Cancer Researchers Link Ovarian Hormone to Breast Stem Cells Growth
ScienceDaily (May 7, 2010) — Cancer researchers at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) have discovered that the ovarian hormone progesterone plays a pivotal role in altering breast stem cells, a finding that has important implications for breast cancer risk.
The findings, published online in Nature, are significant because reproductive history is among the strongest risk factors for breast cancer, says principal investigator Rama Khokha, a molecular biologist at Ontario Cancer Institute and the Campbell Family Cancer Research Institute, PMH. Other major known risk factors are age, genetics and breast density.
"Our study shows how and when hormones affect breast stem cells during the natural reproductive cycle. There are well accepted links between ovarian hormones and breast cancer, and there is mounting evidence that stem cells are seeds for breast cancer. We now show a direct connection between hormones and breast stem cells. "
Lead author Purna Joshi adds: "Our research demonstrates that when progesterone peaks during the second half of the menstrual cycle, it starts a cross-talk between stem cells and neighbouring cells that propels normal breast stem cells to expand in number, and may trigger an environment where cancer can begin."
Until now, breast stem cells were thought to be generally inactive in the adult female breast, says Dr. Khokha, whose speciality is modelling human cancer in the laboratory. In this study, the research team replicated the human natural reproductive cycle in mice to determine the impact of hormones on breast stem cells.
How hormones change these stem cells opens a new pathway to understanding the cell growth that begins breast cancer, and, with further research, will open new ways of targeting stem cells.
"It is the first evidence, to our knowledge, for progesterone-driven dynamic shifts in the mammary stem cell pool. This activation provides an opportunity to start the process of cell transformation leading to breast cancer."
The research was also supported by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
400 reasons you need Estrogen
You need to think about starting natural estrogen bioidentical hormone replacement therapy when approaching menopause in your late 40’s and early 50’s. Why? Well, for relief of symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, and low libido among others, nothing works better than estrogen. Long term benefits of estrogen bioidentical replacement therapy include prevention of memory loss, maintenance of heart health, prevention of heart disease, bone production (prevention of osteoporosis), prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, prevention of cataracts and macular degeneration, maintenance of mood and prevention of depression, and quality and youthfulness of your genital tissues and skin. Vitamins and herbs cannot do all these things (although they may temporarily improve some symptoms like hot flashes). Quite simply, estrogen keeps women’s cells healthy. Only estrogen in women can prevent disease and improve quality of life…and only bioidentical transdermal estrogen!
What is natural bioidentical hormone replacement? It means using hormones that are biologically identical to what your body makes. In other words, the hormones are the same chemical structure as the ones that your body makes. Customized natural hormonal therapy is the only way to replace hormones safely. One size does not fit all.
Studies have shown that women who use hormone replacement live longer than those who do not. To be effective in preventing disease, estrogen must be started in women in their 50’s. For example, you need 10 years of estrogen replacement to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
Estrogen has 400 functions in your body. It increases your metabolic rate, enhances energy, improves insulin sensitivity, and regulates body temperature. It prevents muscle damage and helps maintain muscle.
In the cardiovascular arena, it helps maintain the elasticity of your arteries, dilates your small arteries, increases blood flow, inhibits platelet stickiness, decreases the accumulation of plaque on your arteries, decreases blood pressure, decreases LDL (bad cholesterol) and prevents its oxidation, acts as a natural calcium channel blocker to keep your arteries open (pharmaceutical companies make alien molecules to do this in patients with heart disease), decreases lipoprotein A ( a bad fat that is a risk factor for heart disease), reduces homocysteine (another risk factor for heart disease), increases HDL (good cholesterol) by 10 to 15%, and reduces the overall risk of heart disease by 40 to 50%.
Estrogen has many benefits for your brain and nervous system. It helps maintain your memory, increases reasoning and new ideas, helps with fine motor skills, enhances the production of nerve-growth factor, improves your mood, increases concentration, helps prevent Alzheimer‘s disease, improves your mood, aids in the formation of neurotransmitters in your brain such as serotonin which decreases depression, irritability, anxiety, and pain sensitivity.
For eye health, it protects against macular degeneration and helps prevent cataracts.
For beauty, it maintains the amount of collagen in your skin increases the water content of your skin and is responsible for its thickness and softness, improves breast firmness, maintains the moisture and thickness of the genital tissues, and decreases facial wrinkles.
For bones, it maintains bone density and helps prevent tooth loss.
It increases sexual interest and decreases your risk of colon cancer
Your body has receptor sites for estrogen everywhere: in your brain, muscles, bone, bladder, gut, uterus, ovaries, vagina, breast, eyes, heart, lungs, and blood vessels, so it is needed for health is all these areas.
So with decreased estrogen you get thinner skin, more wrinkles/aging skin, decrease in breast size, stress incontinence, oily skin, acne, decreased sex drive, decreased dexterity, increase in insulin resistance and possible diabetes, vaginal dryness, decreased memory, osteoporosis, urinary tract infections, and increased cholesterol.
Perimenopause and menopause occurs in our 40’s and 50’s. Most women of that age group can expect to live to be a mean age of 83. You may spend 30-40 years without the benefits of estrogen and experience resultant and inexorable disease and decline from loss of estrogen.
With a safe and effective way of replacing estrogen with bio-identical hormones, women no longer need to bear the disease and decline of estrogen deficiency.
A few things to remember:
1. Estrogen must be balanced with progesterone (not progestins or medroxyprogesterone which are piosons), even if you had a hysterectomy. Estrogen without progesterone or not enough progesterone equals 10 pounds. Besides, progesterone also has many benefits of itself.
2. Never take any type of oral estrogen, even bioidentical. It can cause or make cardiovascular heart disease worse due to a protein that is made in the liver when a great deal of estrogen hits the liver when absorbed from the gut. Transdermal estrogen doesn’t do that because it is absorbed more evenly.
3. Take only bioidentical estrogen that has estradiol (your main estrogen) and estriol (a weaker estrogen with cancer and heart protective effects). This compound is generally called Biest (bi-estrogen). Another bioidentical estrogen compound called Triest is now considered to be outdated since it contains estrone, another one of our week estrogens. We need a little estrone for bone health, but we do not need to replace it especially since estrone can be metabolized in the body into cancer causing metabolites.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
What is natural bioidentical hormone replacement? It means using hormones that are biologically identical to what your body makes. In other words, the hormones are the same chemical structure as the ones that your body makes. Customized natural hormonal therapy is the only way to replace hormones safely. One size does not fit all.
Studies have shown that women who use hormone replacement live longer than those who do not. To be effective in preventing disease, estrogen must be started in women in their 50’s. For example, you need 10 years of estrogen replacement to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
Estrogen has 400 functions in your body. It increases your metabolic rate, enhances energy, improves insulin sensitivity, and regulates body temperature. It prevents muscle damage and helps maintain muscle.
In the cardiovascular arena, it helps maintain the elasticity of your arteries, dilates your small arteries, increases blood flow, inhibits platelet stickiness, decreases the accumulation of plaque on your arteries, decreases blood pressure, decreases LDL (bad cholesterol) and prevents its oxidation, acts as a natural calcium channel blocker to keep your arteries open (pharmaceutical companies make alien molecules to do this in patients with heart disease), decreases lipoprotein A ( a bad fat that is a risk factor for heart disease), reduces homocysteine (another risk factor for heart disease), increases HDL (good cholesterol) by 10 to 15%, and reduces the overall risk of heart disease by 40 to 50%.
Estrogen has many benefits for your brain and nervous system. It helps maintain your memory, increases reasoning and new ideas, helps with fine motor skills, enhances the production of nerve-growth factor, improves your mood, increases concentration, helps prevent Alzheimer‘s disease, improves your mood, aids in the formation of neurotransmitters in your brain such as serotonin which decreases depression, irritability, anxiety, and pain sensitivity.
For eye health, it protects against macular degeneration and helps prevent cataracts.
For beauty, it maintains the amount of collagen in your skin increases the water content of your skin and is responsible for its thickness and softness, improves breast firmness, maintains the moisture and thickness of the genital tissues, and decreases facial wrinkles.
For bones, it maintains bone density and helps prevent tooth loss.
It increases sexual interest and decreases your risk of colon cancer
Your body has receptor sites for estrogen everywhere: in your brain, muscles, bone, bladder, gut, uterus, ovaries, vagina, breast, eyes, heart, lungs, and blood vessels, so it is needed for health is all these areas.
So with decreased estrogen you get thinner skin, more wrinkles/aging skin, decrease in breast size, stress incontinence, oily skin, acne, decreased sex drive, decreased dexterity, increase in insulin resistance and possible diabetes, vaginal dryness, decreased memory, osteoporosis, urinary tract infections, and increased cholesterol.
Perimenopause and menopause occurs in our 40’s and 50’s. Most women of that age group can expect to live to be a mean age of 83. You may spend 30-40 years without the benefits of estrogen and experience resultant and inexorable disease and decline from loss of estrogen.
With a safe and effective way of replacing estrogen with bio-identical hormones, women no longer need to bear the disease and decline of estrogen deficiency.
A few things to remember:
1. Estrogen must be balanced with progesterone (not progestins or medroxyprogesterone which are piosons), even if you had a hysterectomy. Estrogen without progesterone or not enough progesterone equals 10 pounds. Besides, progesterone also has many benefits of itself.
2. Never take any type of oral estrogen, even bioidentical. It can cause or make cardiovascular heart disease worse due to a protein that is made in the liver when a great deal of estrogen hits the liver when absorbed from the gut. Transdermal estrogen doesn’t do that because it is absorbed more evenly.
3. Take only bioidentical estrogen that has estradiol (your main estrogen) and estriol (a weaker estrogen with cancer and heart protective effects). This compound is generally called Biest (bi-estrogen). Another bioidentical estrogen compound called Triest is now considered to be outdated since it contains estrone, another one of our week estrogens. We need a little estrone for bone health, but we do not need to replace it especially since estrone can be metabolized in the body into cancer causing metabolites.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Testosterone For Men
Testosterone in Men byCandice Lane, M.D.
Filed under For Men
There has been a lot of buzz about women’s hormones, but you hear very little about men. To make it worse, men do not seek or share this information as women do. How many men do you know who go out for coffee with their buddies and talk about their hormones? Few people appreciate the pervasive effects of testosterone on men’s general health.
The fact is that as men age, they lose their testosterone. The loss of youthful levels of testosterone with the onset of its associated symptoms is sometimes called andropause. It is the natural diminution (or pause) in production of male hormone (an androgen) as men age.
