Why is estrogen important? When women are estrogen deficient, the impact may be subtle or hellacious, potentially transforming a woman’s life into a living nightmare. Over the past ten years working with perimenopausal and menopausal patients, I saw that a subtle symptom for one patient can be unbearable for another. Not all patients experience symptoms of estrogen deficiency the same. When estrogen is too low, it doesn’t matter if she’s a young girl just beginning her periods, a 30 year old mother of two, or a 48 year old woman in advanced perimenopause or menopause, the consequences are all the same; health is negatively impacted depending on her unique set of genetic circumstances and dietary choices.

Estrogen deficiency is at the root of most chronic diseases afflicting women, starting at the onset of menarche till the grave. The symptoms of estrogen deficiency are long but are not considered in medical diagnosis or treatment. It is under diagnosed and unrecognized in our modern medical model. Every woman with a diagnosable chronic disease suffers from estrogen deficiency yet doctors are not educated or trained to optimize estrogen. Adequate estradiol improves and may even outright resolve most chronic diseases that afflict women.

Many women go to the doctor for headaches and migraines, insomnia, joint pain, fibromyalgia and muscle pain, loss of drive and desire for intimacy. Many women would rather watch T.V. than interact with loved ones or friends, finding themselves emotionally isolated and feeling depressed. When these women go to the doctor and express their symptoms, they’re not given a lab requisition to get their hormones checked; they’re given prescriptions to treat the symptoms that cause the problem.

Unfortunately, doctors are not taught to get to the root cause of the symptoms their patients are experiencing. They are also not taught to optimize and cycle the hormones to mimic a woman’s own cycle. Doctors are taught to give the lowest possible dose to treat the maximum amount of symptoms. It's about symptoms treating and disease management. Why are women falling for this? Our bodies do not function that way. Restoring hormones to optimal levels protects the body from the degenerative diseases of aging, reverses disease, and gives a woman her life back.

Hi M2,

Welcome to BWS. We're glad to have you join us, and hope that you will become an active member.

Hopefully you saw our rules when you first came here. I won't take time to go over them, as I am assuming you did.

Meanwhile, you have given a lot of information on a topic we probably don't know enough about -- estrogen deficiency.

Though of course, each of us will be aware of our own current monthly status -- I had no idea lack of or low estrogen could impact chronic disease.

What about things like feeling cold all the time? Just curious.

And, in the past, estrogen replacement has been ticketed as a "cancer causing agent," has it not???

Jabber, you ask good questions -- ones that I am sure a lot of our readers are also asking.

As far as I can tell -- and the answers are still sort of murky for me -- HRT, hormone replacement therapy, has been vindicated in YOUNGER post-menopausal women. But is still a concern for women beyond that stage...

As I recall, NABBW did a teleseminar on this topic roughly 18 months ago, with a woman doctor - a gynocologist. I've temporarily forgotten her name, but I will look up her event and post a link to it again.

Meanwhile, here is a link from About.com's Heart Health Center, which provides some 3rd party answers related to HRT and heart health -- though not related to cancer.

I'll do some more research to see if I can find anything about HRT and cancer and post below...

OK, here's what looks to be a reliable article on HRT and breast cancer which comes from a site called www.breastcancer.org.

The answer is complex, so I'm sure it would be best to read it, rather than have me paraphrase it.

But the bottom line seems to be that there are two types of HRT: Estrogen only and "combination HRT" which contains both the hormones estrogen and progesterone.

What I get out of the article is that every woman needs to make her own best decision. BUT if a woman is suffering severely from post-menopausal hot flashes, etc., the ESTROGEN ONLY version of HRT can prove to be helpful in preventing the menopausal symptoms, with minimal concern for breast or ovarian cancer.

Perhaps our new member, "M2," can tell us what she knows about this. Meanwhile, I will continue to search for the name of the expert I interviewed, and the recording of the call.

Success! It was a year ago May, and the doctor I interviewed was Dr. Tara Allmen, MD. She has a program called "Menopause in an Hour," which is available on DVD.

