Estrogen, lignan & your health

Estrogen, the dominant female hormone, is good for you, right? As well as being responsible for breast development and menstrual cycle regulation, it protects against osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. It supports wound healing, fights the effects of skin ageing and combats menopausal symptoms like vaginal dryness and irritability. That’s why supplemental estrogen, called hormone replacement therapy, is such a popular treatment for menopausal women worldwide.

On the other hand, estrogen is bad for you, isn’t it? Hormone replacement therapy is no longer recommended for many women as it has a wide range of dangerous side effects including an increased risk of coronary heart disease and strokes. Also, high levels of estrogen are linked to PMS symptoms, and, most importantly for many women, too much estrogen can increase the risk of developing some cancers, including breast cancer.

So what’s the story? How can a hormone with so many good effects also be so harmful?

The estrogen story really isn’t that strange when you compare it with what we know about other body systems. For many years we’ve know the body contains ‘good’ cholesterol, or HDL cholesterol that’s protective against heart disease, and ‘bad’ cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol that increases your heart disease risk. Prostaglandins, a hormone-like substance that controls inflammation, works the same way: there are ‘good’ prostaglandins, called series 2, that control the healing aspects of inflammation, and ‘bad’ prostagladins that can cause painful inflammation in conditions like arthritis, migraines and dysmenorrhoea.

Not surprisingly, researchers now realise that it’s exactly the same story for estrogen. Good estrogen, called 2-hydroxyestrone, is responsible for the many good effects of estrogen, and is believed to protect against breast cancer. 16-alpha hydroxyestrone, the bad estrogen, can increase your breast cancer risk.

But the estrogen story doesn’t end there. New research from Melbourne’s RMIT university shows that women can improve their ratio of ‘good’ to ‘bad’ estrogen by taking a daily food supplement. This supplement, called flax lignan, is a naturally-occurring compound often prescribed in Europe, Canada and the US to reduce the symptoms of menopause. By taking a group of post menopausal women and adding lignans to their diet, researchers in this breakthrough study have found a way for healthy women to increase the level of the good estrogens and thereby perhaps reduce their risk of breast cancer.

The hero of this story is flax lignans. Lignans are found naturally in a range of healthy food, including whole grains, beans and legumes, but are often lacking in today’s Western, processed diet. The lignan supplement used in the trial was purified from flaxseed, a well-known source of lignans. Although everyone should increase the amount of unprocessed whole grains in their diet, it would be almost impossible to duplicate the results of the study using diet alone. Flaxseed oil is a terrific source of omega-3 fatty acids, but doesn’t contain any lignans because lignans are found in the flax meal, rather than the oil, part of flaxseed. Only by taking a lignan supplement can women be confident they are receiving a measured amount of purified flax lignan.

The truth about Estrogen by Toni Jordan B.Sc. Dip B.A.