Testosterone loss in men is a gradual process. Testosterone decline starts around age 30, and may drop 1% to 3 % per year depending on genetics and lifestyle. That means that men can sustain a 20% drop in testosterone by age 50, and a 50% drop by age 80. Each man may experience the symptoms of a decline in testosterone differently depending on what his normal was at his hormonal peak. Often the symptoms are ignored or rationalized away until the resultant decreased functioning becomes a way of life.
The most obvious and disturbing changes for men are those of sexual function, but equally troubling symptoms of low testosterone may manifest as a decline in mental functions, musculoskeletal conditions, and metabolic or physical diseases.
Changes in mental functioning may manifest as spells of mental fatigue and inability to concentrate, feeling burned out, low energy, tiredness or sleepiness in the afternoon or evening, decrease in mental sharpness, attention, and wit, or a change in creativity like getting spontaneous new ideas. There may be a decrease in desire to start new projects, or a decreased interest in past hobbies or new work-related activities. Competitiveness may diminish and irritability increase. Memory functions may become impaired with increased forgetfulness. Men can experience a sense of depression with a sense that work, marriage, or recreational activities have lost their significance.
Musculoskeletal symptoms may appear as sore-body syndrome with aches and joint and muscle pains. A decline in flexibility and mobility may be noticed with increased stiffness. Muscle size, tone, and strength may decrease. Physical stamina and athletic performance may decline. Some men experience back pain, neck pain, or a tendency to pull muscles or get leg cramps. Some develop osteoporosis or inflammatory arthritis.
Low testosterone levels correlate with more risk factors of heart disease than any other individual factor in the male body. Cardiovascular risk factors increase in men as testosterone decreases. Cholesterol and triglyceride levels increase, coronary and major arteries constrict leading to a greater risk of cardiac events, and blood pressure rises. Insulin resistance increases with obesity, adult diabetes, and increased cortisol levels. There is increased central abdominal fat with increased waist to hip ratio. Estrogen levels associated with higher stroke and heart attack rates (and increased fat in the breast and hip area) increase. Another increase associated with decreased testosterone is in lipoprotein A and fibrinogen, which correlate with cardiac events. Also, human growth hormone output decreases leading to a decline in energy, strength, stamina, and heart muscle mass and output. Low testosterone levels are associated with increased incidence of death even after researchers adjust for age, medical problems, and variables.
Although not all signs and symptoms of aging are due to hormonal decline, many correlate well with a decline in hormones and can be alleviated by hormone adjustment.
Treatment of low testosterone should be administered by a doctor trained in hormone therapy after a full history, examination, and laboratory testing. Regular follow-up is important to control symptoms, prevent side effects, and to make sure hormone levels are optimal.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Filed under For Men
There has been a lot of buzz about women’s hormones, but you hear very little about men. To make it worse, men do not seek or share this information as women do. How many men do you know who go out for coffee with their buddies and talk about their hormones? Few people appreciate the pervasive effects of testosterone on men’s general health.
The fact is that as men age, they lose their testosterone. The loss of youthful levels of testosterone with the onset of its associated symptoms is sometimes called andropause. It is the natural diminution (or pause) in production of male hormone (an androgen) as men age.
Testosterone loss in men is a gradual process. Testosterone decline starts around age 30, and may drop 1% to 3 % per year depending on genetics and lifestyle. That means that men can sustain a 20% drop in testosterone by age 50, and a 50% drop by age 80. Each man may experience the symptoms of a decline in testosterone differently depending on what his normal was at his hormonal peak. Often the symptoms are ignored or rationalized away until the resultant decreased functioning becomes a way of life.
The most obvious and disturbing changes for men are those of sexual function, but equally troubling symptoms of low testosterone may manifest as a decline in mental functions, musculoskeletal conditions, and metabolic or physical diseases.
Changes in mental functioning may manifest as spells of mental fatigue and inability to concentrate, feeling burned out, low energy, tiredness or sleepiness in the afternoon or evening, decrease in mental sharpness, attention, and wit, or a change in creativity like getting spontaneous new ideas. There may be a decrease in desire to start new projects, or a decreased interest in past hobbies or new work-related activities. Competitiveness may diminish and irritability increase. Memory functions may become impaired with increased forgetfulness. Men can experience a sense of depression with a sense that work, marriage, or recreational activities have lost their significance.
Musculoskeletal symptoms may appear as sore-body syndrome with aches and joint and muscle pains. A decline in flexibility and mobility may be noticed with increased stiffness. Muscle size, tone, and strength may decrease. Physical stamina and athletic performance may decline. Some men experience back pain, neck pain, or a tendency to pull muscles or get leg cramps. Some develop osteoporosis or inflammatory arthritis.
Low testosterone levels correlate with more risk factors of heart disease than any other individual factor in the male body. Cardiovascular risk factors increase in men as testosterone decreases. Cholesterol and triglyceride levels increase, coronary and major arteries constrict leading to a greater risk of cardiac events, and blood pressure rises. Insulin resistance increases with obesity, adult diabetes, and increased cortisol levels. There is increased central abdominal fat with increased waist to hip ratio. Estrogen levels associated with higher stroke and heart attack rates (and increased fat in the breast and hip area) increase. Another increase associated with decreased testosterone is in lipoprotein A and fibrinogen, which correlate with cardiac events. Also, human growth hormone output decreases leading to a decline in energy, strength, stamina, and heart muscle mass and output. Low testosterone levels are associated with increased incidence of death even after researchers adjust for age, medical problems, and variables.
Although not all signs and symptoms of aging are due to hormonal decline, many correlate well with a decline in hormones and can be alleviated by hormone adjustment.
Treatment of low testosterone should be administered by a doctor trained in hormone therapy after a full history, examination, and laboratory testing. Regular follow-up is important to control symptoms, prevent side effects, and to make sure hormone levels are optimal.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Women To Women - Not Hormones, Only Vitamins.
When you search Google for “bioidentical hormones”, what’s the first site to come up? It’s Women to Women. I find this astounding because Women to Women has nothing to do with bioidentical hormones.
“Women to Women” is a vitamin sales website that proclaims it’s devoted to women’s health. They say they use phytotherapy to achieve natural hormone balance. So what is phytotherapy? It’s vitamins and herbs. On Women to Women, they are basically saying you can rebalance your hormones with vitamins.
Hormones decline in women because our ovaries shut down with age. There is no vitamin in the universe that will bring back ovarian function or hormones once in the process of menopause. Some vitamins may improve your symptoms and improve health, but no vitamin can replace the beneficial functions of estradiol, progesterone, or testosterone. As far as balancing your hormones, eventually they will all be balanced by being gone, and no vitamin will prevent that!
Don’t get me wrong. I am a devoted believer in using vitamins to help treat many problems including adrenal fatigue, adrenal stress, thyroid problems, hypertension, high cholesterol, osteoporosis and a number of other disorders. Vitamins and herbs can overall improve our general health. But without hormones to direct your cells functioning, vitamins are limited in what they can do. The fact is that you need both hormones and vitamins, and the way you get hormones just like with vitamins, is with replacement! Hormones can totally relieve your symptoms and keep you healthy. Vitamins, even with diet and exercise, cannot do this.
Women to Women has an extensive library of many legitimate disorders and there is a lot of good information there. However, most every conclusion is that there is no good hormonal treatment and the best treatment is to use their vitamins. Admittedly, those writing the articles are very skillful in coming round to this conclusion, but be aware that the people writing the articles are nurses without any specialized hormone training, not doctors with bioidentical hormone training.
The fact is Women to Women is basically a site dedicated to making money by selling vitamins to women who are suffering from menopause. Granted vitamins may mildly and usually temporarily improve some symptoms of menopause like hot flashes, but they falsely claim that women can “rebalance women’s hormones without the use of drugs”. O.K. I agree with balancing your hormone without the use of drugs; that is, without the use of pharmaceutical drugs like the synthetic hormones Premarin and Provera (HRT), but bioidentical hormones (BHRT) are not drugs. They are natural hormones with the exact same molecular structure as in the human body.
Women to Women goes on to say “We have found that about 85% can find relief through an approach that combines medical-grade nutritional supplements, gentle endocrine support, and dietary and lifestyle changes.” Relief of what and for how long? This is a fundamental misunderstanding or misrepresentation of menopause and hormone imbalance.
Menopause is a hormone deficiency of estrogen and progesterone caused by ovarian failure and cessation of ovulation that is genetically dictated by our life cycle. How can you balance hormones that are not there? Vitamins will not put back your hormones or keep you ovulating until you are 90. The symptoms, aging, and decline of menopause are due to losing your hormones. As you become deficient, the only remedy is to replace your hormones.
Estrogen is the woman’s hormone for health. It has 400 functions in the human female body. It is responsible for heart health, eye health, brain health, and bone health. When estrogen is started early (at least in your 50’s) the medical literature has shown it can help prevent heart disease, osteoporosis, cataracts, macular degeneration (blindness), Alzheimer’s disease, depression, colon cancer, wasting of our genital tissues, urinary leakage, cholesterol problems, loss of sexual desire, loss of skin beauty, loss of memory and other things. (Estrogen-Natural Bioidentical Hormone Replacement) The current medical literature has shown that bioidentical hormones are safe. They do not cause breast cancer. To prevent disease, bioidentical hormones need to be used on a long terms basis. At least 10 years use is needed to prevent Alzheimer’s. Current bioidentical experts recommend lifelong use to stay healthy and vital.
Women to Women has said bioidentical hormones are not the fountain of youth. Well that may be. None of us will get younger with hormones (except maybe with growth hormone), but we don’t have to experience the disorders of aging either that are more likely to occur without our sex hormones. Progesterone has its very own functions (Progesterone Deficiency) and is necessary to balance estrogen.
Women to Women staff comes from a sect of alternative medicine that believes in aging naturally by allowing your hormones to decline and only alleviating, if necessary, the symptoms (hot flashes, night sweats, etc.) of this slow and painful decline. But what about the diseases that occur due to hormone loss like Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, and colon cancer? Why not try to prevent these diseases by replacing our hormones?
Women to Women recommends using vitamins first to treat the symptoms of menopause (remember vitamins don’t put hormone back). Why? Well maybe because they sell vitamins…that’s their business. They do not recommend bioidentical hormones. Why? Well, because they can’t sell a pharmacy product online with the click of a button and a charge of the card, and that would put their vitamin business out of business. Their articles minimize Suzanne Somers’s writings and claim that she is in the minority of women needing replacement. Why? Maybe because she writes about bioidentical hormones as the basis of health, and again, they can’t sell hormones online.
