When women and men have too much oestrogen

Oestrogen is known as the female sex hormone, while testosterone is the male sex hormone.

April 22, 2019 Health, Wellness

By Datuk Dr Nor Ashikin Mokhtar

High levels of oestrogen can result in erectile dysfunction in men and low sex drive in women. — AFP

However, the fact is, men and women produce both types of hormones, and both play a key role in regulating various functions.

For example, in women, oestrogen plays a part in developing our reproductive system and regulates the menstrual cycle. In men, it helps with sexual function.

Unfortunately, having too much of either hormone not only causes an imbalance in our body, but also leads to serious health problems if left unmonitored.

The potential to develop degenerative conditions, atherosclerosis, weight gain, mood swings, endometriosis, fibroids, breast cysts and breast or ovarian cancer in women increases with hormonal imbalance.

As high oestrogen levels present risks to both genders, we should also mention some of the issues men may face.

Guys, in addition to heart problems, be on the look out for prostate cancer, as the risk increases together with oestrogen levels.

You may also experience erectile dysfunction, weight gain, difficulty gaining muscle, artherosclerosis or stroke.

Causes of oestrogen increase

High levels of oestrogen can stem from family genetics. If there are instances of family members who experience high oestrogen levels, chances are that you may be prone to it as well.

Indicators of high oestrogen levels include obesity, liver disease and ovarian tumours.

When you develop a hormonal imbalance, the body produces low levels of other hormones like progesterone or testosterone, while oestrogen levels are in overdrive.

Causes of imbalance include taking oral contraceptive pills or hormone replacement therapy, which is administered to menopausal women.

Hormonal imbalance is also a side effect of certain medications. Pay attention to your oestrogen levels if you take any of the following:

• Phenothiazines, which is an anti-psychotic medication used to treat emotional or mental conditions.

• Certain antibiotics. Check with your doctor if the antibiotic they prescribe to you might cause hormonal imbalance.

• Herbal or natural remedies. A few common ones are evening primrose oil, liquorice and black cohosh extract.

• Hormonal contraceptives.

• Oestrogen replacement therapy.

Symptoms

Oestrogen in excess will cause the following symptoms:

• Weight gain, especially at the hips and waist.

• Irregular periods with either heavy flow or light spotting. Symptoms of PMS (premenstrual syndrome) may also be more severe.

• Cold hands and feet.

• Bloating.

• Fatigue.

• Trouble sleeping well.

• Low mood and low sex drive.

Reversing oestrogen increase

You can correct oestrogen imbalance by first and foremost, modifying your diet.

Calcium d-glutarate helps to get rid of excess oestrogen before it is reabsorbed back into the system. Foods that are rich in this calcium salt include grapefruit, apples and oranges.

Brussel sprouts, turnips, bok choy, cauliflower and broccoli are cruciferous vegetables that are a rich source of many types of nutrients that not only fight high oestrogen levels, but have also been found to help with cancer and thyroid function.

Cruciferous vegetables contain indole-3-carbinol, which neutralises the impact of high oestrogen.

Still, unless you have the time to prepare large quantities of food every day, it can often be a challenge to get the correct amount of nutrients needed to counter the risks of high oestrogen levels.

Here’s where supplements can help with the process, and the types to seek out include:

• Probiotics.

A healthy microbiome is essential for the management of every hormonal condition imaginable.

There’s a community of gut bacteria, and specifically, bacterial genes called the oestrobolome that produce an enzyme that supports the metabolisation of oestrogen.

Your gut is an important part of the elimination system that is vital in ushering hormones out of the body.

When you eat dairy, gluten or food that has been produced with pesticides, or take antibiotics, you disrupt this hugely important bacterial balance.

• Di-indole methane (DIM), which is a natural plant-based chemical found in many cruciferous vegetables.

• Fish oil, especially DHA.

• Zinc, to dampen the activity of oestrogen receptors.

• Boron, which lowers the quantity of free oestrogen.

Apart from that, it is a good idea to rid your surroundings of xenoestrogens, which are found in many daily items.

Xenoestrogens are endocrine disruptors that mimic, but do not perform oestrogen functions.

Eliminating xenoestrogens can be difficult, especially in places and situations beyond your control.

Here are some things that will help you remove xenoestrogens from your life:

• Use natural skin and body care products.

• Avoid plastic containers for food and water as much as possible.

• Do your laundry with natural detergents.

