category : Hormone Balancing

Any discussion about Estrogen is usually limited to women. But estrogen, that most “female” of hormone types, plays a role in the hormonal balance of healthy men as well. This is especially true in the link between estrogen, testosterone and prostate cancer.

Estrogen is not a hormone; it's a class of hormones.

Almost every living thing makes some form of estrogen, including plants and animals. But the estrogens found in plants are quite different than the estrogens found in animals. And each species of animal has his own unique mixture of estrogens. Human beings make a unique mixture of estrogens not produced by any other animal on the planet.

But traditionally, when women go to the doctor for treatment of their menopausal symptoms 95% of the time they are given a compound known as conjugated equine estrogens. These are estrogens extracted from the urine of pregnant horses, and

One of the common therapies used in prostate cancer are drugs that interfere with a man’s production of testosterone. While this does slow tumor growth, there is a downside.

With low testosterone men are at higher risk of forming blood clots in their legs, lungs and brain, not to mention sexual dysfunction, depression and chronic fatigue. As a consequence, many men end up taking anticoagulants to prevent those blood clots.

An interesting paper just published shows that men who use anticoagulants have significantly better survival from their cancers than men who do not need these drugs. This intriguing bit of data is causing researchers to take a look at the anticoagulants, such as warfarin and heparin, to see if they might have anti-cancer properties that have not previously been recognized.

Once more, studies designed to look at one thing, raise more intriguing new questions than they answer.