Let the buyer beware. The formula used by Women to Women is not anything special and can be easily duplicated at a lower cost. Their lifestyle coaching might prove beneficial if personal support is your goal
What’s my problem with all this? The vitamins won’t hurt, right? Wrong. It shakes confidence in real medical treatment, deters seeking treatment, and is a financial drain. I have had several patients that have come to me after trying Women to Women’s program which did not work. They spent a large amount of money with Women to Women without relief (of course you have to do the 3 month program). This financial loss discouraged and inhibited them from seeking medical advice from doctors trained in hormone replacement therapy. For about the same price of their premium plan you can get bioidentical hormones for replacement from a pharmacy.
So how does Women to Women get to the top of Google search for bioidentical hormones? They spend huge amounts of money on advertising with Google Adwords for one thing. In addition they have a large amount of content on their website which pushes them up in the page rankings.
There is a way to actually balance and replace your hormones that really works and has immediate and long term benefits – and that is natural bioidentical hormone replacement
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
“Women to Women” is a vitamin sales website that proclaims it’s devoted to women’s health. They say they use phytotherapy to achieve natural hormone balance. So what is phytotherapy? It’s vitamins and herbs. On Women to Women, they are basically saying you can rebalance your hormones with vitamins.
Hormones decline in women because our ovaries shut down with age. There is no vitamin in the universe that will bring back ovarian function or hormones once in the process of menopause. Some vitamins may improve your symptoms and improve health, but no vitamin can replace the beneficial functions of estradiol, progesterone, or testosterone. As far as balancing your hormones, eventually they will all be balanced by being gone, and no vitamin will prevent that!
Don’t get me wrong. I am a devoted believer in using vitamins to help treat many problems including adrenal fatigue, adrenal stress, thyroid problems, hypertension, high cholesterol, osteoporosis and a number of other disorders. Vitamins and herbs can overall improve our general health. But without hormones to direct your cells functioning, vitamins are limited in what they can do. The fact is that you need both hormones and vitamins, and the way you get hormones just like with vitamins, is with replacement! Hormones can totally relieve your symptoms and keep you healthy. Vitamins, even with diet and exercise, cannot do this.
Women to Women has an extensive library of many legitimate disorders and there is a lot of good information there. However, most every conclusion is that there is no good hormonal treatment and the best treatment is to use their vitamins. Admittedly, those writing the articles are very skillful in coming round to this conclusion, but be aware that the people writing the articles are nurses without any specialized hormone training, not doctors with bioidentical hormone training.
The fact is Women to Women is basically a site dedicated to making money by selling vitamins to women who are suffering from menopause. Granted vitamins may mildly and usually temporarily improve some symptoms of menopause like hot flashes, but they falsely claim that women can “rebalance women’s hormones without the use of drugs”. O.K. I agree with balancing your hormone without the use of drugs; that is, without the use of pharmaceutical drugs like the synthetic hormones Premarin and Provera (HRT), but bioidentical hormones (BHRT) are not drugs. They are natural hormones with the exact same molecular structure as in the human body.
Women to Women goes on to say “We have found that about 85% can find relief through an approach that combines medical-grade nutritional supplements, gentle endocrine support, and dietary and lifestyle changes.” Relief of what and for how long? This is a fundamental misunderstanding or misrepresentation of menopause and hormone imbalance.
Menopause is a hormone deficiency of estrogen and progesterone caused by ovarian failure and cessation of ovulation that is genetically dictated by our life cycle. How can you balance hormones that are not there? Vitamins will not put back your hormones or keep you ovulating until you are 90. The symptoms, aging, and decline of menopause are due to losing your hormones. As you become deficient, the only remedy is to replace your hormones.
Estrogen is the woman’s hormone for health. It has 400 functions in the human female body. It is responsible for heart health, eye health, brain health, and bone health. When estrogen is started early (at least in your 50’s) the medical literature has shown it can help prevent heart disease, osteoporosis, cataracts, macular degeneration (blindness), Alzheimer’s disease, depression, colon cancer, wasting of our genital tissues, urinary leakage, cholesterol problems, loss of sexual desire, loss of skin beauty, loss of memory and other things. (Estrogen-Natural Bioidentical Hormone Replacement) The current medical literature has shown that bioidentical hormones are safe. They do not cause breast cancer. To prevent disease, bioidentical hormones need to be used on a long terms basis. At least 10 years use is needed to prevent Alzheimer’s. Current bioidentical experts recommend lifelong use to stay healthy and vital.
Women to Women has said bioidentical hormones are not the fountain of youth. Well that may be. None of us will get younger with hormones (except maybe with growth hormone), but we don’t have to experience the disorders of aging either that are more likely to occur without our sex hormones. Progesterone has its very own functions (Progesterone Deficiency) and is necessary to balance estrogen.
Women to Women staff comes from a sect of alternative medicine that believes in aging naturally by allowing your hormones to decline and only alleviating, if necessary, the symptoms (hot flashes, night sweats, etc.) of this slow and painful decline. But what about the diseases that occur due to hormone loss like Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, and colon cancer? Why not try to prevent these diseases by replacing our hormones?
Women to Women recommends using vitamins first to treat the symptoms of menopause (remember vitamins don’t put hormone back). Why? Well maybe because they sell vitamins…that’s their business. They do not recommend bioidentical hormones. Why? Well, because they can’t sell a pharmacy product online with the click of a button and a charge of the card, and that would put their vitamin business out of business. Their articles minimize Suzanne Somers’s writings and claim that she is in the minority of women needing replacement. Why? Maybe because she writes about bioidentical hormones as the basis of health, and again, they can’t sell hormones online.
Let the buyer beware. The formula used by Women to Women is not anything special and can be easily duplicated at a lower cost. Their lifestyle coaching might prove beneficial if personal support is your goal
What’s my problem with all this? The vitamins won’t hurt, right? Wrong. It shakes confidence in real medical treatment, deters seeking treatment, and is a financial drain. I have had several patients that have come to me after trying Women to Women’s program which did not work. They spent a large amount of money with Women to Women without relief (of course you have to do the 3 month program). This financial loss discouraged and inhibited them from seeking medical advice from doctors trained in hormone replacement therapy. For about the same price of their premium plan you can get bioidentical hormones for replacement from a pharmacy.
So how does Women to Women get to the top of Google search for bioidentical hormones? They spend huge amounts of money on advertising with Google Adwords for one thing. In addition they have a large amount of content on their website which pushes them up in the page rankings.
There is a way to actually balance and replace your hormones that really works and has immediate and long term benefits – and that is natural bioidentical hormone replacement
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Bioidentical Hormones are Safe Bioidentical Hormones are Safe
by Candice Lane, M.D.
There is no doubt that there is improvement in the symptoms of menopause by using hormone replacement therapy. It includes elimination of symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats, reversal of bone loss leading to osteoporosis, improved sleep, emotional stability, libido and quality of life.But extreme confusion revolves about the safety of taking hormones.
Some doctors are telling patients to get off all hormones. Some are prescribing Premarin and Provera, while others are prescribing “bio-identical hormones”. Still others are switching back and forth between the two.
Hormone replacement therapy or HRT is a broad category. Some people use this term to refer to all hormone replacement therapy. When you hear this term in the media, they are generally referring to Premarin and Provera which are not natural to the human body. These drugs are referred to as synthetic hormones because they are synthesized with molecules that do not occur in the human body in nature.
Premarin is a type of estrogen obtained from horse’s urine. Although it is natural to horses, it is a different molecule than occurs in the human body. It is a very potent estrogen that can alleviate many symptoms but has negative effects as well.
Provera is a progestin used to prevent tissue from building up in the uterine lining while taking Premarin. A progestin is NOT progesterone. It is a different molecule. Progestins actually inhibit production of progesterone by the human body and have dangerous effects on the human body.
The new classification of hormone replacement therapy is called bio-identical hormone replacement therapy or BHRT. This therapy includes estrogens and progesterone that are made from soy and wild yams obtaining a compound that has the exact same molecular structure as these substances in the human body… therefore, bio-identical.
The dangers of Synthetic HRT (Premarin and Provera) were discovered in the Women’s Health Initiative Study in 2002.
This study analyzed the outcome of women taking Premarin (conjugated equine estrogen or horse estrogen from pregnant mare’s urine) and Provera (medroxyprogesterone acetate or synthetic progesterone) and found increased rates of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease. Since the drugs used were not bio-identical hormones the results only apply to Premarin and Provera, not BHRT.
Premarin is taken orally. Any oral estrogen can be a problem for heart health. It can activate coagulation and inflammation. Descenci in Circulation in 2005, found that transdermal estrogen does not have this effect.
The main breast cancer problem is the synthetic Provera (medroxyprogesterone). When the Women’s Health Initiative patients who received only Premarin without Provera were analyzed the rate of breast cancer was not increased. (Anderson, JAMA, 2004). This indicated that it was the Provera that caused an increased incidence of breast cancer.
BHRT (bio-identical hormone therapy) does not increase the chance of breast cancer. The main danger of synthetic HRT is the non-bio-identical progestin (Provera).
In the Fournier et al. study in the International Journal of Cancer, 2005 studied 54,000 women who were taking bio-identical estrogen and either bio-identical progesterone or synthetic progestin. The women taking the bio-identical progesterone had a 10% decrease in risk of breast cancer and the women taking artificial progestin had a 40% increase in the risk of breast cancer.
The De Lignieres study from Climacteric 2002 could not show an increased risk of breast cancer with use of bio-identical hormones but showed an increased risk with the use of synthetic progestin (Provera/medroxyprogesterone). In fact, they could not justify stopping BHRT(bio-identical), which is beneficial for quality of life, prevention of bone loss and cardiovascular risk profile without activating coagulation and inflammatory protein synthesis as in users of oral estrogens.
The real problem with synthetic HRT is the synthetic progestin(Provera). In contrast, several studies document that higher progesterone levels during pre-menopausal years or during pregnancy are protective against breast cancer. (Campanoli, Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2005).
In any case, estrogen should not be taken without progesterone which counters the proliferative tissue effect of estrogen on breast and uterine lining.
Bio-identical hormone therapy, which is different from Premarin and Provera, is safe, effective, and proven beyond any reasonable medical and scientific doubt
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
There is no doubt that there is improvement in the symptoms of menopause by using hormone replacement therapy. It includes elimination of symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats, reversal of bone loss leading to osteoporosis, improved sleep, emotional stability, libido and quality of life.But extreme confusion revolves about the safety of taking hormones.
Some doctors are telling patients to get off all hormones. Some are prescribing Premarin and Provera, while others are prescribing “bio-identical hormones”. Still others are switching back and forth between the two.