• Use household cleaners that contain fewer chemicals or make your own natural household cleaners.

• Do not let plastic wraps touch your food during microwaving, and use ceramic or glass containers to reheat food.

• Consume organic produce.

• Reduce meat consumption.

• Reduce dairy consumption.

• Reduce stress.

• Support liver health.

Your liver plays a critical role in maintaining hormonal balance and keeping symptoms at bay.

In order to do all of the detoxification work it does on your behalf, it needs a fully stocked supply of many micronutrients, such as the B complex vitamins and the antioxidants Vitamins A, C and E, Q10 and alpha lipoic acid.

Your issues with elevated levels of oestrogen might also be due to poor lifestyle habits like overeating, excessive recreational drugs or alcohol consumption.

Practice everything in moderation. Eat smaller portions, and if you’re overweight, it will help to lose some kilos as well.

Try to reduce your alcohol intake and stop smoking.

In summary, high levels of oestrogen has its risks, but if you identify why it’s occurring, you have ways to control it.

The best thing to do is consult a doctor when you experience any symptoms of hormonal imbalance.

With proper advice and monitoring, it is possible to pre-empt the issue from escalating into more serious health issues.

https://www.star2.com/health/2019/04/22/women-men-too-much-oestrogen/

How the humble cabbage can stop cancers

Scientists say they have discovered why some vegetables - including cabbage, broccoli and kale - can reduce the risk of bowel cancers.

By James GallagherHealth and science correspondent, BBC News

• 15 August 2018
• 
  

That cruciferous veg is good for the gut has never been in doubt but a detailed explanation has been elusive.

The team at the Francis Crick Institute found anti-cancer chemicals were produced as the vegetables were digested.

Cancer Research UK said there were plenty of reasons to eat more veg.

The work focused on how vegetables alter the lining of the intestines, by studying mice and miniature bowels growing in the lab.

Like the skin, the surface of the bowels is constantly being regenerated in a process that takes four to five days.

But this constant renewal needs to be tightly controlled, otherwise it could lead to cancer or gut inflammation.

And the work, published in the journal Immunity, showed chemicals in cruciferous vegetables were vital.

• Fruit and veg: For a longer life eat 10-a-day
• Fibre and whole grains 'reduce bowel cancer risk
• Bowel cancer screening to start earlier at age 50 in England

From kitchen to cancer prevention?

The researchers investigated a chemical called indole-3-carbinol, which is produced by chewing such vegetables.

"Make sure they're not overcooked, no soggy broccoli," said researcher Dr Gitta Stockinger.

The chemical is modified by stomach acid as it continues its journey through the digestive system.

In the lower bowel, it can change the behaviour of stem cells, which regenerate the bowel lining, and of immune cells that control inflammation.

The study showed diets high in indole-3-carbinol protected the mice from cancer, even those whose genes put them at very high risk of the disease.

Without the protective diet, the gut cells divided uncontrollably.

Dr Stockinger added: "Even when the mice started developing tumours and we switched them to the appropriate diet, it halted tumour progression."

Signs of bowel cancer include persistent:

• blood in the stools
• changes in bowel habits, such as going to the toilet more often
• tummy pain, bloating or discomfort

Dr Stockinger said the findings were a "cause for optimism".

She has reduced the amount of meat she eats and now consumes a lot more vegetables.

She told the BBC: "A lot of dietary advice we're getting changes periodically - it is very confusing and not clear cut what the causes and consequences are.

"Just telling me it's good for me without a reason will not make me eat it.

"With this study, we have the molecular mechanisms about how this system works."

Prof Tim Key, from Cancer Research UK, said: "This study in mice suggests that it's not just the fibre contained in vegetables like broccoli and cabbage that help reduce the risk of bowel cancer, but also molecules found in these vegetables too.

"Further studies will help find out whether the molecules in these vegetables have the same effect in people, but in the meantime there are already plenty of good reasons to eat more vegetables."

HEALTHWISE

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45171651

4 Little Ways to Help Your Body Detox

What do the healthiest people have in common? For starters, they limit the junk that enters their body. This means cutting back on irritants to the gut (alcohol, coffee) and foods that trigger inflammation, like sugar and processed foods, according to integrative medicine physician Dr. Frank Lipman, founder and director of Be Well, a wellness company. 

