Mercola & Guest's Analysis - WRONG on Estrogen
Two men very wrong, on a very female hormone. Feel free to pass forward.
Mercola put out an interview/article about estrogen on his platform a few days ago. I was appalled at how much of it is massively wrong. Not based in hormonally driven peer-review science. Is this an elaborate marketing plan to push his new DHEA drops? Worst of all, he does a stunningly huge injustice to our natural hormone therapy cause!
I wrote extensively about this issue in my August 2022 substack article “Hormones Protect "Against" Cancer(s): 7 Million Medicare NIH Women's Study”
In this interview/analysis, Bulgarian bioenergetic researcher (not a hormone clinician) Georgi Dinkov, and Mercola, discuss the downsides of estrogen and serotonin, making them appear not only not healthy, but dangerous.
Rebuttal to Mercola’s analysis
Who knew Mercola could be this wrong that it’s appalling? Below is my rebuttal of his article “What You Need to Know About Estrogen and Serotonin” by Dr. Joseph Mercola October 22, 2023 (also PDF version here)
Mercola’s article text including his guests’ comments are in “lined” quote bars.
My retorts are in bold.
What you will learn is that the “science” says it is “more breast and life protective” to be on hormone therapies, than not.
Normally, an article this extensive and detailed would be in the premium, paid section of my Substack. But this information is so vital for every woman, health provider, etc. to read, my team and I have put it in the free section.
Please share this widely — help spread the real human-science based facts about estrogen and hormone replacement. It’s efficacy. It’s safety.
What’s going on?
Here is where Mercola’s first bullet point and comment begin::
Estrogen is an obesity promoter and well-established human carcinogen.
(My response is followed in bolded lettering).
This is not accurate. In fact, there is substantial science, from replicated studies (the hallmark of good science) showing the “opposite”. That in fact, estrogen “protects” healthy breast tissue from getting breast cancer in the first place. And, if a women has been on estrogen therapies for an average of 5 years and then gets breast cancer, the estrogen therapies “reduce” her risk of dying from breast cancer by 44%. Nothing else like estrogen therapies has ever been shown to be so breast protective.
Where did this data come from?
There were actually two Women’s Health Initiatives (WHI).
The first WHI was stopped prematurely in 2002. Proclaiming estrogen (in the form of horse estrogen - CEE) and progestins (in the form of synthetic progestins - MPA) drove breast cancer and heart disease.
The estrogen only arm, even with conjugated equine or horse estrogen, did not appear to be causing issues so it continued. Tracked for many more years. Then re-analyzed in 2019.
I will from here on refer to them as WHI 1 and WHI 2. The first WHI from 2002. When all hell broke out. The second WHI in 2019, which went silently into that dark night.
This present guest on Mercola’s got stuck at the older, first WHI.
BTW - there were two arms of the WHI. The “estrogen-only” arm was not found to be problematic. It was not stopped prematurely. The estrogen combined with synthetic progestins appeared to be more of the problem, largely due to progestin’s breast-damaging actions. (BTW birth control contains these breast-dinging synthetic progestins and is now available over-the-counter, more on this Big Pharma horror later.
Then, the exact same authors of WHI 1, re-analyzed their original data and re-analyzed tracking of the estrogen only arm for many more years.
The first WHI 1 scary conclusions were found to not only be “wrong”, but the exact “opposite” of what was finally concluded to be right. (This re-analysis was 1st presented at the yearly SA TX Breast Cancer Symposium see below including authors at 2019 SABCS.
I wrote an entire book on this called Safe Hormones, Smart Women.
Hodis published in 2018 that the WHI 1 methodology was wrong. (Menopausal hormone therapy and breast cancer: what is the evidence from randomized trials? Climacteric. 2018 Dec;21(6):521-528)
The WHI 1 authors forgot to ask, and thus did not remove, in the placebo group, any women who had already taken estrogen therapies.
Since estrogen was ultimately, on re-analysis found to be “breast protective” , and the synthetic progestins were huge adverse contributing issues, this made the incidence of breast cancer in the placebo group of ladies, lower, as women had already taken the protective estrogen.
This made the experimental arm, women taking hormones, falsely appear as though they had more cases of breast cancer.
When the data was re-analyzed, thus “righted” by taking out this “confounding issue”, and longer term effects of estrogen looked at with a fine tooth comb, the same original authors, re-published their re-analysis. This is now what I call the WHI 2.
Conclusions of WHI 2:
Women taking estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) had 23% less incidence or chance of getting breast cancer in the first place.
And if you had been on ERT, and got breast cancer, you had a 44% decreased chance of dying from it.
Progestins were more the breast damaging issue. Not estrogen.
So, stunning as it is, being on ERT put you in a better position, even if you went on to get breast cancer! This is something that is now replicated. Substantiated. But not taught in most med schools or appreciated by most docs and women. Or lawyers!
BTW, the same holds true for males with prostate cancer. I ask you, as Dr. Abe Morganthaler, ex associate professor of urology at Harvard also asks, (hear our podcast) “Why would Mother Nature make the very hormones that drive humanity be Pro-carcinogenic? Makes no sense?”
The 7 million NIH study, the largest study ever run on women, with 1.5 million American women on ERT, shows that women 65 and older on estrogen therapies have statistically “less” of all 5 cancers studied (breast, ovarian, uterine, lung and colon). As well as live almost 20% longer, healthier lives. With less heart disease (unless on oral estrogens) and less dementias.
Here is more detail on the 2019 SABCS Abstracts session where the WHI 2 was first presented at a yearly San Antonio Breast Cancer Convention.
2019 SABCS Abstracts Session GS5 - GS5. General Session 5 December 13, 2019, 9:30 AM - 9:45 AM
Authors of the WHI 2
Rowan T Chlebowski1, Garnet L Anderson2, Aaron K Aragaki2, JoAnn E Manson3, Marcia Stefanick4, Kathy Pan1, Wendy Barrington5, Lewis H Kuller6, Michael S. Simon7, Dorothy Lane8, Karen C Johnson9, Thomas E. Rohan10, Margery L.S. Gass2, Jane A Cauley6, Electra D. Paskett11, Maryam Sattari12 and Ross L Prentice2. 1Los Angeles BioMedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, CA; 2 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA; 3Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA; 4Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford, CA; 5University of Washington, Seattle, WA; 6 Pitt Public Health, Pittsburgh, PA; 7Karmanos Cancer Institute, Detroit, MI;8 Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY; 9University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN;10Albert Einstein Cancer Center, Bronx, NY;11The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; 12UF Health Internal Medicine, Gainesville, FL.