Hormone replacement therapy or HRT is a broad category. Some people use this term to refer to all hormone replacement therapy. When you hear this term in the media, they are generally referring to Premarin and Provera which are not natural to the human body. These drugs are referred to as synthetic hormones because they are synthesized with molecules that do not occur in the human body in nature.
Premarin is a type of estrogen obtained from horse’s urine. Although it is natural to horses, it is a different molecule than occurs in the human body. It is a very potent estrogen that can alleviate many symptoms but has negative effects as well.
Provera is a progestin used to prevent tissue from building up in the uterine lining while taking Premarin. A progestin is NOT progesterone. It is a different molecule. Progestins actually inhibit production of progesterone by the human body and have dangerous effects on the human body.
The new classification of hormone replacement therapy is called bio-identical hormone replacement therapy or BHRT. This therapy includes estrogens and progesterone that are made from soy and wild yams obtaining a compound that has the exact same molecular structure as these substances in the human body… therefore, bio-identical.
The dangers of Synthetic HRT (Premarin and Provera) were discovered in the Women’s Health Initiative Study in 2002.
This study analyzed the outcome of women taking Premarin (conjugated equine estrogen or horse estrogen from pregnant mare’s urine) and Provera (medroxyprogesterone acetate or synthetic progesterone) and found increased rates of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease. Since the drugs used were not bio-identical hormones the results only apply to Premarin and Provera, not BHRT.
Premarin is taken orally. Any oral estrogen can be a problem for heart health. It can activate coagulation and inflammation. Descenci in Circulation in 2005, found that transdermal estrogen does not have this effect.
The main breast cancer problem is the synthetic Provera (medroxyprogesterone). When the Women’s Health Initiative patients who received only Premarin without Provera were analyzed the rate of breast cancer was not increased. (Anderson, JAMA, 2004). This indicated that it was the Provera that caused an increased incidence of breast cancer.
BHRT (bio-identical hormone therapy) does not increase the chance of breast cancer. The main danger of synthetic HRT is the non-bio-identical progestin (Provera).
In the Fournier et al. study in the International Journal of Cancer, 2005 studied 54,000 women who were taking bio-identical estrogen and either bio-identical progesterone or synthetic progestin. The women taking the bio-identical progesterone had a 10% decrease in risk of breast cancer and the women taking artificial progestin had a 40% increase in the risk of breast cancer.
The De Lignieres study from Climacteric 2002 could not show an increased risk of breast cancer with use of bio-identical hormones but showed an increased risk with the use of synthetic progestin (Provera/medroxyprogesterone). In fact, they could not justify stopping BHRT(bio-identical), which is beneficial for quality of life, prevention of bone loss and cardiovascular risk profile without activating coagulation and inflammatory protein synthesis as in users of oral estrogens.
The real problem with synthetic HRT is the synthetic progestin(Provera). In contrast, several studies document that higher progesterone levels during pre-menopausal years or during pregnancy are protective against breast cancer. (Campanoli, Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2005).
In any case, estrogen should not be taken without progesterone which counters the proliferative tissue effect of estrogen on breast and uterine lining.
Bio-identical hormone therapy, which is different from Premarin and Provera, is safe, effective, and proven beyond any reasonable medical and scientific doubt
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Breast Thermography is Now Available in Illinois
Breast thermography is a 15 minute non invasive test of physiology. It is a valuable procedure for alerting your doctor to changes that can indicate early stage breast disease.
The benefit of breast thermography is that it offers the opportunity of earlier detection of breast disease than has been possible through breast self examination, doctor examination or mammography alone.
Thermography can detect the subtle physiologic changes that accompany breast pathology, whether it is cancer, fibrocystic disease, an infection or a vascular disease. Your doctor can then plan accordingly and lay out a careful program to further diagnose and /or MONITOR you during and after any treatment.
Normal
Good thermal symmetry with no suspicious vascular patterns or significant thermal findings.
Fibrocystic Changes
The very significant vascular activity in the left breast justified clinical correlation and close monitoring which returned an opinion of fibrocystic changes taking place. These changes can be monitored thermographically at regular intervals until a stable baseline is established and is reliable enough for annual comparison.
Early Stage Malignant tumor
This is the specific area of a small DCIS. We can see the vascular feed and the discreet area of hypothermia that is displacing the surrounding hyperthermia.
Thermography is a painless, non invasive, state of the art clinical test without any exposure to radiation and is used as part of an early detection program which gives women of all ages the opportunity to increase their chances of detecting breast disease at an early stage. It is particularly useful for women under 50 where mammography is less effective.
Thermography's role in breast cancer and other breast disorders is to help in early detection and monitoring of abnormal physiology and the establishment of risk factors for the development or existence of cancer. When used with other procedures the best possible evaluation of breast health is made.
This test is designed to improve chances for detecting fast-growing, active tumors in the intervals between mammographic screenings or when mammography is not indicated by screening guidelines for women under 50 years of age.
All patients thermograms (breast images) are kept on record and form a baseline for all future routine evaluations.
This patient's thermograms have remained stable for two years. These patterns are like a thermal fingerprint which will only change if pathology develops.
Baseline
3 Month Follow-up
First Annual
Second Annual
With the new ultra-sensitive, high resolution digital infrared cameras available today a technology that has been developing over the past 20 years is now becoming more accessible.
Thermography as a physiologic test, demonstrates heat patterns that are strongly indicative of breast abnormality, the test can detect subtle changes in breast temperature that indicate a variety of breast diseases and abnormalities and once abnormal heat patterns are detected in the breast, follow-up procedures including mammography are necessary to rule out or properly diagnose cancer and a host of other breast diseases such as fibrocystic syndrome, Pagets disease, etc.
Canadian researchers recently found that infrared imaging of breast cancers could detect minute temperature variations related to blood flow and demonstrate abnormal patterns associated with the progression of tumors. These images or thermograms of the breast were positive for 83% of breast cancers compared to 61% for clinical breast examination alone and 84% for mammography.
By performing thermography years before conventional mammography, a selected patient population at risk can be monitored more carefully, and then by accurately utilize mammography or ultrasound as soon as is possible to detect the actual lesion - (once it has grown large enough and dense enough to be seen on mammographic film), can increase the patients treatment options and ultimately improve the outcome.
It is in this role that thermography provides its most practical benefit to the general public and to the medical profession. It is certainly an adjunct to the appropriate usage of mammography and not a competitor. In fact, thermography has the ability to identify patients at the highest risk and actually increase the effective usage of mammographic imaging procedures.
Until such time as a cure has been found for this terrible disease, progress must be made in the fields of early detection and risk evaluation coupled with sound clinical decision making.
Thermography, with its non-radiation, non-contact and low-cost basis has been clearly demonstrated to be a valuable and safe early risk marker of breast pathology, and an excellent case management tool for the ongoing monitoring and treatment of breast disease when used under carefully controlled clinical protocols.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
The benefit of breast thermography is that it offers the opportunity of earlier detection of breast disease than has been possible through breast self examination, doctor examination or mammography alone.
Thermography can detect the subtle physiologic changes that accompany breast pathology, whether it is cancer, fibrocystic disease, an infection or a vascular disease. Your doctor can then plan accordingly and lay out a careful program to further diagnose and /or MONITOR you during and after any treatment.
Normal
Good thermal symmetry with no suspicious vascular patterns or significant thermal findings.
Fibrocystic Changes
The very significant vascular activity in the left breast justified clinical correlation and close monitoring which returned an opinion of fibrocystic changes taking place. These changes can be monitored thermographically at regular intervals until a stable baseline is established and is reliable enough for annual comparison.
Early Stage Malignant tumor
This is the specific area of a small DCIS. We can see the vascular feed and the discreet area of hypothermia that is displacing the surrounding hyperthermia.
Thermography is a painless, non invasive, state of the art clinical test without any exposure to radiation and is used as part of an early detection program which gives women of all ages the opportunity to increase their chances of detecting breast disease at an early stage. It is particularly useful for women under 50 where mammography is less effective.
Thermography's role in breast cancer and other breast disorders is to help in early detection and monitoring of abnormal physiology and the establishment of risk factors for the development or existence of cancer. When used with other procedures the best possible evaluation of breast health is made.
This test is designed to improve chances for detecting fast-growing, active tumors in the intervals between mammographic screenings or when mammography is not indicated by screening guidelines for women under 50 years of age.
All patients thermograms (breast images) are kept on record and form a baseline for all future routine evaluations.
This patient's thermograms have remained stable for two years. These patterns are like a thermal fingerprint which will only change if pathology develops.
Baseline
3 Month Follow-up
First Annual
Second Annual
With the new ultra-sensitive, high resolution digital infrared cameras available today a technology that has been developing over the past 20 years is now becoming more accessible.
Thermography as a physiologic test, demonstrates heat patterns that are strongly indicative of breast abnormality, the test can detect subtle changes in breast temperature that indicate a variety of breast diseases and abnormalities and once abnormal heat patterns are detected in the breast, follow-up procedures including mammography are necessary to rule out or properly diagnose cancer and a host of other breast diseases such as fibrocystic syndrome, Pagets disease, etc.
Canadian researchers recently found that infrared imaging of breast cancers could detect minute temperature variations related to blood flow and demonstrate abnormal patterns associated with the progression of tumors. These images or thermograms of the breast were positive for 83% of breast cancers compared to 61% for clinical breast examination alone and 84% for mammography.
By performing thermography years before conventional mammography, a selected patient population at risk can be monitored more carefully, and then by accurately utilize mammography or ultrasound as soon as is possible to detect the actual lesion - (once it has grown large enough and dense enough to be seen on mammographic film), can increase the patients treatment options and ultimately improve the outcome.
It is in this role that thermography provides its most practical benefit to the general public and to the medical profession. It is certainly an adjunct to the appropriate usage of mammography and not a competitor. In fact, thermography has the ability to identify patients at the highest risk and actually increase the effective usage of mammographic imaging procedures.
Until such time as a cure has been found for this terrible disease, progress must be made in the fields of early detection and risk evaluation coupled with sound clinical decision making.
Thermography, with its non-radiation, non-contact and low-cost basis has been clearly demonstrated to be a valuable and safe early risk marker of breast pathology, and an excellent case management tool for the ongoing monitoring and treatment of breast disease when used under carefully controlled clinical protocols.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Development, Structure, and Function of the Ovary
The gonads in utero exist in an undifferentiated state until the seventh week of fetal life, at which time the primitive ovary can be differentiated from the testis. Estrogen formation in the ovary begins between weeks 8 and 10, and by 10 to 11 weeks of gestation, some oognia in the developing ovarian cortex begin developing into primary oocytes.