May 11, 2016

But even if you don’t eat perfectly 24/7, you can do simple things to help the liver—your body’s natural filter—do its job. “Boosting liver function helps to decrease the accumulation of toxic products in the tissues,” Dr. Lipman says. Here are cleansing moves you can do on the regular—no juice-fasting or salt-cave-dwelling required.

1. Wake up with lemon

As soon as you wake up, drink a glass of warm water with fresh lemon squeezed in. “It will provide your body with hydrating electrolytes in the form of potassium, calcium and magnesium,” Dr. Lipman says. “We get dehydrated overnight as the body takes care of its detoxification processes, so it's important to hydrate and replenish first thing.” Lemon juice also helps your liver produce more enzymes, which aid digestion and prompt the liver to purge toxins . The vitamin C in lemon juice, a powerful antioxidant, protects against free radicals, strengthening the immune system.

Health.com: 6 Ways to Get More Veggies Into Your Diet

2. Get bendy

Twisting yoga poses—think, a seated spinal (or torso) twist—helps with the detox process by stimulating digestion and elimination. “ A lot of digestive discomforts come from stress,” Dr. Lipman says, “so by releasing gripping and holding in the belly and taking deep calming breaths, we can relax the muscles and diaphragm, allowing the GI system to do a better job.”



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3. Eat your broccoli

Reduce chronic inflammation—which has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer— by filling your plate with sulfur-rich foods, such as onions, garlic, and cruciferous vegetables, including broccoli, kale, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower. “ These foods are high in antioxidants, which support the body’s ability to fight off toxins,” Dr. Lipman says. A 2014 study revealed that women who ate the most cruciferous vegetables had substantially less inflammation than those who ate the fewest.

Health.com: The Best Meal Kit Services for Healthy Eaters

4. Sip tea

Teas containing dandelion or milk thistle may boost liver function, helping to decrease the build-up of toxins in the tissues. In a study review on milk thistle commissioned by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, researchers found that the herb may help enhance liver function, possibly by protecting against cell damage and stimulating repair of liver tissue. 

And cancer studies suggest that milk thistle may strengthen cell walls to prevent toxins from getting in, stimulate enzymes that make toxins less harmful and block free radicals from attacking cells. A word of warning though: Avoid “detoxing” teas that also promise to curb appetite or rev metabolism, because they can be laced with herbs delivering unwanted side effects such as agitation and headache. (We like The Republic of Tea Organic Milk Thistle Superherb Tea and The Republic of Tea Organic Dandelion Superherb Tea).

Health.com: 6 Iron-Rich Food Combos—No Meat Required

This article originally appeared on Health.com
http://time.com/4323264/detox-body-lemon-vegetables/

Like it or not, broccoli's good stuff

Turns out our mothers may have been onto something when they told us to eat our vegetables — especially our broccoli.

• JONATHAN M. PITTS 

30 June 2017

A compound found naturally in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables may reduce some of the harmful effects of Type II diabetes in overweight adults, according to new research by Jed Fahey, a nutritional biochemist and an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a team of researchers in Europe and the United States.

An article on the findings appeared in the journal Science Translational Medicine in June.

Fahey, who is director of the Cullman Chemoprotection Center at the medical school, served as an author of the study along with colleagues based in Sweden, Switzerland and elsewhere in the United States.

It isn’t the first time Hopkins researchers have illuminated the healthful powers of broccoli.

Fahey’s predecessor as director of the research center, the renowned pharmacology professor and experimental generalist Paul Talalay, isolated the compound sulforaphane as a phytochemical (a chemical produced by plants) in the early 1990s.

Baltimore faith communities host challenges, health initiatives to encourage healthier living.

Two years later, Talalay made international headlines — and sparked broccoli sales around the world — by demonstrating the compound’s effectiveness in boosting the body’s ability to resist cancer.

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He and Fahey also showed that broccoli sprouts — three- to four-day-old broccoli plants — have 50 to 100 times the cancer-fighting power as the mature stalks typically sold in grocery stores.

Popular Science called the findings among the top 100 scientific discoveries of the 20th century, and researchers at Hopkins and elsewhere have since tested the chemical’s effectiveness in helping the body fend off pathologies from autism and osteoarthritis to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

Shedding pounds sensibly and making weight loss stick

This study was the first to test it against Type II diabetes, a chronic and increasingly widespread metabolic disorder that affects more than 29 million Americans and 420 million people around the world, according to the World Health Organization.

The world’s most common form of diabetes, Type II arises when the body can no longer properly use insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar. As a result, blood sugar levels soar.