The Women’s Health Initiative studies, which began in 1991, showed estrogen replacement therapy in menopausal women significantly increased the risk of heart attacks, strokes, dementia, Parkinson's disease and cancer, not just in the breast but all female reproductive organs
This is old wrong hat. WHI 1. The reanalysis by the original authors showed this to be the opposite. This guest of his is way off on the current science.
Even the web site for gynecologists, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, still only cite the WHI 1. This promotes confusion. And WRONG fear of estrogen. And women miss out.
I gave a talk in Chicago a few months ago (15 hours of didactic lecture) with about 20 OBGYN docs attending. None of them knew about the WHI 2 at all. Let alone these other studies that I cite. All from peer review scientific literature.
The biochemical role of estrogen is to aid in wound healing. In cases of tissue trauma, estrogen reverts the differentiated cells in that specific tissue back to a stem cell-like condition, to repair the damaged tissue. In young, healthy women, progesterone will turn off estrogen’s activity. Progesterone declines with ages, but estrogen synthesis typically does not. Hence, if your estrogen is high and progesterone low, your cancer risk will rise.
Estrogen is the oldest hormone on the planet. Hormones work by signaling receptors, satellite dishes, that take “emails” from hormones. Estrogen has more receptors than any other hormone since “she’s” been around so long. Each signaled receptor gives different directives. Thus, estrogen sends “many” instructive and diverse emails.
What is not appreciated, is that estrogen’s second receptor acts like a “natural chemotherapeutic drug” fighting breast cancer, other cancers, and even ovarian (Therapeutic utility of natural estrogen receptor beta agonists on ovarian cancer. Oncotarget. 2017 Jul 25;8(30):50002-50014.) and glioblastoma (in vitro or lab studies much written by Jan-Åke Gustafsson PhD, who discovered this receptor. I got to hang with him at Tulane. Dr. Jan-Åke is now in Houston trying to help make anti-breast cancer drugs that in fact signal this estrogen receptor).
Estrone signals mostly ER alpha which signals “growth”.
Cancer is growth out of control.
Estradiol signals 50% ER alpha and 50% ER beta.
Estriol signals 90% ER beta.
ER beta estrogen signals give “growth control” signals.
So much so, that Jan-Åke Gustafsson, who discovered ER beta, writes that whatever signals ER beta (agonist), acts as a tumor suppressor agent. (Therapeutic utility of natural estrogen receptor beta agonists on ovarian cancer. Oncotarget. 2017 Jul 25;8(30):50002-50014.)
In this manner, E2 (estradiol, E3 (estriol), Testosterone (it’s final metabolite 3-Beta Diol, which acts just like protective soy) all are estrogenic signals. But these estrogen signals act as “anti-cancer” and “protective” estrogen signals.
This guest is way too simplistic and way off the scientific mark.
Estrogen is antimetabolic and radically reduces the ability of your mitochondria to create cellular energy in a form of ATP
BS. Estrogen protects mitochondria from oxidative damage. (Mitochondria: Target organelles for estrogen action. Postepy Hig Med Dosw (Online). 2017 Jun 8;71(0):454-465)
Again, I query: “Why would Mother Nature make the very hormone that drives humanity, not protect mitochondria that fuels humanity? Makes no sense.”
If it was true, when we are younger and have “more” estrogen, we would have more fatigue and more cancer. But we usually are at higher risk for getting more tired or more carcinogenic issues, when we have “less” estrogen.
Estrone - the menopausal estrogen, mostly signals ER alpha) when we are older. (I wrote about this whole estrogen story in an eBook called Estrogen Vindication)
That’s one reason that taking estrogen therapies to signal the second estrogen receptor, helps balance out this older, menopausal estrogen, and keep us safer.
Elevated serotonin destroys empathy, love and wisdom, and contributes to fibrosis, impaired thyroid function, reduced metabolism and reductive stress. High serotonin is also responsible for bizarre, recurring nightmares and may play a role in PTSD as well
The drug industry is making a mint on the idea that depression is caused by low serotonin, for example. However, a closer look reveals both estrogen and serotonin can cause severe problems and you do not want high levels of either of them.
Estrogen has been improving oxytocin and nitric oxide levels and neurotransmitter release in women on hormone replacement therapies (HRT) for years. Even Harvard has published in psychiatric (along with the neuroendocrine department of Mass General) peer review randomized trials stunningly giving estrogen and progesterone replacement to “young” girls (ages 13 to 24) and this rapidly improved mood and body image as well as sleep and anxiety. (Estrogen administration improves the trajectory of eating disorder pathology in oligo-amenorrheic athletes: A randomized controlled trial. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2019 Apr;102:273-280)
Estrogen Is an Obesity Promoter and Known Human Carcinogen The original name for estrogen was adipin, so called because it was known to make you fat, as in adipose (fat) tissue. In the mid-‘50s, when the drug industry started pushing synthetic estrogens, this knowledge faded from memory.
Estrogen is not an obesity promoter unless it is out of balance.
Estrogen actually helps signal brown fat that burns fat.
This guy is way off base and trying to make estrogen look dangerous. Is there an agenda here?
I wrote about fat cells in-depth in the Townsend News Letter Jan 1st 2023 issue. And here is a peer review study showing estrogen signals the fat burning brown fat. (Estrogen as a key regulator of energy homeostasis and metabolic health. Biomed Pharmacother. 2022 Dec;156:113808)
One of the most infamous early synthetic estrogens prescribed was diethylstilbestrol (DES), which caused fetal malformations and deaths, and cancers in the mothers who took it. DES was eventually withdrawn and banned for use in humans.
DES does activate estrogen receptors, but potentially more potently than our own endogenous estrogen does, and it has no other mechanisms of action except through its estrogenic effects. This gives us a strong signal that estrogen excess is of serious concern.
