to pursue Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) make a bio-identical choice and dose those hormones in a bio-identical way. Further, attend to the way your body breaks down those estrogens in the liver and the gut to maximize the health benefits of HRT.
Targeted Nutritional Formulas that I use in my practice every day, to achieve better estrogen health for my patients include:
Estrogen metabolism in the liver - Non-hormonal symptom balancing support for estrogen in the liver, which drives the breakdown of estrogen toward metabolites that fight for us instead of against us, is a very smart tool that I use every day in my practice.
Non-toxic, stable Omega 3 fish oil - supports estrogen metabolism and whole body health.
B vitamins in their active forms – is support you can feel.
Estrogen detoxification support in the gut - is for timely elimination of estrogens and fat stored toxins that would otherwise store up in the fat cells in our bodies. Good riddance!