The ovary contains a finite number of germ cells. The maximal number of about 7 million oogonia being reached by the fifth to sixth month of gestation. Afterward, the germ cells decrease in number through a process of atresia such that only 1 million remain at birth, 400,000 are present at the time of menarche, and only a few remain at menopause. Two X chromosomes are required for normal development of the ovary. In individuals with a 45,X karyotype, ovarian development occurs, but the rate of atresia (ovarian dealth) is accelerated so that only a fibrous streak remains at the time of birth.
Final maturation of ovarian follicles commences during puberty. The two major hormones that regulate follicular development are the pituitary gonadotropins - follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH).
As the time of puberty nears, a decrease in the sensitivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary system allows for increased secretion of FSH and LH, possibly secondary to increased episodic or pulsatile secretion of luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) by the hypothalamus. An increase in estrogen secretion subsequently exerts a positive feedback which leads to an exaggeration of the pulsatile release of LH and eventually to ovulation and the menarch, after which average plasma gonadotropin concentrations reach adult values in which day and night levels are similar.
The culmination of puberty is the onset of predictable, cyclic menses. The average time between the beginning of breast development and the onset of menses is 2 years. During the first few years after menarche, menstrual cycles are often irregular and unpredictable due to anovulation (similar to perimenopause). The age of menarch is variable and is determined in part by socioeconomic and genetic factors as well as general health. The mean age in the United States has decreased at a rate of 3 to 4 months per decade over the last 100 years and is now around 13 years old.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
The ovary contains a finite number of germ cells. The maximal number of about 7 million oogonia being reached by the fifth to sixth month of gestation. Afterward, the germ cells decrease in number through a process of atresia such that only 1 million remain at birth, 400,000 are present at the time of menarche, and only a few remain at menopause. Two X chromosomes are required for normal development of the ovary. In individuals with a 45,X karyotype, ovarian development occurs, but the rate of atresia (ovarian dealth) is accelerated so that only a fibrous streak remains at the time of birth.
Final maturation of ovarian follicles commences during puberty. The two major hormones that regulate follicular development are the pituitary gonadotropins - follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH).
As the time of puberty nears, a decrease in the sensitivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary system allows for increased secretion of FSH and LH, possibly secondary to increased episodic or pulsatile secretion of luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) by the hypothalamus. An increase in estrogen secretion subsequently exerts a positive feedback which leads to an exaggeration of the pulsatile release of LH and eventually to ovulation and the menarch, after which average plasma gonadotropin concentrations reach adult values in which day and night levels are similar.
The culmination of puberty is the onset of predictable, cyclic menses. The average time between the beginning of breast development and the onset of menses is 2 years. During the first few years after menarche, menstrual cycles are often irregular and unpredictable due to anovulation (similar to perimenopause). The age of menarch is variable and is determined in part by socioeconomic and genetic factors as well as general health. The mean age in the United States has decreased at a rate of 3 to 4 months per decade over the last 100 years and is now around 13 years old.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
The Estrogen Dilemma
In the April 12, 2010, New York Times article The Estrogen Dilemma, researchers are discovering that estrogen, a hormone produced in your brain, keeps your mind healthy and helps diseases like Alzheimer’s and heart disease kick the boot. The key here is the Timing Hypothesis, which is, "the proposition that estrogen could bring great benefit to a woman who starts it in her 50’s while having the reverse effect on women ten years older…other scientists know there are ways estrogen improves and protects the brain when it is added to healthy tissues.”
Thus stating estrogen when added to a healthy happy body can heal your body, where taking estrogen in a tired unhealthy body can hit cells that are already sick, thus not replenishing or strengthening the woman’s body.
The study also goes on to feature the evolution of hormones from horse urine to yam/plant based topical creams. At the Wake Forest University in North Carolina researchers have found that estrogen has had a tremendous influence against heart disease in women alone.
In T.S. Wiley’s Book, Sex, Lies, and Menopause, she states the Dying of Cancer is something we all fear. Having a heart attack, although seems more remote, because we don’t hear about it on television everyday would probably kill us where we stand. A doctor interviewed in the article stated that, “Heart disease ultimately kills many more women than all cancers combined, some doctors had also taken to urging older women, even those past menopause to start hormones for cardiac health purpose.”
The overall dilemma that most women face is how do they get prescribed hormones and where. What type of hormone is right for them? Is it estrogen, progesterone, testosterone or all of them?
The Wiley Protocol is the answer. The Wiley Protocol restores your hormones back to the way you had them when you were young, in the way you had them when you were young, rhythmically
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Thus stating estrogen when added to a healthy happy body can heal your body, where taking estrogen in a tired unhealthy body can hit cells that are already sick, thus not replenishing or strengthening the woman’s body.
The study also goes on to feature the evolution of hormones from horse urine to yam/plant based topical creams. At the Wake Forest University in North Carolina researchers have found that estrogen has had a tremendous influence against heart disease in women alone.
In T.S. Wiley’s Book, Sex, Lies, and Menopause, she states the Dying of Cancer is something we all fear. Having a heart attack, although seems more remote, because we don’t hear about it on television everyday would probably kill us where we stand. A doctor interviewed in the article stated that, “Heart disease ultimately kills many more women than all cancers combined, some doctors had also taken to urging older women, even those past menopause to start hormones for cardiac health purpose.”
The overall dilemma that most women face is how do they get prescribed hormones and where. What type of hormone is right for them? Is it estrogen, progesterone, testosterone or all of them?
The Wiley Protocol is the answer. The Wiley Protocol restores your hormones back to the way you had them when you were young, in the way you had them when you were young, rhythmically
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Let's talk about the hormone cycle. What happens physiologically?
Under the influence of gonadotropins (FSH and LH), a group of primary follicles (eggs) is recruited, and by day 6 to 8 of the menstrual cycle, one follicle becomes mature or "dominant," a process characterized by acceleerated growth of granulosa cells and enlargement of the fluid filled antrum. The recruited follicles not destined to ovulate begin to undergo degeneration, similar to the atresia observed in other follicles during embryogenesis. Just prior to ovulation, meiosis resumes in the ova of the dominant follicle, and the first meiotic division is completed with formatino of the first polar body. (okay enough with the medical talk). Rapid enlargement of the antrum (up to 10 to 25 mm in size) occurs with an associated increase in follicular fluid (we women feel pain!!). Ovulation from the dominant follicle occurs some 16 to 23 hours after the LH peak or 24 to 38 hours after the onset of the LH surge as the result of rupture of the follicular wall at the area of the stigma, followed by expulsion of the ovum together with a mass of surounding granulosa cells called cumulus cells. The rupture is believed to result from the action of hydrolyzing enzymes on the surface of the follicle, possibly under the control of prostaglandins. The second meiotic division begins after the egg is fertilized by a sperm.
Following ovulation, the formation of the corpus luteum begins in the retained remannt of the ovulated follicle (the corpus luteum produces the progesterone in the early stages of pregnancy). The principal estrogen secreted by the ovary and the most potent naturally occurring estrogen is estradiol. Estrone is also secreted by the ovary, but the principal source of estrone is from extraglandular conversion of androstenedione in peripheral tissues (aromatase in your abdominal fat cells). Estriol, is the most abundant estrogen in urine, arises form the 16-hydroxylation of estradiol and estrone.
Like other steroid hormones, ovarian steroids are derived from cholesterol. The ovary can synthesize cholesterol from circulating low density lipoproteins LDL. Virtually all ovarian cells are believed to possess the complete enzymatic complement required for the conversionm of cholesterol to estradiol; however, different cell types within the ovary contain different amounts of these enzymes so that the principal asteroids produced differ in the various compartments. For example, the corpus luteum forms progesterone and 17-hydroxyprogesterone predominantly, whereas theca and stromal cells convert cholesterol to the androgens androstenedione and testosterone. Granulosa cells are particularly rich in the aromatase (an enzyme) responsible for conversion of androgens to estrogen and utlize as substrates for this process from the androgens from the theca and stromal cells.
Estrogens promote development of the secondary sexual characteristics in women and cause uterine growth, thickening of the vaginal mucosa, thinning of the cervical mucus, and development of the ductular system of the breasts.
Progesterone is the principal hormone secreted by the corpus luteum and is responsible for progestational effects, namely, induction of secretory activity in the endometrium of the estrogen-primed uterus in preparation for implantation of the fertilized egg. Progesterone also induces a decidual reaction in endometrium. Other effects include inhibition of uterine contractions, increased viscosity of cervical mucus, glandular development of the breats, and increase in basal body temperature.
A normal menstrual cycle is usually divided into a follicular (or proliferative phase) and a luteal (or secretory phase). The secretion of FSH and LH is fundamentally under negative feedback control by ovarian steroids (particularly estradiol) and probably by inhibin (inhibits the release of FSH by the hypothalamic-pituitary unit), but the response of gonadotropins to different levels of estradiol varies;
FSH secretion is inhibited progressively as estrogen levels increase - typically negative feedback. In contrast, LH secretion is SUPPRESSED maximally by estrogen in low amounts and is ENHANCED in response to a rising and sustained elevation of estradiol - so called positive feedback control. Negative feedback of estrogen involves both the hypothalamus and pituitary, whereas positive feedback operates primarly at the level of the pituitary (both located in the brain).
The length of the normal menstrual cycle is defined as the time from the onset of one menstrual bleeding episode to onset of the next. In women of reproductive age, the menstrual cycle averages 28+-3 days, and the mean duration of flow is 4+-2 days. Longer menstrual cycles (usually due to anovulation) occur at the start of menarche (puberty) and prior to menopause (perimenopause). At the end of one menstrual cycle and in the face of a waning corpus luteum, plasma levels of estrogen and progesterone fall, and circulating levels of FSH increase concomitantly. Under the influence of increasing levels of FSH, follicular recruitment is initiated to effect development of the follicle that will be dominant during the next cycle.
Just prior to ovulation, estradiol secretion reaches a peak and then falls. Immediately thereafter, a further rise in the plasma level of LH mediates the final maturation of the follicle, followed by follicular rupture and ovulation 16 to 23 hours after the LH peak. Plasma progesterone also begins to rise just prior to midcycle and facilitates the positive feedback action of estradiol on LH secretion.
At the onset of the luteal phase, plasma gonadotropins decrease and plasma progesterone increases. A secondary rise in estrogens causes further gonadotropin suppresion. Near the end of the luteal phase, progesterone and estrogen levels fall, and FSH levels begin to rise to initiate the development of the next follicle (usually in the contralateral ovary) and the next menstrual cycle.