DES is not estrogen. It’s an estrogenic disruptive chemical.
I am a DES daughter (meaning my pregnant mom was given this, so I was exposed in the womb, causing many life long health issues, like multiple cancers).
I worked at an environmental estrogen think tank (Center for Bioenvironmental Research) with the scientists that unveiled this DES story. Actually the moms given the DES brought all this to Dr. John McLachlan’s attention. Dr. John was one of my mentors at Tulane.
I got invited to be a Distinguished Hormone Scholar, by Dr. John, at the “Estrogen Think Tank”, after writing my breakthrough endocrine disruption book: Hormone Deception). Dr. John wrote an amazing introduction to this work.
DES is an acronym for diethylstilbesterol. Mouth full.
DES was a synthetic estrogen, 50 times more powerful than our own estrogens. It was given to pregnant women, like my mom, from 1938 to 1971, when it was “finally” labeled a class 1 carcinogen (memo’s from the 1930’s proved the manufacturing drug companies knew DES caused cancer in rodents, and of course, covered this up. Thus, I have a fire in my belly).
DES is our number one “model molecule” of how endocrine disruption works. Not how natural estrogen works.
The DES tragedy is no longer taught in any med schools, yikes!
DES is a powerful estrogen disruptor, that’s why it’s prenatal exposure increased the risk of cancer in the offspring and moms.
DES is the model compound of endocrine disruption that damages DNA. Not that it’s an estrogen.
Rather DES damages the “protective” actions of our innate estrogen.
Mercola’s guest and himself are getting this all mixed up.
Why does Mercola not have me or female OBGYNs who have used HRT for many years on many women, on his show?
That estrogen can cause cancer is well-established.
This is not the case. This is propaganda meant to keep women frail and using prescribed meds and being customers for nursing facilities. Or whatever else folks are selling. Never thought I would say this, but say this I do.
Socialized countries track the health of their citizens and what costs the countries money as they pay for “all” of it. Many of them now offer hormone replacement therapies for “free” as so many women stay out of nursing homes and hospitals and cost the countries less when they are on hormone therapies.
I gave a talk at the prestigious ICIM (International College of Integrative Medicine at their “Advances in Cancer Prevention and Post-Cancer Care 70th Congress) in Dearborn, MI, on April 8h 2022. It was evaluated as the best talk given in the 40+ years of this medical society. They sent me a notice about this of which I am humbled and very proud.
I presented to the ICIM, in detail, the astonishing 26 studies run “before” 2002 and the WHI 1, on mostly ER+ breast cancer patients right after diagnosis, given estrogen therapies. Matched with groups of ER+ ladies not given ERT.
One study went 33 years, one 26 years, many about 2 to 8 years.
Not one study showed any increased risk of issues with breast cancer patients taking estrogen therapies! Let that sink in.
Most studies showed “less” recurrence, “less” death if there was recurrence, and a much “higher quality” of life.
MD Anderson did one study, University of Wisconsin another, and on and on.
These types of studies stopped abruptly after the WHI 1. And even after the WHI 2 re-analysis and vindication of estrogen therapies. While so many of my sisters-of-the-heart miss out.
I had ER+PR+ breast cancer almost 30 years ago and have been on HRT for almost 27-28 years. So long ago not sure exactly how many. I am almost 75 years old, running around the country lecturing for CME’s to providers and having the energy and lucidity, thank you universe, to do so. Would not be able to, if were not on HRT!
This is the battle cry of the advertising campaigns of big pharma, that estrogen is dangerous. Yet, while they are vilifying estrogen therapies in our aging ladies, they are pushing it big time on social media in the form of birth control pills to our 8, 9 and 10 year old girls. More on this below. Makes me grind my teeth to powder.
In December 2002, the National Institutes of Health added steroidal estrogens used in estrogen replacement therapy and oral contraceptives to its list of KNOWN human carcinogens.
This was due to the WHI 1 that was reversed by its own original authors.
"Even mainstream doctors will admit that there is this thing called estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer," Georgi says. "The role of estrogen there is well known. Nobody's denying it, but the story has always been, it's a localized-only effect. It's a tissue-specific effect.
If you look at the estrogen levels of menopausal women ... it’s undetectable. However, if you take a tissue biopsy from the tumor or the breast tissue around it, you'll see that estrogen levels are sky-high there.
Cancer has several theories. One is estrogen “drives” it.
But this theory is in opposition to the other one saying “cancer stem cells” are driving it.
Cancer stem cells have NO receptors and are not fueled by estrogen.
Cancer can also come about by an imbalance. Too much ER alpha signaling and not enough ER beta.
ER beta is an anti-cancer protective estrogen signal that acts like a tumor suppressor or chemotherapeutic agent. Women miss out by Mercola and his guest’s way too simplistic and old (based on the older WHI 1) data that is no longer correct.
And written and reported in a rather inflammatory and scary manner.
Begrudgingly, medicine said, ‘OK, yes, estrogen is involved as a causal agent in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. However, this effect is specific only to the breast.
There is a movement based on the work of an oncologist, Avrum Bluming MD (I interviewed him for my book Safe Hormones, Smart Women which re-analyzed the WHI 1), to recognize that stem cells drive cancer, not estrogen receptors.
Stem cells are not effected or driven by estrogen.
Also, these ER+ and PR+ receptors are found in “all” healthy breast tissue.
There is a growing movement in understanding and “reframing” of breast cancer that says that finding ER+ and/or PR+ receptors does not mean the tumor is driven by these hormones. Rather the cancer has not totally overtaken the healthy original breast cell which had all these receptors.
Thus, ER+ and PR+ findings are good signs of remaining archival tissue. Wrong perspective means everything. (Additional info in Estrogen Vindicated eBook)
Elsewhere, estrogen is really beneficial, and that's the reason why we're seeing ovarian uterine atrophy, vulva atrophy and all these menopausal women need more estrogen.’"
However, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) studies, which began in 1991, showed estrogen replacement therapy in menopausal women significantly increased the risk of heart attacks, strokes, dementia, Parkinson's disease and cancer, not just in the breast but all female reproductive organs.
