August 11th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Fascinating new research from the National Institutes of Health finds that women’s cholesterol levels correspond with cyclic changes in estrogen levels. Total cholesterol levels can vary by as much as 19% over the course of the cycle.
The researchers found that as the level of estrogen rises, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol also rises, peaking at the time of ovulation.
In a typical cycle, estrogen levels steadily increase as the egg cell matures, peaking just before ovulation. Previous studies have shown that taking formulations which contain estrogen — oral contraceptives or menopausal hormone therapy — can affect cholesterol levels. However, the results of studies examining the effects of naturally occurring hormone levels on cholesterol have not been conclusive. According to the NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, high blood cholesterol levels raise the risk for heart disease.
. . . .
In contrast, total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels — as well as another form of blood fat known as triglycerides — declined as estrogen levels rose. The decline was not immediate, beginning a couple of days after the estrogen peak at ovulation.
These findings provide another reason for girls and women to learn to track their cycles, so their blood tests can be interpreted more precisely.
It also gives more weight to the frequent assertion of members of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research that menstruation matters — and is worthy of our study — in part because it is not an event isolated in the uterus and vagina, but a complex part of the endocrine system that has effects on health and well-being throughout a woman’s body.
Tags: cholesterol, endocrine system, estrogen, hormones, menstrual cycle, ovulation
Posted in Health Care, Menstruation, New Research, ovulation | 1 Comment »
July 19th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
It’s been two weeks since Chris Hitchcock and I returned from San Diego’s recent Endocrine Society meetings. We are feeling incredibly happy with the success of our protracted, intense commitments to a controlled trial of oral micronized progesterone (marketed in the USA and Canada as Prometrium®) for night sweats and hot flushes/flashes. At the Endocrine Society we presented the first-ever trial showing that the molecularly identical progesterone by mouth is effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms (VMS = hot flushes/flashes and night sweats)(1). We were also invited to present our data at an Endocrine Society-sponsored press conference.
Why did a scientific study require so much from us? First, this trial started in 2003 as the initial scientific venture of the newly founded Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research–thus CeMCOR’s reputation became tied to this trial. Second, despite concerted efforts, we were never able to obtain peer reviewed funding for this study—we successfully supported it with individual private donations. Finally, because of the “estrogen myth” and its corollary negatives about progesterone, I wanted to gain additional accurate information about how Prometrium® works in women’s cardiovascular system from this same study. For that reason we decided to enroll only very healthy women who were within 1-10 years since their final flow—they had to be non-smokers, without obesity, diabetes, or high blood pressure, and further to have normal measured waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol, and fasting blood sugar levels. Therefore many women were interested but few were eligible. Continue reading...
Tags: CeMCOR, clinical trial, estrogen, guest post, hormones, hot flashes/flushes, Menopause, progesterone
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Pharmaceutical | 1 Comment »
June 23rd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Wellcome Library, London // CC 2.0
The Endocrine Society has released a new, peer-reviewed statement on the risks and benefits of hormone therapy for menopausal women. The upshot is that risks and benefits vary depending on the age of the patient and the length of time since menopause:
One interesting finding . . . was that women who start hormone therapy within 10 years of menopause have a 30% to 40% reduction in total mortality.
In addition, in the 50 to 55 age group the task force concluded that hormone therapy reduced hot flashes and overactive bladder and that vaginal estrogen reduced recurrent urinary tract infections. The evidence also showed that hormone therapy reduced pain on intercourse and improved quality of life.
Given that there are thousands of lawsuits pending over the role of HT in breast cancer, I was especially interested in this nugget of new information:
“Our conclusion is that [the estrogen/progestin hormone combination] didn’t cause breast cancer — it caused preexisting tumors to grow to a size where they became detectable.”