The endometrium lining the uterine cavity undergoes marked alterations in response to the changing plasma levels of ovarian hormones. Concomitant with the decrease in plasma estrogen and progesterone and the decline of corpus luteum function in the late lteal phase, intense vasospasm occurs in the spiral arterioles supplying blood to the endometrium, followed byan eschemic necrosis, endometrial desquamation, and bleeding. This vasospasm is caused by locally synthesized prostaglandins. (thus by taking motrin or advil can decrease prostaglandin synthesis and symptoms)
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Following ovulation, the formation of the corpus luteum begins in the retained remannt of the ovulated follicle (the corpus luteum produces the progesterone in the early stages of pregnancy). The principal estrogen secreted by the ovary and the most potent naturally occurring estrogen is estradiol. Estrone is also secreted by the ovary, but the principal source of estrone is from extraglandular conversion of androstenedione in peripheral tissues (aromatase in your abdominal fat cells). Estriol, is the most abundant estrogen in urine, arises form the 16-hydroxylation of estradiol and estrone.
Like other steroid hormones, ovarian steroids are derived from cholesterol. The ovary can synthesize cholesterol from circulating low density lipoproteins LDL. Virtually all ovarian cells are believed to possess the complete enzymatic complement required for the conversionm of cholesterol to estradiol; however, different cell types within the ovary contain different amounts of these enzymes so that the principal asteroids produced differ in the various compartments. For example, the corpus luteum forms progesterone and 17-hydroxyprogesterone predominantly, whereas theca and stromal cells convert cholesterol to the androgens androstenedione and testosterone. Granulosa cells are particularly rich in the aromatase (an enzyme) responsible for conversion of androgens to estrogen and utlize as substrates for this process from the androgens from the theca and stromal cells.
Estrogens promote development of the secondary sexual characteristics in women and cause uterine growth, thickening of the vaginal mucosa, thinning of the cervical mucus, and development of the ductular system of the breasts.
Progesterone is the principal hormone secreted by the corpus luteum and is responsible for progestational effects, namely, induction of secretory activity in the endometrium of the estrogen-primed uterus in preparation for implantation of the fertilized egg. Progesterone also induces a decidual reaction in endometrium. Other effects include inhibition of uterine contractions, increased viscosity of cervical mucus, glandular development of the breats, and increase in basal body temperature.
A normal menstrual cycle is usually divided into a follicular (or proliferative phase) and a luteal (or secretory phase). The secretion of FSH and LH is fundamentally under negative feedback control by ovarian steroids (particularly estradiol) and probably by inhibin (inhibits the release of FSH by the hypothalamic-pituitary unit), but the response of gonadotropins to different levels of estradiol varies;
FSH secretion is inhibited progressively as estrogen levels increase - typically negative feedback. In contrast, LH secretion is SUPPRESSED maximally by estrogen in low amounts and is ENHANCED in response to a rising and sustained elevation of estradiol - so called positive feedback control. Negative feedback of estrogen involves both the hypothalamus and pituitary, whereas positive feedback operates primarly at the level of the pituitary (both located in the brain).
The length of the normal menstrual cycle is defined as the time from the onset of one menstrual bleeding episode to onset of the next. In women of reproductive age, the menstrual cycle averages 28+-3 days, and the mean duration of flow is 4+-2 days. Longer menstrual cycles (usually due to anovulation) occur at the start of menarche (puberty) and prior to menopause (perimenopause). At the end of one menstrual cycle and in the face of a waning corpus luteum, plasma levels of estrogen and progesterone fall, and circulating levels of FSH increase concomitantly. Under the influence of increasing levels of FSH, follicular recruitment is initiated to effect development of the follicle that will be dominant during the next cycle.
Just prior to ovulation, estradiol secretion reaches a peak and then falls. Immediately thereafter, a further rise in the plasma level of LH mediates the final maturation of the follicle, followed by follicular rupture and ovulation 16 to 23 hours after the LH peak. Plasma progesterone also begins to rise just prior to midcycle and facilitates the positive feedback action of estradiol on LH secretion.
At the onset of the luteal phase, plasma gonadotropins decrease and plasma progesterone increases. A secondary rise in estrogens causes further gonadotropin suppresion. Near the end of the luteal phase, progesterone and estrogen levels fall, and FSH levels begin to rise to initiate the development of the next follicle (usually in the contralateral ovary) and the next menstrual cycle.
The endometrium lining the uterine cavity undergoes marked alterations in response to the changing plasma levels of ovarian hormones. Concomitant with the decrease in plasma estrogen and progesterone and the decline of corpus luteum function in the late lteal phase, intense vasospasm occurs in the spiral arterioles supplying blood to the endometrium, followed byan eschemic necrosis, endometrial desquamation, and bleeding. This vasospasm is caused by locally synthesized prostaglandins. (thus by taking motrin or advil can decrease prostaglandin synthesis and symptoms)
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Friday, March 26, 2010
Sodas in School Vending Machines Traded for Chemically Laden Diet Drinks – Pick Your Poison, Kids!
A major soft drink manufacturer announced it will help kids to lead healthier lives by offering “low-calorie nutritious beverage choices” in school vending machines. Sugar soft-drinks will be removed and replaced with a variety of beverages, including juice, plus artificially sweetened sodas, sports drinks and iced teas. While I applaud the notion of getting rid of sugary soft drinks filled with high fructose corn syrup, the idea of replacing them with artificially sweetened drinks – especially for children – should not be called a “healthy” alternative, but rather a dangerous exposure to chemicals.
Is over-consumption of sugar a problem in our country? You bet. Sugar consumption has reached astonishingly unhealthy levels, with the average American eating 160 pounds of sugar yearly. Not all sugar is as obvious as the amount we get in a soft drink - it is often disguised in ingredient lists or hidden in seemingly innocent food items such as crackers, condiments, and salad dressings. Our insatiable appetite for sugar has far-reaching toxic implications for our health. There is an especially alarming link between sugar consumption and the cancer epidemic.
According to Dr. Russell Blaylock, an oncologist, brain surgeon, and neuroscientist, sugar directly fuels cancer cell growth, Dr. Michael Galitzer expands on this point by explaining that while healthy cells utilize oxygen to create energy, cancer cells create energy and thrive by fermenting sugar. Cristiana Paul, M.S., a certified nutritionist, explains that high blood sugar is taken in by precancerous cells causing them to multiply faster than they would if less sugar was available. Sugar also causes a damaging spike in the hormone insulin. The excess insulin stimulates cell growth, cell division, and the proliferation of cancerous cells. While these experts agree it is imperative for cancer patients to completely remove sugar from their diet, it is also imperative for healthy individuals to do the same in order to reduce the risk of cancer.
Reduce the sugar and provide healthier alternatives... yes, I agree. But diet sodas, teas and sports drinks? Really? Chemically produced artificial sweeteners are not a healthy alternative for sugar! Dr. Blaylock cites a recent study from one of the biggest cancer research institutes in the world, The Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences in Italy. They tested aspartame on the largest number of rats ever and found it increases cancer incidence from doses equivalent to drinking diet sodas. It also showed an increase specifically in lymphoma, leukemia, breast cancer, and brain cancer. And from previous studies, Dr. Blaylock cites neurological brain damage from aspartame. Research by Dr. Richard Wurtman, a physician-researcher at MIT, demonstrated that aspartame is not only a neurological toxin, but it also increases appetite. So artificial sweeteners derived from chemicals can actually contribute to weight gain.
Why should we choose between two types of poison; sugar or artificial sweeteners? And why would anyone even consider placing either of these poisons into a vending machine for our children to consume? Choose water! Milk! Unsweetened juice! Or if you want something sweet, choose stevia, agave, or an All Natural Sweetener.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Is over-consumption of sugar a problem in our country? You bet. Sugar consumption has reached astonishingly unhealthy levels, with the average American eating 160 pounds of sugar yearly. Not all sugar is as obvious as the amount we get in a soft drink - it is often disguised in ingredient lists or hidden in seemingly innocent food items such as crackers, condiments, and salad dressings. Our insatiable appetite for sugar has far-reaching toxic implications for our health. There is an especially alarming link between sugar consumption and the cancer epidemic.
According to Dr. Russell Blaylock, an oncologist, brain surgeon, and neuroscientist, sugar directly fuels cancer cell growth, Dr. Michael Galitzer expands on this point by explaining that while healthy cells utilize oxygen to create energy, cancer cells create energy and thrive by fermenting sugar. Cristiana Paul, M.S., a certified nutritionist, explains that high blood sugar is taken in by precancerous cells causing them to multiply faster than they would if less sugar was available. Sugar also causes a damaging spike in the hormone insulin. The excess insulin stimulates cell growth, cell division, and the proliferation of cancerous cells. While these experts agree it is imperative for cancer patients to completely remove sugar from their diet, it is also imperative for healthy individuals to do the same in order to reduce the risk of cancer.
Reduce the sugar and provide healthier alternatives... yes, I agree. But diet sodas, teas and sports drinks? Really? Chemically produced artificial sweeteners are not a healthy alternative for sugar! Dr. Blaylock cites a recent study from one of the biggest cancer research institutes in the world, The Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences in Italy. They tested aspartame on the largest number of rats ever and found it increases cancer incidence from doses equivalent to drinking diet sodas. It also showed an increase specifically in lymphoma, leukemia, breast cancer, and brain cancer. And from previous studies, Dr. Blaylock cites neurological brain damage from aspartame. Research by Dr. Richard Wurtman, a physician-researcher at MIT, demonstrated that aspartame is not only a neurological toxin, but it also increases appetite. So artificial sweeteners derived from chemicals can actually contribute to weight gain.
Why should we choose between two types of poison; sugar or artificial sweeteners? And why would anyone even consider placing either of these poisons into a vending machine for our children to consume? Choose water! Milk! Unsweetened juice! Or if you want something sweet, choose stevia, agave, or an All Natural Sweetener.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Cancer is only transformation, unless it kills you first.
All of the genes active in cancer are active at only one other time in life. They are all switched on in the high estrogen/low progesterone state of the first nine weeks of life in utero when we are neither man nor woman. Since nature abhors a vacuum and is about duality, we must be one or the other -- man or woman.
We can’t remain in limbo for more than nine weeks or nature will take over, trying out combinational strategies in an effort to make us become “something”. Cancer is no plague on mankind, it is life, it’s just the new you. It’s a group of cells turned on to rapid unchecked growth by genes that are exactly the same in fetal tissue. That’s why they call them fetal oncogenes in research.
Grandma’s shift to an expanding middle, a little thinner hair on top, and a few chin whiskers was part of her salvation. When estrogen declines and progesterone production stops, all that’s left is the testosterone that once upon a time fed our libido along with an abundance of estrogen balanced by progesterone. In the grand scheme of things, old women – aren’t women at all past a certain point. If this phase-shift happens quickly -- say after decades of childbearing and breastfeeding --some of us make it through it without getting cancer.
