What Is Happening to Our Midlife Hormones? with Wise and Well
The Breast Cancer and Hormone Connection. Yes, women who use hormones can get breast cancer. So can women who do not use hormones – and maybe even more often those who do use hormones. The biggest risk for breast cancer is being a woman and growing older.
There is a lot of confusion around this topic and in addition to doctors being trained on bad science, often the confusion is because the nuances are overlooked. Until recently, the only study being taught in medical school (and thus, what all doctors we had been seeing were taught) was that HRT causes breast cancer. But what caused the breast cancer was the application of endocrine disruptors during the study from the synthetic hormones on women who were not prescreened for cancer and had other metabolic issues which we know drive cancer – like type II diabetes, obesity, smoking history, drinking, etc.
One of the biggest problems of the study is that they used synthetic pharmacology hormones (not bioidenticals) that were actually at odds with women’s physiology just for being what they are, and the study was being altered to spread the message that ALL hormones were bad. If that were TRUE, then how do you escape extremely elevated levels of estrogen while pregnant without cancer? It’s not the hormones.
Progesterone is what our body naturally makes and it can be synthesized in a lab from natural materials and be molecularly identical to that which we make naturally. Then we have progestogen which is an umbrella term that gets used to denote full progesterone natural AND synthetic progestins (things that molecularly do NOT resemble what we make). So when you hear these studies you have to ask: was it progesterone or was it progestin?!
The Benefits of Taking Hormones in Perimenopause and Menopause
An important piece to this conversation is the fact that hormones don’t work without receptors. There are receptors all over your body for hormones and they ALL benefit from having estrogen. Estrogen is great for vaginal health, skin health, sleep, emotional regulation, stress tolerance, strength and muscle, brain health, you name it. There have even been a high number of incidents in Wise + Well patients where osteoporosis is quite literally being reversed.
Is It Too Late For Me to Start Taking Hormones?
No. If you’re healthy, have a smart provider who is trained in hormones and understands pre-screening to ensure nothing will get triggered, you can start HRT. These changes start in perimenopause before you even know things are changing inside of us. It’s BETTER to start earlier because you want to capture your body when it still has the integrity of the healthiest systems it can BUT late doesn’t automatically mean it’s a no go.
Is Estrogen Dominance Common?
“Estrogen dominance” was originally intended to mean an overproduction of estrogen in the body which could come from anywhere (fat cells, ovaries, adrenals, etc.). But once you hit 40, you’re lucky if you’re producing robust amounts of estradiol on a daily basis. When the word “dominance” is used, they are referencing a relationship between estrogen and progesterone.
The problem is that if you were to map out a woman's 28 day cycle and compare the production of estrogen and production of progesterone, you’re always estrogen dominant by the theory that estrogen is higher than progesterone. Relatively speaking, that is always the case in the 28 day cycle. What the ACTUAL problem is in midlife, is that we have declining progesterone but our estrogen is ALSO declining. So we have low hormones ALL together! Estrogen creates receptors for progesterone, so as estrogen decreases, so do the receptors for the progesterone, and we won’t feel the progesterone effects like we used to.
This and SO much more on the episode!