Why Do Women Need Estrogen?
Channel: BioBalance Healthcast
Date: 28/12/2020

See all the Healthcasts at https://www.biobalancehealth.com/healthcast-blog/

Today, women are very legitimately concerned about the risk of breast cancer. They regularly ask Drs. Maupin and Sullivan to just give them replacement testosterone and not give them estrogen because of this fear. What these women do not realize is that Estradiol does not cause breast cancer, and that Estradiol provides many benefits that lower their risk of other more common and dangerous diseases. Women should receive both estradiol and testosterone after menopause to receive the healthy benefits of both hormones as long as they live. The fear of breast cancer comes from outdated, faulty studies has been unfounded and has caused many women to miss out on the healthy benefits they could receive from replacing their Estradiol. Medicine has finally accepted that taking estrogen is safe for women, yet many doctors have not updated their recommendations since medical school.  There is no need to be in fear of taking estradiol, and it is important to understand why women need Estradiol replaced after menopause.

Estradiol prevents vascular disease: heart disease, stroke and arrhythmias.
An article in Menopause 2017 reviews the importance of estrogen in preventing heart disease. Estradiol is the hormone that keeps the lining of our arteries free of plaque and keeps our arteries supple. Estradiol also stimulates the production of Nitric Oxide (NO) which allows our blood vessels to dilate when we need them to like when our bodies are preparing for sex, or when we exercise. These three actions of estradiol keep our cardiovascular systems healthy and prevent the diseases of aging, stroke, heart disease and heart arrhythmias. Estradiol is one advantage we have over men in regard to lowering our risk of cardio-vascular disease. Women have a lower risk of heart disease than men when we are pre-menopausal, but the risk soars when we become menopausal and do not replace estradiol!

This particular study correlated hot flashes with loss of estrogen. They found that women with the worst hot flashes (and the lowest estradiol levels in menopause), had the highest risk of heart disease after menopause. The underlying science behind this truth is as follows: when a woman loses the ability to make estradiol, her pituitary gland reacts by sending out higher and higher concentrations of FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormone) which sends the message to the ovary to make more estradiol. After menopause the ovary cannot respond with more estradiol production so the FSH level continues to increase above 23MIU, then the pituitary gland responds to these surges of FSH with an earthquake-like-reaction that surges neurotransmitters through the brain, causing the heat and anxiety centers of the brain to surge with. The lower the estradiol, the higher the FSH level, and the more severely the brain reacts to the FSH surge with heat, sweating and anxiety, and sometimes with a sympathetic surge in heart rate and even arrhythmias.

In short, the more you need estradiol, the more severely you will feel the effects of FSH surges. Hot flashes, anxiety, sweating, sweating, arrhythmias and insomnia. These signs are not to be ignored. They will eventually result in disease and damage to the female body. Should you get these surges and symptoms, recognize that your body is crying for help, and get estradiol replacements appropriately.

Now we know that lack of estrogen causes damage to our bodies beyond just the symptoms from high FSH surges called hot flashes, we also know that it can cause heart disease hardening of arteries and hypertension.

Estradiol depletion also causes pre-diabetes and insulin resistance, atrophy of the vagina and the vulva, make having sex impossible, the drying up of sweat glands in the groin and vagina drying up lubrication, drying and wrinkling of the skin, frontal hair loss, sagging skin, and increases the risk of brain shrinkage causing Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
If estradiol is replaced in a high enough dose these outcomes will be averted. The study done on women taking bio-identical estradiol non-orally prolonged the time before women got Dementia by ten years. If you think about it, if your lifestyle and genetics put you at risk for dementia, adding estradiol will give you 10 more years of productive life. For example, if you were designed to have dementia at 80 then the use of estradiol after menopause would defer the onset of dementia until 90. As an aside, the use of T pellets adds another 10 years to the onset of dementia, so you would not get dementia until you were 100.