Again, this is the old WHI 1, now found NOT to be accurate by it’s reanalysis. By it’s original authors.
Just that this guy keeps referring to the WHI 1 clearly reveals his actual non-scientific understanding and hate to say it, also arrogance.
Hormones are extraordinarily brain protective.
The Arizona insurance study showed that women (almost 400,000) taking natural steroids had 79% less dementias (Association between menopausal hormone therapy and risk of neurodegenerative diseases: Implications for precision hormone therapy. Alzheimers Dement (N Y). 2021 May 13;7(1):e12174.).
The Cache County dementia studies showed that women on estrogen therapies for an average of 10 years had 30 to 50% less incidence of Alzheimer’s disease depending on the spin-off paper you read.
The Cache author’s conclusions were: “Our results suggest that longer EEE and HT use, especially in older women, are associated with higher cognitive status in late life.” (Lifetime estrogen exposure and cognition in late life: the Cache County Study. Menopause. 2019 Dec;26(12):1366-1374).
The 7 million menopause study (largest study ever run by our NIH and National Library of Medicine on older women taking ERT) showed that older women on ERT for at least 5 years had significantly “less” incidence of all neurodegenerative diseases unless they took synthetic progestins or oral estrogens (which, btw, are in oral birth control pills now sold OTC).
The studies that show that hormonal therapies are linked to higher incidence of neurodegenerative diseases, if you read the “bowels” of the research, are from “oral” estrogens and “synthetic progestins”. Not the same!
In the interview, Georgi also reviews evidence showing that estrogen can play a role in all types of cancer, not just reproductive ones.
Estrogen Therapy Has Seen a Revival, With Dire Consequences
The publication of the WHI results led to a significant decline in estrogen replacement therapy, starting in the late 1990s, early 2000s, until about 2015, when studies refuting those earlier results started coming out. Scientists argued estrogen could be safely used if dosed and timed better. Cancer rates don’t bear that out though. "If you look at cancer rates, not just for breast cancer but for all of the female reproductive organs, you'll see there was a drop in deaths from these cancers over the last 20 years, and then that rate started going up, and not just up, but exponentially up over the last five or six years," Georgi says.
The rate of cancers started to drop “before” the first WHI.
I discuss this in detail in Safe Hormones Smart Women. This is not an accurate argument. It’s an older, inaccurate argument. I spent literally months data sleuthing to show the proof of this in my book Safe Hormones, Smart Women. Georgi has it wrong.
"This coincides perfectly with the gap, which is about 15 years of not using estrogen on a mass scale, and then ... reintroducing it back into the treatment protocols. Both the rates of the cancers and the deaths from these cancers plummeted over this 15-year period, and now it's back, and actually exceeds what it used to be."
"That's another big myth that we need to address," Georgi says. "Talk to any doctor and they'll tell you, ‘Menopause is a condition of severe progesterone and estrogen deficiency. We've done countless tests of the blood and we've seen that estrogen levels and progesterone levels are undetectable.’ That's expected because most of the estradiol — which is the main estrogen both for males or females — and progesterone are of ovarian origin in females. In other words, if the ovaries atrophy, yes, you will expect to see declining levels of the steroids in the blood because the ovaries are not working so well. In fact, eventually they fail. However, another thing that's probably not well known, even among doctors, is that every cell in the body expresses the enzyme aromatase and contains the machinery to synthesize its own estrogen from circulating precursors. And those circulated precursors are always there, usually cholesterol which, by the way, rises with age. So that would imply that if we test tissues, even in menopausal women, we should see increase in estrogen — especially in women that are having problems with their health — versus decrease, which is what's seen in the blood.
In older women peripheral tissues make “estrone”.
Estrone signals more the growth estrogen receptor (ER alpha) and not the protective tumor suppressive second estrogen receptor (ER beta), which estradiol signals half the time, estriol most of the time, and many botanicals and healthy foods and even testosterone’s final metabolite (3-beta diol, that looks just like soy isoflavones) signal much of the time.
Older women make more estrone. Making them more prone to issues like cancer. When adding ERT. especially “bi-est” with estriol added to the estradiol, this helps “right” this balance. Thereby reducing a women’s risk of issues like this.
And every test I've seen on biopsies done confirms that. In 2022, a Chinese group published a very large study with Chinese women where they measured the levels of more than 20 different hormones in hair ... which is kind of like a surrogate for what's going on in the tissues because hair grows out of cells called follicular cells. Basically, the levels of steroids in these cells are probably representative of what gets deposited into a hair. If you look at the estrogen levels of these women, which span all age groups, estrogen levels not only did not decline with age, they actually slightly increased ... Progesterone did decline, almost to undetectable levels. Thyroid hormone, the active portion, T3, also declined. Reverse T3 increased, and there was an inverse correlation between body mass index (BMI) and the levels of either T3 and progesterone, and a positive correlation between BMI and the levels of estrogen. So, to me, that gives you very strong evidence that estrogen is really not what we're being told it is, in the sense that you can freely administer it and will restore youthfulness in menopausal women."
If you put 100 women in a room who all got the memo to eat right and exercise, but half are on hormone replacement, you could cherry pick them out. They stand taller, talk with less old lady voice, have less pot belly and more. I am the very example of all I am talking/writing about. Let me debate Georgi. Let’s match our muscle mass!
Estrogen Summary So, to summarize, low estrogen levels in your blood is not an indictment of estrogen deficiency. This is because most cells can synthesize estrogen from common precursors that are widely available in your body, including cholesterol.
But they synthesize estrone. Not the best estrogen. Not all estrogens are alike. Wrong. Oh how can i count the ways?
The problem is that the estrogen that these cells produce doesn’t equilibrate with the blood, but stays within these cells and gives a false impression of estrogen deficiency.
This guy is not in the trenches working with women who have lost their zip and sleep and memory. He uses all mixed up rhetoric and inaccurately keeps citing the now WRONG WHI 1. This guy is so way off it is shocking that Mercola gives it such a huge title.
But then I see that Mercola is using all this as a marketing ploy to sell his new DHEA in a glass bottle. Can this really be? With so many folks believing in him? OMG.