The disorder increases a patient’s likelihood of developing heart disease, eyesight problems, kidney failure and stroke.

Though the study was comparatively small and short-term, the results are tentatively promising for the treatment of diabetes.

“This shows that sulforaphane is useful not only for cancer prevention but it also demonstrates anti-diabetes and many other activities,” said Fahey, who spent 15 years in the biotechnology industry before joining the Hopkins faculty at Talalay’s invitation in 1993.

It was four years ago that Anders Rosengren and Annika Axelsson, research endocrinologists at the Lund University Diabetes Center in Sweden, reached out to Fahey for his help in getting the study under way.

He and several colleagues had come across several papers suggesting that sulforaphane — a compound that broccoli, cabbage, kale, bok choy and other vegetables in the pungent cruciferous category developed to protect themselves against unfavorable and stressful conditions — might help human beings resist diabetes.

The Swedes' thinking, in scientific terms, was simple.

Research has shown that sulforaphane, by its very molecular makeup, has an unusual effect: it accelerates the body's production of a common but important protein known as Nrf2.

The job of Nrf2, in essence, is to regulate the creation of antioxidants that repair stressed, damaged or decaying cells.

A shot of sulforaphane kicks the creation of those antioxidants into overdrive, bolstering at the cellular level the body's capacity to resist a wide range of malfunctions.

"This molecule [Nrf2] is responsible for shouting out to cells, 'You're in trouble; you're being attacked by sunlight, by ultraviolet light, by toxins. You've got to up your game, you've got to enhance your protective strategy,'" Fahey said. "Nrf2 is a crucial regulator, and sulforaphane is one of the most potent inducers of that regulator."

While the liver of a normal person creates energy by producing glucose, a type of sugar, and releasing it in regulated amounts into the bloodstream, individuals with Type II diabetes can produce as much as three times the needed amount.

If that malfunction occurs because a patient's cells have been weakened by exposure to stressful conditions, the Swedes theorized, perhaps sulforaphane would help.

Their research proceeded in three phases.

First, they chose more than 3,800 drugs whose gene signatures they saw as likely to match up well against the pattern of gene expression associated with Type II diabetes.

They found through a complex form of mathematical cross-referencing that sulforaphane overlapped most closely with the diabetic expression pattern.

The group then began working with Fahey, who is known for the highly potent freeze-dried form of broccoli sprout extract he creates at Hopkins.

A series of experiments using the extract showed that sulforaphane reduced the overproduction of glucose in liver cells the scientists had grown in a lab — and that it did the same in the livers of rats with diabetes.

The final step was to test sulforaphane in humans. The team conducted a 12-week randomized study involving 97 adults with Type II diabetes. About a third of them had a form of the disease that the widely used drug metformin and recommended lifestyle changes had failed to control.

The researchers gave about half of the group a dose of the extract each day, the rest a placebo.

Those who received the extract saw a decrease by an average of 10 percent in their glucose levels — enough, the team says, to reduce complications in the eyes, kidney and blood.

Those with the least controlled cases of diabetes — and subjects who were obese — saw the greatest drops. Subjects who were not obese experienced no appreciable change.

Emily Ho, a nutritional biochemist at Oregon State University, also has studied the health effects of sulforaphane.

The results of the study are "definitely promising" even though "a more comprehensive study with a larger study group is needed, especially to tease out long-term safety and the sustainability of effects in patients," said Ho, the director of Moore Family Center for Whole Grain Foods, Nutrition and Preventive Health at Oregon State.

Fahey agreed that the study calls for follow-up.

"You want to see other people replicate your results or go them one better," he says.

But they are more than enough to support the belief Fahey and his Hopkins colleagues have long promoted — that science has shown people don't have to wait until they develop full-blown illness to fortify their health.

A balanced diet that contains plenty of well chosen whole foods, he said — including broccoli sprouts, the cruciferous vegetable with the most sulforaphane — can provide a range of nutrients that work with the body to forestall illness and extend our "healthspan" in life.

Normally a patient man, Fahey struggles to hide his frustration when he talks about Americans and their eating habits. Science clearly shows that a diet centered on fresh, whole foods can ward off disease.

He can't fathom why so many people still have an appetite for junk food.

"It has been an uphill slog to convince people to eat a healthy overall diet," he says. "We'll keep trying to get the word out."

jonathan.pitts@baltsun.com

http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-broccoli-and-diabetes-20170630-story.html