NewsFlash! Estrogen, the “split-personality” chemical

Posted by Liz on Dec 27, 2009 in estrogen | 1 comment

Move on over estrogen! The game is up. Researchers have discovered that estrogen acts like the middlewoman when it comes to certain activity in the body.  What this means for you: the potential of developing new agents that act like estrogen in the body but avoid all the negative bits, like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, heart disease and deaths from lung cancer.

The study, which was conducted in rats, showed that estrogen appears to stimulate a brain protein (i.e. calpain) that is critical to learning and memory. When it acts through calpain, it doesn’t act like a hormone (and its “wreak havoc” types of effects) but rather, like a power surger that boosts the ability to process and retain information. Researchers compare this to adrenaline, which acts like a hormone in most of the body but in the brain, helps transmit nerve signals across cells (i.e. a “neurotransmitter”).

Not only do these findings (which were published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science) change the way that scientists look at estrogen, but as mentioned, they may eventually lead to strategies that allow the medical community who espouses HRT to look elsewhere for solutions to troublesome menopausal symptoms.