And, while estrogen is an essential component in tissue repair, that growth and repair process needs to be turned off when the job is completed, and if it isn’t, the risk of cancer rises dramatically.
Cancer comes from DNA damage, inflammation and cancer stem cells run amok. All which estrogen helps behave!
The problem is that progesterone and androgens — the off-switches for estrogen in women and men respectively — do decline with age, because cells do not have a comparable enzyme like aromatase, to synthesize them. Their synthesis is restricted to gonadal tissues. This leads to elevated estrogen levels and decreased progesterone and testosterone, which typically results in unregulated cell growth, the essence of cancer.
It is true. From the arduous and thankless work of Dr. R. Glaser et. al., which shows that women with less testosterone and more estrone are more at the risk of getting breast cancer. Dr. Glaser demonstrates that giving testosterone replacement, and balancing hormones… protects “against” breast cancer.
Dr. Glaser also uses testosterone therapy to help treat some cases of breast cancer. She and her partner have published about this.
Making matters worse, estrogen is antimetabolic and radically reduces the ability of your mitochondria to create cellular energy in a form of ATP by depending on aerobic glycolysis (the Warburg effect) which radically impairs oxidative phosphorylation.
Wrong, estrogen actually protects mitochondria from damage. Again this comes from replicated peer review data, which I cited just one such study above.
This further contributes to its carcinogenic effect.
Georgi explains: "When you have to repair tissue, you can forego, for a little bit, the oxidative phosphorylation, but it always needs to come back, because that is the differentiating factor. Stem cells stay in ‘cancer metabolism’ because ... it’s the way cells have to be in order to divide at the maximum rate possible with the minimum consumption of resources possible. But if you want this tissue to become an organ instead of a blob of cells that consumes all your energy, you need to turn off that estrogen signal, and either high metabolism and/or progesterone, and/or thyroid [hormone], both of which also prometabolic, are known as the main differentiating factors in humans."
Stem cells are not driven by hormones. They have NO hormone receptors.
In fact, the second estrogen receptor, ER beta, helps tamp down cancer stem cells. And what signals this ER beta but estradiol, estriol, T’s final metabolite 3-Beta Diol, soy, and many botanicals such as the flavonoid apigenin (thus I designed my Biotic’s Hormone Balance and Protect to contain these cancer stem cell “guardians”). Here is just one of many studies and I love it when the title tells it ALL: (Estrogen Receptor β as a Therapeutic Target in Breast Cancer Stem Cells. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2017 Mar 1;109(3):1-14 and here’s another, Therapeutic Targeting of Ovarian Cancer Stem Cells Using Estrogen Receptor Beta Agonist. Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Jun 28;23(13):7159)
The Many Health Benefits of Progesterone As explained by Georgi, progesterone is the main endogenous and most direct and potent glucocorticoid receptor antagonist. This is a profound important point that I was unaware of until Georgi mentioned it.
Well women have an amazing amount of testosterone, too. In fact, the lower the T and the higher the estrone (the most proliferative estrogen), the more the risk of getting breast cancer.
Testosterone is breast protective.
Testosterone is muscle protective.
Testosterone (T) protects the immune system in the gut (SIgA).
As such, it’s also a cortisol blocker, with a similar activity as the anticancer drug and cortisol blocker RU-486, which is now virtually impossible to get.
The primary difference between them is that RU-486 also blocks progesterone, so when you take it you have to be very careful about supplementing.
Taking progesterone bypasses this issue, and Georgi believes it has about the same effectiveness as mifepristone (RU-486). Georgi goes into great detail about RU-486.
Progesterone replacement protects against many cancers not just of the uterus. It is also produced in 6 areas of the brain in middle-aged humans (both genders), where it acts to calm the brain. To lower anxiety.
Progesterone is a huge cancer protector. Against breast cancer but also many others. So much so, why are aging women not routinely recommended it? We don’t need expensive drugs but protective natural hormones like progesterone
Conclusion of one peer review article: “Use of progesterone has been linked to lower rates of uterine and colon cancers and may also be useful in treating other cancers such as ovarian, melanoma, mesothelioma, and prostate. Progesterone may also be helpful in preventing cardiovascular disease and preventing and treating neurodegenerative conditions such a stroke and traumatic brain injury.”
Conclusions • Physicians should have no hesitation prescribing natural progesterone. The evidence is clear that progesterone does not cause breast cancer. Indeed, progesterone is protective and preventative of breast cancer. (In Defense of Progesterone: A Review of the Literature. Altern Ther Health Med. 2017 Nov;23(6):24-32)
As I said, it’s virtually impossible to get a hold of this compound outside the mifepristone these days, which is why I won’t expound on it here, but if you want to learn more about it, listen to the interview.
Ugh. Why not just use natural progesterone? Again, he is not a prescribing female doc.(I have worked with medical prescribing teams for decades besides being a distinguished hormone scholar for many years at Tulane).
Progesterone is also a GABA agonist and could be useful to take concomitant with a GABA supplement. You may even be able to use much lower doses of both if you combine them together. This affinity for GABA accounts for some of progesterone’s psychological benefits. Georgi explains: "The strongest GABA agonist in the body, slightly stronger than progesterone, is a progesterone derivative, a metabolite, known as allopregnanolone. It was recently approved by the FDA for postpartum depression. A company is developing an oral formulation with the long-chain fatty acids called LYT-300, and now they're applying to the FDA for clinical trials for posttraumatic stress disorder, psychosis, sleep disturbances, anxiety — all of these things GABA is known to relieve. They're saying, ‘Oh, we have the most potent endogenous GABA agonist here, allopregnanolone, for all these conditions.’ But we can say, ‘Well, you don't have to get allopregnanolone by prescription. You can do it with progesterone, maybe a slightly higher dosage, but still in the same ballpark." As mentioned, progesterone also inhibits cortisol, and cortisol has been welldocumented to play a major role in depression.
On a side note, GABA and allopregnanolone also appear to have anticancer activity. According to Georgi, GABA is known to improve mitochondrial energy production and inhibit excessive glycolysis. Excessive glycolysis and impaired mitochondrial function just happen to be the classic hallmarks of cancer. In older studies, injecting GABA directly into tumors was found to trigger complete regression in a matter of days.
