Effects of Estrogen
Estrogen helps to prevent a common malady of old age: osteoarthritis, in which bone decay leads to generalized weakness, altered gait, and a stooped posture. Postmenopausal women who take estrogen may actually increase their life span. Estrogen’s effects in the brain are less well recognized, but a lack of this hormone can give rise to memory loss.
Genetic Factors Influence Treatment Response
In all branches of medicine, there is a general rule that genetic factors play an important role in predicting treatment response. If one family member responds to a treatment, the other family member will likely respond to the same treatment. I am convinced that estrogen could have accomplished for Cynthia what it had achieved for Myra, and that its effects on both mild depression and memory loss would have been far greater than the standard antidepressant and antimemory-loss
medications that she received. My guess is that her primary problem was estrogen deficiency (blood estrogen levels are not very useful and don’t tell us how well estrogen is being utilized in the brain), which is why the other treatments did not work as well as they usually do.
Estrogen in Long-Term Prevention of Memory Loss
Clinical anecdotes and observations about the power of estrogen have been supported by the results from systematic studies, especially of elderly women living at home. In a report from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Normal Aging, 472 menopausal and postmenopausal women were followed for sixteen years. Women on estrogen-replacement therapy were 50 percent less likely to develop dementia. Other studies of women living in the community have also shown that estrogen provides a protective effect against dementia. Most of these studies suggest a twofold to fourfold protective effect, meaning that if you are sixty years old and your risk of getting dementia in the next ten years
is 12 percent, this risk will drop to 3 to 6 percent if you are taking estrogen. No one is suggesting that estrogen will cure Alzheimer’s, but rather that the procognition properties of estrogen will delay the
onset of the disease by several years. The results of several studies indicate that the longer you take estrogen, and the higher the dose, the greater the protective effect against this dreaded disease.
Taken From: The Memory Program How to Prevent Memory Loss
and Enhance Memory Power
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