Tags: Endocrine Society, estrogen, hormone therapy, hormones, Menopause, postmenopause
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Pharmaceutical | 3 Comments »
May 13th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Jerilynn Prior, M.D., Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research
Yes! I’m sure you can hear my whoop of excitement and vindication. Finally, something negative about estrogen and positive about progesterone in the mainstream media. According to this article by Emily Anthes in the current issue of Scientific American: Mind, women’s risk for addiction, and potential for successful withdrawal, are both linked to our menstrual cycle hormones. Estrogen increases women’s addictive behaviors while progesterone assists with successful addiction recovery.
Why am I feeling vindicated? Because I recently declared that hot flushes/flashes and night sweats are estrogen addiction (1). That wild but supportable hypothesis is based on the evidence that prolonged or high-dose estrogen exposure is required for hot flushes to occur. But, it is the subsequent abrupt decrease in estrogen levels that triggers vasomotor symptoms. Drug exposure—drug withdrawal symptoms. And do women feel high on estrogen? Perhaps. Clearly the withdrawal is miserable—as one woman said, “I continued to take it only because I couldn’t stand being off the hormone. I really couldn’t function.” (p. 2130 (2). Just ask any woman taking estrogen for hot flushes who has tried to stop it. Continue reading...
Tags: addiction, anatomy, estrogen, guest post, hormones, physiology, progesterone
Posted in Menopause, New Research, anatomy, magazines | 4 Comments »
May 10th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Barbara Sommer, University of California-Davis
Why is it that assertions about hormones and behavior lead us to readily suspend our capacity for critical thought? It seems like folks will accept just about any assertion with regard to the power of estrogen and the fluctuation of the menstrual cycle.
My observations over several decades (I am nearly forty years post-doctorate) have been reassuring. I have not seen women crushed in the working and professional worlds by the demands of their physiology. In fact it looks like women might be moving towards running the world, at least in those areas where they have access to education. Nevertheless, it rankles when a journal of some credibility makes assertions based on scanty evidence.
It is difficult to evaluate the quality of the research underlying the claims of the article “Is Estrogen The New Ritalin?” in the current issue of Scientific American: Mind. The title is cute. A writer for the New Yorker recently claimed that “White is the New Black.” Do we believe it? The article was provocative, and did not pretend to be a scientific piece of work. In contrast, the estrogen piece, by appearing under the prestigious banner of the Scientific American, carries an imprint of scientific credibility. The first paragraph claims the menstrual cycle might affect the brain as much as caffeine, methamphetamines, and Ritalin. Nowhere in the study is there any indication that estrogen levels or even menstrual fluctuation effects were actually compared with the above substances. The author also claims that this study is “the first to show that cognition is tied to estrogen levels in people” – perhaps the first because no one else has done a good job of it, but certainly not for a failing to try. There are many published studies claiming that estrogen affects cognitive function.
The central problem with this report is that the scientific community has not vetted the research. There is nothing to suggest that it was subject to review. It has not been published – at least nowhere that could be found by this writer with access to a university library. I don’t expect a popular version of scientific research to include information about whether there were adequate controls for subject selection, for practice effects on the task performance, or that the claim of population dopamine levels was accurate, and whatever measure was used to estimate estrogen levels was reliable. But someone needs to have looked at those aspects of the research. Without that, we end up with questionable conclusions at best, and junk science at worst.
Tags: addiction, critical thinking, estrogen, hormones, physiology, Ritalin
Posted in Menstruation, New Research, Pharmaceutical, anatomy, magazines | Comments Off
April 23rd, 2010 by Chris Hitchcock
Recently the New York Times published a long article entitled the Estrogen Dilemma. It’s an article rich with many issues, and previous blogs have critiqued its uncritical acceptance of the timing hypothesis, and its failure to distinguish between the transient symptoms of perimenopause, early menopause, and the rest of your long, healthy, post-menopausal life.