Progesterone Dosing In my view, what mature women really need are progesterone and pregnenolone, not estrogen.
That is because he is not a woman. As women age, when the healthy estrogens are not on board, it is a different, and a much less comfy or sleep-able body suit.
Estrogen also protects bones from potentially fatal bone fractures as well as protects against colon cancer.
As the new 7 million study by our own NIH shows, ERT decreases the incidence of many dementia diseases, like Alzheimer’s, because estrogen is the one thing that increases the size of our “memory” and “awareness” piggy bank, our precious hippocampus.
True anti-aging is maintaining the volume of our hippocampus. What does this? Not exercise or meditation as shown by the recent Yale MedEx trial results, but by estrogen replacement. I discuss this in-depth in my CME lectures to practitioners all across the US and Canada. (Effects of Mindfulness Training and Exercise on Cognitive Function in Older Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2022 Dec 13;328(22):2218-2229. doi: 10.1001/jama.2022.21680)
So, in practical terms, you’ll want to make sure your levels of progesterone and pregnenolone are within healthy limits, which are the levels you’d have in your 20s.
According to Georgi, "a physiological dose for a young healthy child before they actually reach puberty is about 30 milligrams of progesterone daily ... so, 30 milligrams seems to 3 be a decent dosage prophylactically."
That is a dose that works for younger women. But older women needing it to sleep, to protect the lining of their uterus, to protect their lungs to heal rapidly after injury such as with a virus like covid, need more progesterone than that.
Dr. Katarina Dalton, the first British physician to use progesterone replacement and coin the term PMS, used from 500 to 900 mg a day! Pregnant ladies 3rd trimester levels can go from several hundred to 400 mg.
Thus, the human body is set up to be able to use large dosages. The Mt. Sinai study on males with severe Covid in ICUs, gave 200 mg a day. In Dr. White’s multi-centered head trauma progesterone study, patients were given 400 mg/d to both genders with no issues and a statistical trend of positive brain protection.
How to Optimize Progesterone Absorption To maintain an optimal progesterone level, you can either take preformed progesterone or its precursor, pregnenolone.
This is nuts, you can take the precursor but you have no idea what hormones it will make down the road. You can simply take progesterone. It’s so safe it is available over-the-counter, even in make up. This guy is not a clinician, and is doing a disservice if you didn’t read this response to his inaccurate stuff.
If you're taking oral progesterone, be sure to take it with a small amount of saturated or monounsaturated fat — something with a carbon chain above 14, to optimize absorption. Butter is an ideal choice. "If you don't avoid the first-pass metabolism, you're going to waste about 85% of the progesterone taken," Georgi says.
But the key, and what I had misunderstood from my previous conversations with Georgi, is that the pregnenolone or DHEA, can’t be merely taken at the same meal with butter. It needs to be taken out of the pill and mixed well into the butter.
Again, this is so off scientific reality it’s hard to believe that Mercola published this. Be so careful who you listen to regarding hormones. Yikes.
You don’t need much butter (or ghee), just about one-fourth of a teaspoon. You can mix it with a toothpick or similar small tool and put on your food and you are off to the races avoiding the 85% destruction that typically occurs when you swallow the capsule without this trick. Progesterone has potent sedative effects, so if you’re getting to a point where you're getting disoriented, or your thinking or speech slows or you’re getting sleepy, you'll probably know that your dose was too high and have taken too much. You can take advantage of its GABA agonist effect by taking it 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime.
"A hefty dose of progesterone causes symptoms indistinguishable from being drunk," Georgi says, "so don't operate machinery when you're taking a lot of progesterone."
The typical dose many functional docs give older menopause ladies is often up to 300 mg of progesterone and they don’t (if this dose is right for them) get drunk. This guy is like a late night hormone chef making jokes or something. So help me god.
Of course, if you have trouble sleeping, then taking the progesterone in the evening can be helpful. One commercial product that Georgi and I discussed was Progest-E which the late biologist and thyroid expert Ray Peat developed, and contains progesterone mixed with vitamin E. Since our interview, however, I did some research and now would strongly recommend avoiding Progest-E. Why? For two reasons. One, it is put into a cheap plastic squeeze bottle. I’m not sure why Peat did not realize that flexible plastic is loaded with plasticizers like BPA and phthalates and are strong estrogen mimics. But, the more important reason is that it is virtually impossible to squeeze out a precise dose of "one drop" from the bottle. My experience suggests that one drop could be a small fraction of a drop or five or even more drops.
So, this product needs to be avoided.
Fortunately, there is a far better one available called Simply Progesterone that you can get at Health Natura. It has the same progesterone concentration of 3 mg/drop as the Progest-E. The products comes in a glass bottle with a real glass dropper that you can easily and accurately measure. This product is a winner and the one that I use.
Well, is this what’s behind all this? Selling something. Is this accurate, I find myself pondering. Is this podcast an info-commercial selling Mercola’s new DHEA drops? Make women so fearful of estrogen, they will then take DHEA to take something? I ask you what you think?
DHEA Dosing and Considerations For optimal health, you also want to keep an eye on your cortisol-to-DHEA ratio. "The cortisol-to-DHEA ratio — whether in blood, tissue, hair or nails — has now been established as the single most reliable predictor of all-cause mortality and morbidity throughout the entire lifespan," Georgi says.
Where has that been established? This guys speaks like he has access to the Akashic records. Not.
"That ratio should be less than 0.3. In other words, heavily in favor of DHEA. Anything over 0.5 is known to start causing mood disturbances [like] depression. Anything over 1, you're probably at risk of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, or worse."
That said, DHEA is a precursor to estrogens, so you don’t want excessive amounts of DHEA.
DHEA protects estrogen’s actions. Labrie PhD made his career in France writing on this. (Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society Vol. 16, No. 5, pp. 923/931 Effect of intravaginal dehydroepiandrosterone (Prasterone) on libido and sexual dysfunction in postmenopausal women)
For most people, 10 mg to 12 mg of DHEA is more than adequate. That’s how much you produce in your mid-20s. 4 It would be highly unwise to simply swallow DHEA, as 85% will be broken down by your liver and we have no idea how harmful the liver metabolites are. You can use the same butter trick described above for pregnenolone, to avoid this. But it would also be wise to not take doses over 10 mg without professional supervision.