Here's a link to a YouTube video that condenses the information she provides into a minute and a half.

Finally, as promised, here's the link to the NABBW teleseminar.

So let's get some more discussion going. This is an important topic!

Hello Anne,

Thank you for the welcome and good question. Being cold all the time is more of a thyroid issue but when you get it tested, most doctors will tell you that you're in the "normal" limits and do nothing about it. "Normal limits" is data taken from the average woman your age. The average woman your age is estrogen deficient which impacts thyroid significantly.

I was cold all the time too most of my adult life until I met an off beat doctor who prescribed me Armour Thyroid. My hands, butt, feet and nose were things that were rarely warm. Armour Thyroid is the most natural form of thyroid on the market, and is the most complete containing T1, T2, T3, and T4. Patients feel much better on Armour than any other thyroid supplement. When estrogen is deficient, it triggers other hormones to decline as well. Most patients taking a thyroid supplement will be able to stop taking it once her hormones are optimized. Balancing out the estrogen and progesterone levels in women, balances out all the other hormones as well. I was able to stop taking my thyroid after my estrogen was optimized.

Anemia is another reason someone could be cold all the time but most likely it's your thyroid. If a woman is having heavy periods, she could become anemic. Finding a doctor trained to optimize your thyroid will be tough. The goal is to optimize the estrogen to balance out everything else.

Respectfully,

Moxie

Estrogen has gotten a bad wrap in regards to cancer. Read my article, WHI Flaws The Flaws of the Women's Health Initiative.

If estrogen caused cancer, every woman in her twenties would have cancer since women's estrogen is at its highest than any other time in her life. Estrogen is designed to protect the body against disease, including cancer.

A woman is at greater risk of cancer, tumors, and the degenerative diseases of aging if she doesn't have adequate levels of estrogen.

Never take estrogen without taking progesterone. Estrogen and progesterone need to be looked at as one, like yin and yang. They’re both considered a woman’s “main-sex” hormone like testosterone and DHEA are for men. Progesterone triggers a receptor response for estrogen; it’s not about how much estrogen you give a woman, it’s about how much estrogen she receives. When estrogen peaks on day 12 of a woman’s cycle, it triggers a receptor response for progesterone allowing the body to receive the hormones and it’s benefits. On day 21 of a woman’s cycle, progesterone peaks hopefully high enough to trigger estrogen receptors in anticipation for the estrogen peak the following month. One doesn’t work without the other. T.S. Wiley wrote about this in Sex, Lies, and Menopause, a book worth the read.

I hear what you say about every woman has to make her own decision but that’s the tough part. There is so much misinformation out there that not even doctors know which end is up with regards to estrogen, menopause, cancer, and hormones. Doctors don’t know because medical schools teach doctors how to manage symptoms of diseases, not get to the root of the problem and fix it as naturally as possible. I started my blog because of what patients were telling me over the years about what they think and what their doctors think about these topics and no one knows what’s going on. I worked with a doctor who thought outside of the box and was more interested in getting to the root of the problems instead of disease management. I’ve been perimenopausal, have had a hysterectomy, and now menopausal. I’ve been on every hormone replacement therapy on and off the market, documenting every experience. Working with patients over a ten-year period since the genesis of the hormone replacement therapy boom has given me incredible insight and knowledge.

Medical schools are not teaching doctors that if we restore estrogen to optimal levels, we can reverse diseases like osteoporosis, diabetes, depression, weight gain, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and every chronic disease a woman has. There is no chronic disease a woman has that can’t be linked to estrogen deficiency. Doctors are taught which prescription to write for what symptom, including OB-Gyn specialists and endocrinologists. Conventional medicine says to give the lowest dose to treat the most symptoms. Dr. Tara Allmen, a good doctor I’m sure, has a conventional medicine approach to HRT. She doesn’t not cycle or optimize hormones. This is the type of training doctors get, manage symptoms but keep patients ill. Why treat the symptoms if we can fix the problem? PMS, perimenopause, menopause, PCOS, and endometriosis are all caused by estrogen deficiency. If we restored estrogen, these conditions wouldn’t exist.