That’s also why cancer isn’t something you can kill like a germ with an antibiotic. You can’t burn it, poison it or take it away because it is us -- or at least what’s become of us in the absence of performing a role in nature. Cancer is actually the genetic creativity shown in nature when an organism ceases to fit into The Plan.
Bio-identical progesterone replacement is a shoe-in as a cancer treatment because cancer was never about cellular overgrowth. It has always been about not enough death-- in the presence of overgrowth.
But cutting edge medicine has never equated menopause with cancer, even though cancer strikes at the time in a woman’s life when her hormones are disappearing.
The Standard of Care treatment plan is to further remove her estrogen. Taking estrogen away from women, or selectively blocking it without ever considering the synergy between the estrogen and progesterone, the most selective potent apoptotic factor known in the human body, is not the way to eradicate cancer.
It’s the way to cause heart disease and Alzheimer’s.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
We can’t remain in limbo for more than nine weeks or nature will take over, trying out combinational strategies in an effort to make us become “something”. Cancer is no plague on mankind, it is life, it’s just the new you. It’s a group of cells turned on to rapid unchecked growth by genes that are exactly the same in fetal tissue. That’s why they call them fetal oncogenes in research.
Grandma’s shift to an expanding middle, a little thinner hair on top, and a few chin whiskers was part of her salvation. When estrogen declines and progesterone production stops, all that’s left is the testosterone that once upon a time fed our libido along with an abundance of estrogen balanced by progesterone. In the grand scheme of things, old women – aren’t women at all past a certain point. If this phase-shift happens quickly -- say after decades of childbearing and breastfeeding --some of us make it through it without getting cancer.
That’s also why cancer isn’t something you can kill like a germ with an antibiotic. You can’t burn it, poison it or take it away because it is us -- or at least what’s become of us in the absence of performing a role in nature. Cancer is actually the genetic creativity shown in nature when an organism ceases to fit into The Plan.
Bio-identical progesterone replacement is a shoe-in as a cancer treatment because cancer was never about cellular overgrowth. It has always been about not enough death-- in the presence of overgrowth.
But cutting edge medicine has never equated menopause with cancer, even though cancer strikes at the time in a woman’s life when her hormones are disappearing.
The Standard of Care treatment plan is to further remove her estrogen. Taking estrogen away from women, or selectively blocking it without ever considering the synergy between the estrogen and progesterone, the most selective potent apoptotic factor known in the human body, is not the way to eradicate cancer.
It’s the way to cause heart disease and Alzheimer’s.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Cancer and Your Hormones
Cells, fed by estrogen and insulin that continue to grow in the absence of progesterone past a programmed growth phase, have all sorts of potential for genetic and immunological mistakes to be made.
We call those mistakes cancer.
In reality, the mutational changes that are the hallmark of metastatic cancer are not caused by mistakes during repeated cellular divisions or assaults by toxic pollutants, rather those changes are caused by the fall-off of regulatory hormones that control the switches on your very DNA for the growth and death of your cells.Knowing that progesterone deprivation is the key to cancer at midlife for women makes the research showing that women who have given birth multiple times, and thereby experienced long periods of placental progesterone, have much less cancer --it makes those findings make sense in a whole new way. When we examine the statistic that the incidence of breast cancer in our grandmother’s day was 1 in 21, and in our mother’s generation it was up to 1 in 18, it becomes painfully obvious that our standing at 1 in 8 (in one generation) is self-inflicted.
Our lack of childbearing has prevented the long periods of progesterone exposure necessary to buy time. Repeated pregnancies and bouts of lactation added up to a savings of at least 150 eggs a month or 1350 per birth, and if Grandma nursed for a year or so, another 2100. That means a savings of about 3500 eggs per child. Do the math. Grandma, in her day, would have given birth four to eight times; maybe Mom had three or four. That’s 10,000 to 15,000 eggs for Mom and twice that for Grandma. That means Mom and Grandma extended their reproductive lives at least two extra years for every child made viable. Eight children would have extended Grandma’s hormonal protection sixteen extra years. Not a bad deal, all in all. That formula pretty much explains not only the above statistics, but why we experience peri-menopause for fifteen years and why they, on the other hand, went from child bearing to menopause at a later age and with fewer physiological repercussions. So the smug assumption that if our mothers and our grandmothers were just fine without hormone replacement then we will be too, may be far from a reasonable one. For all time,the only way to beat the reaper was to rack up points by winning at the game of life. For a woman--or any animal, for that matter--that meant to be fruitful and multiply.
Apparently, biology is destiny.
Evidence and logic amply support the theory that random and irregular ovulation due to declining egg stores creates a scenario that features an over-abundance of estrogen hanging in the balance against a hit-or-miss supply of progesterone for a good ten to fifteen years. .
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
We call those mistakes cancer.
In reality, the mutational changes that are the hallmark of metastatic cancer are not caused by mistakes during repeated cellular divisions or assaults by toxic pollutants, rather those changes are caused by the fall-off of regulatory hormones that control the switches on your very DNA for the growth and death of your cells.Knowing that progesterone deprivation is the key to cancer at midlife for women makes the research showing that women who have given birth multiple times, and thereby experienced long periods of placental progesterone, have much less cancer --it makes those findings make sense in a whole new way. When we examine the statistic that the incidence of breast cancer in our grandmother’s day was 1 in 21, and in our mother’s generation it was up to 1 in 18, it becomes painfully obvious that our standing at 1 in 8 (in one generation) is self-inflicted.
Our lack of childbearing has prevented the long periods of progesterone exposure necessary to buy time. Repeated pregnancies and bouts of lactation added up to a savings of at least 150 eggs a month or 1350 per birth, and if Grandma nursed for a year or so, another 2100. That means a savings of about 3500 eggs per child. Do the math. Grandma, in her day, would have given birth four to eight times; maybe Mom had three or four. That’s 10,000 to 15,000 eggs for Mom and twice that for Grandma. That means Mom and Grandma extended their reproductive lives at least two extra years for every child made viable. Eight children would have extended Grandma’s hormonal protection sixteen extra years. Not a bad deal, all in all. That formula pretty much explains not only the above statistics, but why we experience peri-menopause for fifteen years and why they, on the other hand, went from child bearing to menopause at a later age and with fewer physiological repercussions. So the smug assumption that if our mothers and our grandmothers were just fine without hormone replacement then we will be too, may be far from a reasonable one. For all time,the only way to beat the reaper was to rack up points by winning at the game of life. For a woman--or any animal, for that matter--that meant to be fruitful and multiply.
Apparently, biology is destiny.
Evidence and logic amply support the theory that random and irregular ovulation due to declining egg stores creates a scenario that features an over-abundance of estrogen hanging in the balance against a hit-or-miss supply of progesterone for a good ten to fifteen years. .
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Everything Has A Rhythm In Life Including Hormones
The problem is one of “priming.”
The estrogen must create the internal environmental potential for the progesterone to wipe out the growth and start over again. One just doesn’t work properly without the other. They are for lack of a better term, “in tandem” rhythmically as long as a woman is young, healthy and fertile. It is impossible to be one out of that list of three without the other two.
That’s why the menstrual cycle has two peaks that cease to be when one goes missing.
Everything alive has a rhythm.
The world as we know it, from bacteria to blue whales, the whole universe, in fact, is all about timing, within each of us and in relation to everything outside us. The individual rhythms overlap into larger patterns that then weave in and out of each other. Human beings swim in and out of this sea of rhythms. The moon provides more lightwith its full face and sure enough as the new moon ends, every twenty-eight days females bleed.
The circadian clock in every cell of our body measures one spin of the planet, and the moon tracks the repeating 28 of those days 13 times in one revolution around the sun. In the female menstrual cycle, there’s a peak of estrogen and then a peak of progesterone. If one imagines that picture strung together over a year, one month connected to the next, there’s a rhythm of unending ups and downs. It’s a balancing act.
Estrogen’s solo in the first half of our cycle sets the stage for pregnancy all over our body. Estrogen grows, hence its reputation in cancer research. But estrogen, by way of creating progesterone receptors, has sealed its own fate. Progesterone generated by the popping of the egg, steps on stage to end that song of creation.The progesterone that we make naturally, in the second half of our cycle when we’re young, protects us from cancer on the molecular level. Natural progesterone is a genomic effecter for apoptosis. (In English: natural progesterone latches on to switches on the genes called promoter regions for “cell suicide.”) Cell suicide is the mechanism that causes the death of the one for the good of the many.
Natural progesterone in a normal menstrual cycle controls the destruction phase which kicks in about half way through your cycle when no conception has occurred. It’s only when we stop popping eggs and producing progesterone regularly as we head toward menopause -- that estrogen can continue to grow cells unchecked.
And this doesn’t just happen in the uterus, either.
These rapidly multiplying estrogen-driven cells exist in our breasts and brain, too, and they have progesterone receptors on them. The receptors are waiting for progesterone to signal the final act. The chemical listening for that signal from progesterone will go on indefinitely as long as estrogen continues to pour, unless we artificially replace from the outside the natural hormones we lack.
Does estrogen cause cancer? No or all young women would be dead.
Can estrogen cause cancer? Yes, but only in the absence of progesterone.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
The estrogen must create the internal environmental potential for the progesterone to wipe out the growth and start over again. One just doesn’t work properly without the other. They are for lack of a better term, “in tandem” rhythmically as long as a woman is young, healthy and fertile. It is impossible to be one out of that list of three without the other two.
That’s why the menstrual cycle has two peaks that cease to be when one goes missing.
Everything alive has a rhythm.
The world as we know it, from bacteria to blue whales, the whole universe, in fact, is all about timing, within each of us and in relation to everything outside us. The individual rhythms overlap into larger patterns that then weave in and out of each other. Human beings swim in and out of this sea of rhythms. The moon provides more lightwith its full face and sure enough as the new moon ends, every twenty-eight days females bleed.
The circadian clock in every cell of our body measures one spin of the planet, and the moon tracks the repeating 28 of those days 13 times in one revolution around the sun. In the female menstrual cycle, there’s a peak of estrogen and then a peak of progesterone. If one imagines that picture strung together over a year, one month connected to the next, there’s a rhythm of unending ups and downs. It’s a balancing act.