You do not want to increase your estrogen and prolactin levels. You must be careful, though, as taking DHEA can easily be converted to estrogen by aromatase and subsequently increase prolactin levels. It you are going to take DHEA it would be best to take it with progesterone as that will inhibit DHEA’s conversion into estrogen since progesterone is a potent aromatase inhibitor.
"As far as dosages [are concerned] … if you're still producing DHEA, which you can verify on blood tests, you can calculate the delta between what the optimal interval was when you were young [and what it is now]. Let's say the optimal level was 500, and now you are in your 60s.The [lab] range says you're fine, but your level is 200.
In my opinion, ideal is mid range or if you are peri or postmenopausal, even 100+ is great.
DHEA rules the sebaceous glands of the skin which is why it keeps us looking shiny and younger. But this also means one has to tread softly as some women may get cystic acne. Some can only take several milligrams if not just one mg. Which then has to be compounded. We love and appreciate or amazing compounding pharmacists!
The delta is about 60%, so you need to take 60% of that daily [amount] that you used to produce when you were in your 20s. Sixty percent of 12 mg is what you really need to be taking in order to restore the level to the youthful level without running into the risk of raising estrogen too much. And if you combine it with progesterone, you should be getting an even stronger anti-cortisol effect while further preventing the conversion of DHEA into estrogen."
12 mg is high for many ladies. We start at 5 mg and taper up slowly if at all. Hormones work in ppm and ppb, so only need a small amount. Ideals are very desired by those not treating patients, but labs. We care more how patients look and feel.
Pregnenolone Benefits and Dosing Suggestions Pregnenolone, which your body makes from cholesterol, converts first to progesterone and then to allopregnanolone. Pregnenolone is also converted to DHEA, which is a precursor for estrogens and androgens. "Pregnenolone is really unique in the sense that if you have an excess of a specific steroid, it will likely lower it," Georgi says, "and if you have a deficiency of a specific steroid, it will probably raise it. About 100 mg is probably enough because, being the top level hormone, it’s going to convert downstream into whatever you need ... I know of a study with schizophrenia where 50 mg decreased significantly both the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."
While most people opt for oral pregnenolone, I prefer rectal suppositories. I make my own by mixing the pregnenolone with cacao butter, a very long chain fat that facilitates absorption. For most people, 100 mg is sufficient. If you opt for oral pregnenolone, mix it into half a teaspoon of butter to make an emulsion.
Rectal suppositories, really? I don’t know many that would want to do this regularly. You?
Low Serotonin Is Not the Cause of Depression Next, we discuss serotonin, which used to be called enteramine because it’s produced in the gut. Enteric refers to things related to your intestines. Serotonin has been incorrectly dubbed the "happy hormone." It’s not. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a class of antidepressants that raise your serotonin levels, but contrary to popular belief, this can cause significant problems. The easiest solution for depression, anxiety and insomnia is GABA, with or without progesterone. "Even 100 mg of oral GABA was enough to lower the assessment scores of patients with anxiety and depression disorders. The Beck's Depression Inventory is for depression, and there's another one for anxiety. Just 100 mg of GABA was sufficient to lower significantly in the score on both scales. Combining it with another GABA agonist amino acid known as L-theanine, which is founding in tea, drastically increased the effects.
Love gaba, but nutraceutical gaba does not easily cross our precious blood brain barrier. Thus, another difficulty in treating many insomniacs.
.And L-theanine lowers the levels of serotonin in the brain. It’s perhaps the most direct evidence that serotonin in the brain is not good at elevated levels.
Nothing is good at elevated levels. It’s all about BALANCE and DOSAGES designed FOR THE INDIVIDUAL PATIENT.
So for people who are on antidepressants, one of the first things that I would do is go to a doctor and ask about two drugs that are approved for treating depression but are antiserotonergic. One is called mepirzapine, also known as mirtazapine. If you look at the structure, it's very similar to a drug called cyproheptadine, which is a known selective serotonin antagonist. Mepirzapine or mirtazapine is approved for treating patients in the United States.
Many women, and gents, if given hormone therapies, get rid or greatly reduce depression and/or anxiety. There on many papers on this. Why would we need yet more scripts? Ugh.
You learn fast in practice (which I have had the honor of always working in TEAM med practices) that most patients feel better and younger longer on replaced hormone therapies personally dosed for them.
If you want to get your psychiatrist angry, please ask him or her to explain how an antiserotonin drug is approved for depression, considering that all the other proserotonin drugs are also approved for depression. Something doesn't add up there." Cyproheptadine also acts as a sleeping pill, so if you do not have insomnia, don’t go over 2.5 mg. Cut it in half or even a quarter. It’s also a potent histamine blocker and can be used for acute allergic reactions. It is a prescription and think it would be wise to have it on hand, but Benadryl could also be used.
All pharmaceutical anti-histamine use, 3 years and longer, greatly increases the risk of cognitive decline. This guy bad mouths estrogen and then just keeps recommending more and more drugs or Mercola’s new and improved own version of hormones. Buyer beware!
It also might have benefit for those who are on SSRIs, sleeping pills or anti-anxiety agents. However, I think high dose GABA therapy is likely a far better, safer, and less expensive approach. Georgi and I discuss this in the podcast. Just be careful about combination products as they may contain magnesium. While magnesium is very helpful if you push the GABA to high doses you will get far too much magnesium and it will have a laxative effect.
But this transit time effect reverses immediately when you reduce the dose of magnesium so it’s not dangerous. In the olden days we recommended folks in fact take mg till they got looser stools, then back “off”, to figure out their own ideal dosing.
