Disappearing Difference Between Men and Women: The Estrogen Connection

Did you ever wonder why women can shop all day, and for men it drives them nuts? Did you know there are hormonal reasons for that? It’s not just culture, it’s evolution.

Women have traditionally been responsible for doing the gathering. They get a surge of the feel-good hormone serotonin, and it gives them energy. The more they shop and gather, the more energy they get. They come home energized.

For a man, you can see what happens out in the malls. After about a half hour, he needs to go get a cup of coffee, or else he just sits pathetically, slumped in a chair looking miserable. Being the hunter, he wants to bag the kill. So to have game in front of you that you don’t get to catch zaps you of your male hormonal drive.

The idea that men are from Mars and women are from Venus has always been part of our nature … until now. Because that difference is disappearing fast.

The unnatural world we’ve created isn’t just society taking away the man’s hunter instinct. Or modern stress taking away a woman’s gatherer energy…

We’ve created a world full of feminizing chemicals that act like estrogen. The result of that is even worse than male breasts and mega-menopause for women.

These things are causing cancer. For example breast cancer rates are rising for women … but today, more men than ever are being diagnosed.¹

The good news is even though getting cancer is more likely because of our modern environment, it’s also more likely than ever that you can have successful treatment of it.

Even better, there’s a lot you can do to prevent these kinds of cancers, and I’m going to show you some of them in a minute. But it won’t be what you might hear from the cancer societies or your family practitioner.

We’re not getting more cancer because Aunt Jenny had cancer and it’s in the genes. This higher rate of occurrence illustrates something the cancer societies and family practitioners miss when they talk about cancer. Higher rates illustrate how far we’ve strayed from our natural environment.

We’ve changed the nature of the world we live in. Many of the chemicals and processed foods we eat increase estrogen in the body. Now, cancers that affect parts of your body with estrogen receptors are on the rise, even though other cancer rates have stabilized.

Which makes a lot of what those mainstream sources advise for “lifestyle changes” dangerous. Most of what they want you to do isn’t pleasant, isn’t natural to you, and isn’t helpful.

The most important thing you can do to prevent male and female breast cancers, and prostate cancer for that matter, is to stop the accumulation of excess estrogen.

How do you do that? By promoting the C-2 pathway of estrogen metabolism, instead of the C-16. That might sound complicated, but it’s really pretty simple.

Estrogens that go down the C-2 pathway are weaker, and those that go down the C-16 pathway have much more damaging physiological effect.

Studies show that people who metabolize estrogen on the C-16 pathway have much higher rates of prostate and breast cancer than those who metabolize on the C-2 pathway.²

There are two things I recommend for estrogen detox.

1. This first one is for men. One of the most important things you can do is to reduce the action of a molecule called aromatase because it turns testosterone into estrogen.

• You can use minerals like selenium and zinc to reduce aromatase.

• But another powerful group of nutrients is citrus flavonones. Flavonones seek out and bind to aromatase molecules. Studies show this action of flavonones can help stop the development of estrogen-related cancers.³

• Flavonones came mostly from oranges and grapefruits. Though juices can be a good source of flavonones, they also contain a lot of sugar. So if you want the flavonones, eat grapefruit and oranges instead of drinking the juice.

1. If you’re a regular reader, you already know some of the nutrients that support estrogen detox.

• The B-vitamins detoxify your body of estrogen down the C-2 pathway.

• DIM (Diindolylmethane), which you can get from eating broccoli, is also effective.

1. Other important nutrients that can help your body naturally move the excess estrogens along the detox pathway and out of the body

• SAM-e (S-adenosylmethionine) Besides being an antioxidant, SAM-e promotes bile circulation, which enhances estrogen’s excretion out of the body. It’s also effective at negating the effects of estrogen in the body by preventing estrogen toxicity.⁴  I recommend you take 200 mg a day to start. You can take as much as 800 mg twice a day if your estrogen is particularly high.

• Another notable antioxidant that can stop estrogen from damaging cells is alpha lipoic acid. A recent study shows that alpha-lipoic acid can protect your reproductive organs from the estrogenic effects of estrogen-mimicking chemicals like BPA (bisphenol-A).⁵  Taking 250 mg a day of alpha-lipoic acid is a good place to start, and you can take up to 600 mg a day.

To Your Good Health,

Al Sears, MD

1. Bushak L. “FDA Requests More Volunteers For Male Breast Cancer Research, Hopes To Boost Awareness About Disease.” Medical Daily. medicaldaily.com. Retrieved July 21, 2014. 2. Falk R, Brinton L, Dorgan J, Fuhrman B, Veenstra T, Xu X, Gierach G. “Relationship of serum estrogens and estrogen metabolites to postmenopausal breast cancer risk: a nested case-control study.” Breast Cancer Res. 2013;15(2):R34. 3. Hatti K, Diwakar L, Rao G, Kush A, Reddy C. “Abyssinones and related flavonoids as potential steroidogenesis modulators.” Bioinformation. 2009;3(9):399-402. 4. Frezza M, Tritapepe R, Pozzato G, Di Padova C. “Prevention of S-adenosylmethionine of estrogen-induced hepatobiliary toxicity in susceptible women.” Am J Gastroenterol. 1988;83(10):1098-102. 5. El-Beshbishy H, Aly H, El-Shafey M. “Lipoic acid mitigates bisphenol A-induced testicular mitochondrial toxicity in rats.” Toxicol Ind Health. 2013;29(10):875-87.