Estrogen’s solo in the first half of our cycle sets the stage for pregnancy all over our body. Estrogen grows, hence its reputation in cancer research. But estrogen, by way of creating progesterone receptors, has sealed its own fate. Progesterone generated by the popping of the egg, steps on stage to end that song of creation.The progesterone that we make naturally, in the second half of our cycle when we’re young, protects us from cancer on the molecular level. Natural progesterone is a genomic effecter for apoptosis. (In English: natural progesterone latches on to switches on the genes called promoter regions for “cell suicide.”) Cell suicide is the mechanism that causes the death of the one for the good of the many.
Natural progesterone in a normal menstrual cycle controls the destruction phase which kicks in about half way through your cycle when no conception has occurred. It’s only when we stop popping eggs and producing progesterone regularly as we head toward menopause -- that estrogen can continue to grow cells unchecked.
And this doesn’t just happen in the uterus, either.
These rapidly multiplying estrogen-driven cells exist in our breasts and brain, too, and they have progesterone receptors on them. The receptors are waiting for progesterone to signal the final act. The chemical listening for that signal from progesterone will go on indefinitely as long as estrogen continues to pour, unless we artificially replace from the outside the natural hormones we lack.
Does estrogen cause cancer? No or all young women would be dead.
Can estrogen cause cancer? Yes, but only in the absence of progesterone.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
How it All Works
While estrogen and testosterone levels slide steadily downward from twenty-six years of age on, when human growth hormone slows, the biggest difference between a woman in her twenties and a woman in her late thirties is in the levels of progesterone she can produce.
In a normal twenty-year old, the act of ovulating -- which produces progesterone, once a month for fourteen days -- is dependent on a system of feedback loops between the ovaries and the brain which are regulated by levels of estrogen. Estrogen production is directly dependent upon the number of eggs a woman has left every month after ovulation, deducted from the finite number we are born with.
Ovulation uses up about 150 every month in an effort to produce one “good” one. From conception until puberty, eggs are destroyed by a genetic clock. As fetuses, in utero, we had about one million eggs, but by the time we were born -- we were down to half a million. At puberty we’re down again by half, to a quarter of a million. Every seven years after puberty the number of eggs diminishes by one half of the declining baseuntil we reach about thirty-three, when the decline picks-up speed, and the number of eggs are halved every three years.
In the ten to fifteen years before we actually hit the wall sometime in our fifties, and run out of eggs, the declining estrogen falls in step-fashion with the declining egg base. Therefore, ovulating the remaining eggs gets “iffier” as time goes by (since the system is run by estrogen) and fertility is truly at risk by the time we are in our midthirties; because we don’t have enough estrogen to tell the brain to send the signal to ovulate, at least not on a regular basis.
So, as we’re running out of eggs, the estrogen signal from our ovaries to our brain is weak. The weak estrogen signal is ultimately responsible for the loss of progesterone since progesterone seeps from the blister that housed the egg. -- No pop, no progesterone. The first hint of estrogen depletion is shorter or longer menstrual periods as I mentioned before. The other earliest symptoms are sleeplessness, inability to concentrate or “mind noise,” loss of libido and weight gain. And let us not forget the wrinkles.
In peri-menopause (age thirty-three to fifty), internal estrogen levels certainly aren’t high enough anymore to reliably ovulate, but they are just high enough for too long to be “normal.” Normal levels of progesterone would bring it down. But we don’t have normal levels anymore. It’s like a game of dominoes.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
In a normal twenty-year old, the act of ovulating -- which produces progesterone, once a month for fourteen days -- is dependent on a system of feedback loops between the ovaries and the brain which are regulated by levels of estrogen. Estrogen production is directly dependent upon the number of eggs a woman has left every month after ovulation, deducted from the finite number we are born with.
Ovulation uses up about 150 every month in an effort to produce one “good” one. From conception until puberty, eggs are destroyed by a genetic clock. As fetuses, in utero, we had about one million eggs, but by the time we were born -- we were down to half a million. At puberty we’re down again by half, to a quarter of a million. Every seven years after puberty the number of eggs diminishes by one half of the declining baseuntil we reach about thirty-three, when the decline picks-up speed, and the number of eggs are halved every three years.
In the ten to fifteen years before we actually hit the wall sometime in our fifties, and run out of eggs, the declining estrogen falls in step-fashion with the declining egg base. Therefore, ovulating the remaining eggs gets “iffier” as time goes by (since the system is run by estrogen) and fertility is truly at risk by the time we are in our midthirties; because we don’t have enough estrogen to tell the brain to send the signal to ovulate, at least not on a regular basis.
So, as we’re running out of eggs, the estrogen signal from our ovaries to our brain is weak. The weak estrogen signal is ultimately responsible for the loss of progesterone since progesterone seeps from the blister that housed the egg. -- No pop, no progesterone. The first hint of estrogen depletion is shorter or longer menstrual periods as I mentioned before. The other earliest symptoms are sleeplessness, inability to concentrate or “mind noise,” loss of libido and weight gain. And let us not forget the wrinkles.
In peri-menopause (age thirty-three to fifty), internal estrogen levels certainly aren’t high enough anymore to reliably ovulate, but they are just high enough for too long to be “normal.” Normal levels of progesterone would bring it down. But we don’t have normal levels anymore. It’s like a game of dominoes.
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Hormones and Your Health
T.S. Wiley before the Special Committee on Aging in front of the United States Senate April 19, 2007
I prescribe to my patients a new method of hormone replacement therapy(HRT) called the Wiley Protocol for women to use as a more accurate form of replacement for lost endocrine function. The remedies available to women suffering from hormone deficiency are woefully inadequate. The commercial pharmaceutical offerings are either bio-identical and too low in dosage to have efficacy, or synthetic drugs, far too dangerous to take. Here in the United States, there are over 40 million women between the ages of 40 and 60.
Worldwide, about 25 million women enter menopause annually. It is estimated that by the year 2030, that number will increase to 47 million women per year. Since 1900, in the developed countries, the life expectancy of women has increase from age 47 to well over age 80, however, the average onset of menopause has remained at 50 as recorded for the last 150 years. That means, overall, women are living at least thirty years longer than they did at the turn of the century.
Our society has never felt the impact of the majority of women living 30 or more years in a hormone deficient state. It won’t be pretty. Right now, modern medicine keeps us propped up with antibiotics and surgery, thanks to blood transfusion and anesthesia. But just being alive does not assure “quality of life.” Without it, extended lifespan is far less than a gift. It’s estimated that eighty percent of women experience a variety of transiently debilitating symptoms in menopause and 30% of those are classified as severe.
About ten years before women ever have a hot flash or a migraine, we have odd, too-short menstrual periods, we’re up half of every night and we start to look old. And almost as soon as we start to look old, we start to feel old. Exhaustion coupled with plummeting sex hormones creates a life in tatters and a mind like Swiss cheese. Sex would be a memory, if we could remember anything. Our joints twinge and, worst of all, we can’t fall asleep or stay asleep. It is anecdotal common knowledge that older people wander around all night limping and bumping into things when they should be out like a light.
Given the evidence that these symptoms of menopause, which can begin for women as early as their late thirties, are the same as the daily challenges the elderly face -- that we become, in fact, “old” when our hormones start to plummet -- we can probably assume we’re going to be sick, too, if we aren’t already. Because it is, again, anecdotal common knowledge that old really equals sick in the preponderance of cases -- and sick and old in our culture means usually means cancer, diabetes, heart disease, glaucoma, depression, even Alzheimer’s, and since we’ve established that menopausal symptoms are the same symptoms “old” people experience, then, menopause must really equal sick, and since all those outcomes above of “sick” can be life-threatening, menopause, itself, must really be life-threatening.
If menopause might really equal cancer, diabetes, heart disease, glaucoma, depression, and Alzheimer’s, why is it, then, that in those ads for “menopause products”, and in the health advice from the North American Menopause Society (NAMS), the Women’s Health Intiative (WHI), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), no one ever mentions any of the life-threatening disabilities associated with hormonal decline and urges women to accurately replace those hormones that have gone missing?
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
I prescribe to my patients a new method of hormone replacement therapy(HRT) called the Wiley Protocol for women to use as a more accurate form of replacement for lost endocrine function. The remedies available to women suffering from hormone deficiency are woefully inadequate. The commercial pharmaceutical offerings are either bio-identical and too low in dosage to have efficacy, or synthetic drugs, far too dangerous to take. Here in the United States, there are over 40 million women between the ages of 40 and 60.
Worldwide, about 25 million women enter menopause annually. It is estimated that by the year 2030, that number will increase to 47 million women per year. Since 1900, in the developed countries, the life expectancy of women has increase from age 47 to well over age 80, however, the average onset of menopause has remained at 50 as recorded for the last 150 years. That means, overall, women are living at least thirty years longer than they did at the turn of the century.
Our society has never felt the impact of the majority of women living 30 or more years in a hormone deficient state. It won’t be pretty. Right now, modern medicine keeps us propped up with antibiotics and surgery, thanks to blood transfusion and anesthesia. But just being alive does not assure “quality of life.” Without it, extended lifespan is far less than a gift. It’s estimated that eighty percent of women experience a variety of transiently debilitating symptoms in menopause and 30% of those are classified as severe.
About ten years before women ever have a hot flash or a migraine, we have odd, too-short menstrual periods, we’re up half of every night and we start to look old. And almost as soon as we start to look old, we start to feel old. Exhaustion coupled with plummeting sex hormones creates a life in tatters and a mind like Swiss cheese. Sex would be a memory, if we could remember anything. Our joints twinge and, worst of all, we can’t fall asleep or stay asleep. It is anecdotal common knowledge that older people wander around all night limping and bumping into things when they should be out like a light.
Given the evidence that these symptoms of menopause, which can begin for women as early as their late thirties, are the same as the daily challenges the elderly face -- that we become, in fact, “old” when our hormones start to plummet -- we can probably assume we’re going to be sick, too, if we aren’t already. Because it is, again, anecdotal common knowledge that old really equals sick in the preponderance of cases -- and sick and old in our culture means usually means cancer, diabetes, heart disease, glaucoma, depression, even Alzheimer’s, and since we’ve established that menopausal symptoms are the same symptoms “old” people experience, then, menopause must really equal sick, and since all those outcomes above of “sick” can be life-threatening, menopause, itself, must really be life-threatening.
If menopause might really equal cancer, diabetes, heart disease, glaucoma, depression, and Alzheimer’s, why is it, then, that in those ads for “menopause products”, and in the health advice from the North American Menopause Society (NAMS), the Women’s Health Intiative (WHI), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), no one ever mentions any of the life-threatening disabilities associated with hormonal decline and urges women to accurately replace those hormones that have gone missing?
Call my office in Wilmington (815) 476-5210 or Lombard (630) 627-3700 to set up an appointment or email me at jones.gretchen@gmail.com
