Reply To: The Fantastic Four

[J.R.K]

Thanks for the question Cari. I wish that there would be a concrete solid answer as to why estrogen is prescribed to women. There is this belief that estrogen is heart protective, and that estrogen production is reduced as women age, hence the idea that the menopause is caused by a lack of estrogen. This is true if you are looking strictly at blood samples, the levels do decrease as we age. But a Chinese study looked at tissue samples and discovered that the rates were much much higher and progesterone levels were significantly lower in older females. But this phenomenon of aging is not limited to females, in fact as males age the levels of estrogen rise to levels equivalent and in some cases higher than their female counterparts.

The prescription of estrogen may have something to do with the fact that higher levels of estrogen are seen in all metabolic syndrome related diseases. As was demonstrated with Goldman Sachs denouncing Gilead sciences after they announced the cure to Hepatitis C. Curing people is not a viable business plan, because you will lose revenues compared to managing symptoms and side effects.

Another possible reason might also be that the production of estrogen is more cost effective than bioavailable progesterone or pregnenalone for the pharmaceutical industry. Note specifically on bioavailable, the synthetic progestins are in my opinion equivalently or worse than estrogen supplementation. In some countries the bioavailable forms of these two pro hormones is available over the counter.
Given that there are so many different ways we are exposed to estrogen in our environment, not to mention that every cell in our body is capable of producing estrogen in the event of injury or excessive stress of one form or another, the prescription of estrogen is in my opinion redundant and given the effects of chronically elevated estrogen actually dangerous. An example of this would be the long term side effects of contraceptive’s that are estrogen based. In reality these drugs do not prevent pregnancy but work by terminating the fertilized ovum, if my understanding is correct.