But it is quite remarkable to me that, when speculating about potential hormonal treatment for poor memory and issues of staying on task, the only steroid hormone that seemed to be on anyone’s radar was estrogen. The writer had a lot of space (7600 words) and gave the scientist a lot of freedom to speculate, so I’m guessing that the absence of progesterone in the article is a true representation of her conceptual blind-spot. Progesterone was mentioned a few times, in the context of protection from uterine cancer, and in the context of using MPA (a synthetic relative) as a possible scapegoat in interpreting the WHI randomized hormone therapy trial data. But never did I see any suggestion that progesterone might be anything other than a necessary evil.
In fact, there are some intriguing new research areas that look at progesterone as therapy in neurological domains. Continue reading...
Tags: big pharma, estrogen, hormones, neurology, progesterone
Posted in Menopause, Menstruation, New Research, Newspapers | Comments Off
April 19th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Jerilynn C. Prior, Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research
I just read “The Estrogen Dilemma” in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, and I feel like weeping—in sorrow and deep sadness. This article by Cynthia Gorney is about energetic, intelligent women who feel they must take estrogen in order to survive perimenopause yet have deep worries about its risks. I know personally the anguishing changes that erupt during perimenopause. “The Estrogen Dilemma” also evoked my frustration and even rage. It is wrong that symptomatic women in the midst of the long and stormy midlife transition have to face a conundrum—to take estrogen or not. It arises from a Nixonian-style cover-up of three proven and important-for-women truths: 1) Perimenopause causes higher and not lower estrogen levels. (By perimenopause I mean the transition from fertile menstrual cycles to menopause, or the life phase beginning one year beyond the final menstrual flow.) 2) Progesterone, estrogen’s essential partner hormone, in contrast to estrogen, truly is lower in perimenopause. 3) Women survive perimenopause and “graduate” into a less symptomatic menopause. Continue reading...
Tags: big pharma, estrogen, guest post, hormones, Menopause, perimenopause, progesterone
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Newspapers, Pharmaceutical | 2 Comments »
April 18th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Paula S. Derry, Ph.D.
Déjà vu
An article in today’s New York Times Magazine recounts the author’s experience with a debilitating depression that began during her perimenopause, the transitional time leading up to menopause. For her, prescription estrogen was a life-saver that alleviated her symptoms. The article places her experience in the context of research on the Timing Hypothesis, an idea that arose after the Women’s Health Initiative, or WHI, research project. WHI clinical trials documented that hormone supplements after menopause did not, as had previously been assumed, lower a woman’s risk of heart disease. Heart disease risk was not lower, and, in fact, when a number of chronic illnesses were considered together, the medication did more harm than good overall. The Timing Hypothesis is the idea that the WHI was fundamentally flawed, because hormones must be started right around the time of menopause to have a health-promoting effect and the subjects in WHI were on average over 60; if started when a woman is older, when chronic illnesses have already started, the hormones are actually harmful rather than helpful. The Sunday New York Times article presents this idea uncritically, without quoting any of the many experts who do not find it plausible or convincing, and, in addition, presents a lurid, unscientific description of perimenopausal hormonal dynamics with words like “ricocheting hormones” and an “upheaval” that causes a “hellacious strain” on the brain. The author suggests that WHI was a poorly planned study that asked the wrong questions with the wrong methodology. The Timing Hypothesis, if true, might lead to a cure for Alzheimers and have other important health repercussions. Continue reading...
Tags: depression, estrogen, guest post, heart disease, hormone therapy, hormones, Menopause, perimenopause, timing hypothesis, WHI
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Newspapers, Pharmaceutical | 1 Comment »
March 1st, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
POZ magazine and poz.com claim to be the leading publication and website in the U.S. about HIV/AIDS. The March 2010 issue has a great article by Suzanne Bopp about menstruation, menopause, and HIV. As with medical and cultural knowledge about HIV itself, understanding of how HIV affects menstruation continues to evolve. Irregular menstruation is a common complaint of women with HIV, but
“[Today] we have a better grasp of factors associated with abnormal menstrual cycles: substance abuse, AIDS, wasting disease—it relates more to overall nutritional status,” says Kristine Patterson, MD, clinical assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. “If the body doesn’t have enough fat, production of estrogen and progesterone shuts down,” Patterson says. This can happen anytime a woman loses too much weight, and it is exacerbated by advanced HIV disease, which causes the body to burn calories more rapidly.
. . . .
Researchers do know, however, that female hormones affect the virus—and that sex hormones generally have an impact on immunity. “We know that where a premenopausal woman is in her menstrual cycle affects her infectiousness,” Patterson says. “Estrogen plays a role—not only in HIV and the interplay of HIV and meds, but also in [the likelihood of] women transmitting and acquiring HIV.” Estrogen’s role may explain why women progress to AIDS at lower viral loads than men.
Highly recommended. Read the whole thing.
Tags: AIDS, estrogen, Health Care, HIV, hormones, Menopause, Menstruation
Posted in Health Care, Menopause, Menstruation, New Research, Sex | Comments Off
February 16th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Tags: advertising, anatomy, estrogen, Menstruation
Posted in Advertising, Menstruation, Objects, anatomy | Comments Off
December 10th, 2009 by Laura Wershler
Mammograms showing healthy (left) and (right) cancerous breast. Courtesy of the National Cancer Institute.
Can having too many menstrual cycles give you breast cancer? That’s what one might conclude from two unrelated articles that appeared in national newspapers this week.
First was Nicholas D. Kristof’s Op-Ed in the New York Times. Kristof had recently attended a symposium exploring whether certain common chemicals are linked to breast cancer and other ailments. The role of estrogen – both the real thing our bodies produce and the pseudo-estrogens – in breast cancer was his major example.
The real thing:
One theory starts with the well-known fact that women with more lifetime menstrual cycles are at greater risk for breast cancer, because they’re exposed to more estrogen. For example, a woman who began menstruating before 12 has a 30 percent greater risk of breast cancer than one who began at 15 or later.
The pseudo-estrogens:
One class of chemicals that creates concern — although the evidence is not definitive — is endocrine disruptors, which are often similar to estrogen and may fool the body into setting off hormonal changes. This used to be a fringe theory, but it is now being treated with great seriousness by the Endocrine Society the professional association of hormone specialists in the United States. …These endocrine disruptors are found in everything from certain plastics to various cosmetics. Continue reading...
Tags: birth control pill, breast cancer, drugs, estrogen, hormones, Menarche, Menopause
Posted in Birth Control, Health Care, Media, Menarche, Menopause, Menstruation, Newspapers, ovulation | Comments Off
November 5th, 2009 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Jerilynn Prior, Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research
As a clinician scientist with expertise in hormones and women’s health, I sit in Canada and look at the hype and dis-sing going on about “bio-identicals” in the USA and shake my head. If we don’t want estrogen that is not FDA approved to be used to treat hot flushes, the simple answer is to regulate appropriately. The perpetual debate about bio-identical hormones has now hit USA Today with a headline: “Bioidenticals: Estrogen without FDA approval for menopause?”
In Canada, all hormonal preparations require a prescription. Full stop. And the pharmacists who compound estriol or progesterone do so with my prescription for a specific dose and clear purpose. Those compounding pharmacists are also regulated the same way as pharmacists who dispense FDA/Health Canada approved medications. End of story.
What bothers me is that I believe there is an intrinsic advantage to hormones that are molecularly the same as our bodies produce. They are certainly better, a priori than those that are natural for horses or are “similar-but-different.” When oral micronized progesterone (molecularly identical, Prometrium®) is prescribed with estradiol (there are multiple FDA-approved brands of molecularly identical estrogen), there is no increased breast cancer risk.[1] On the other hand, medroxyprogesterone (a similar synthetic derivative of progesterone) with estradiol increases the risk for breast cancer by 79%.[1] That’s called a nasty surprise. Continue reading...
Tags: estriol, estrogen, guest post, hot flashes/flushes, progesterone
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Pharmaceutical | 1 Comment »
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
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