The other drug Georgi recommends is tianeptine, which is a selective serotonin reuptake enhancer (SSRE), basically the converse of an SSRI, and it too is a potent antidepressant. If you don’t want to go the pharmaceutical route, you can use GABA, at a dose of 500 mg to 2,000 mg (2 grams) daily. This range has been shown to relieve anxiety and insomnia in people who are already taking SSRI drugs, Georgi notes, adding, "I've seen people in very severe cases of anxiety and depression plateau it about 3 to 4 grams. After that ... the mental effects usually plateau." Interestingly, if you take too much GABA, some of it will get deaminated and convert into succinic acid, an intermediate of the Krebs cycle. As such, GABA also helps boost mitochondrial function at high doses. So from a toxicity perspective it appears to be very safe.
Elevated Serotonin Has Devastating Psychological Effects Ironically, while many doctors blame insomnia on depression caused by low serotonin, it may actually be the other way around. Georgi explains: "Every single antiserotonin drug ever tested ... has demonstrated both antidepressant and prosomnic, basically anti-insomnic, effects in animal studies and some human studies as well. So, serotonin is known to actually cause insomnia. How? If serotonin is a precursor to melatonin, how can it actually cause problems with the sleep? It’s because serotonin is the most potent activator in the body of the release of cortisol through ACTH. In fact, the first antidepressant drug, Prozac, is a partial serotonin antagonist. It specifically blocks the serotonin receptor responsible for the release of cortisol, serotonin receptor 2C5-HT2C. Prozac is a potent inhibitor of that receptor while maintaining the rest of its serotonergic effects. So, it's the perfect coverup, right? You can claim that serotonin is great for your depression, while in reality you're giving a drug that’s blocking the effects of serotonin and lowering cortisol, but that’s unknown to most people, even doctors that I've discussed it with. Another side effect of GABA is that GABA increases the degradation rate of serotonin even when it's taken orally. So you cannot have high levels of both. So people that are high in GABA are usually low in serotonin. They're very calm, they're very gregarious. Serotonin is not a happiness hormone. Multiple studies, even a court case recently agreed that serotonin actually destroys empathy, love and wisdom. Those are specific quotes from the court study. Another animal study found that crabs exposed to very low levels of SSRIs because of sewage being dumped into the ocean ... turn extremely violent, homicidal and cannibalistic. They turn on each other. There's nothing else that can explain this behavior except for the SSRI drugs. So really that's what serotonin does. It's also a metabolic inhibitor ... The primary role of serotonin is metabolic, and the evolutionary role of serotonin is probably for numbing pain when you're under stress. It turns off your pain reaction, even your grief reaction, but at the expense of turning off all the other emotions as well. Multiple studies have demonstrated that serotonin is basically a lobotomizing chemical when it comes to emotions. Sure, it'll numb your depression, but it will also numb everything else too. You'll be walking around like a zombie."
Other Adverse Effects of Serotonin High serotonin can also cause serotonin syndrome and contribute to fibrosis (including cardiac and pulmonary fibrosis), impaired thyroid function, reduced metabolism due to excessive glycolysis and high lactic acid production, and reductive stress. High serotonin is also responsible for bizarre, recurring nightmares and may play a role in PTSD as well. Serotonin also inhibits pyruvate dehydrogenase, cytochrome c oxidase and Complex 2 of the electron transport chain (succinic acid dehydrogenase, which also participates in the Krebs cycle). "The evolutionary reason is probably that in times of stress and injury, these things rise in order to help you repair. But it should be acute only," Georgi says.
"These days we have them chronically elevated, and that's a signal to the body that things are chronically bad, and it will dispose of any known essential function that it thinks it can in order to conserve energy, which means your high metabolism (which means you're gaining weight), your good mood (which means you're going to be depressed). Then eventually, if things go down that route, the body will start turning off ‘nonessential’ organs by turning them into fibrotic clumps so that they don't have to waste energy on repairing them. That's how you get fibrosis.
All fibrosis is “driven” by an excess of two pro-inflammatory cytokines, TGFB1 and galectin-3, which I run on most new patients and all breast cancer patients.
Ultimately, the end stage of fibrosis is cancer, unless you die from the organ failure before that."
We measure these in all cancer patients. The molecules that drive fibrosis drive nasty cancer stem cells. I refer to them in my podcast as “The Molecules of Mass Destruction”.
In closing, the take-home from all of this is that you really want to minimize estrogen and keep your serotonin level as low as possible, and increasing progesterone, pregnenolone and GABA will help lower both and appear to be useful, inexpensive, nonprescription modalities if you use them correctly. For even more details, be sure to listen to the interview in its entirety.
I do not want to minimize estrogen. The better/healthier the estrogen serum levels, the bigger the volume of your hippocampus, which acts like “the physiologic analogy of your soul”.
This guest must not be treating human females in the trenches or how can he make such inaccurate and broad swath old science statements? Thus I have taken the time to rebuttal. Whew.
Pictures of me — October 2023 — 75 yrs. young (in December) — on BHRT!
PS MORE MUST READ — Where the Real Risks Are
This comes just at a time, when estrogen is being WRONGLY vilified as it is in this podcast write-up, that young girls can walk into any pharmacy and buy over-the-counter birth control pills.
Birth control pills are the number one cause of the increased numbers of breast cancer cases we are seeing, especially in younger and younger women. Even the lowest levels have been linked to increased risk.
Birth control pills have also been linked, repeatedly, to increased risk of stroke, high blood pressure, thicker book (independent heart attack risk), migraines, and more.
Why? Birth control pills are an oral delivery of the worst forms of hormones, the synthetic estrogen called ethinyl estradiol and the synthetic progesterone that acts completely different than natural progesterone, called progestins.
Ethinyl estradiol is a severe endocrine disruptor. Like a milder form of DES.
Also, progestins have been linked to many issues (especially in the re-analysis in the WHI 2, progestins were found to drive the breast cancers and heart disease. Not the estrogen.)
I discussed this in an episode of my podcast “Birth Control Pill’s Shadow Side (#125)” and in these Substack articles (mix of free and premium level articles):
I have been diving into all this stuff for over 4 decades!
I am soooo glad u wrote a rebuttal to dr. Mercola's article. The article really bothered me & was filled w/ misleading & , I feel, wrong info. Dr. Mercola has not been vocal about female hormones for years & sadly, if this is where he is getting his info currently, it's a sad state of affairs. I would expect more from him.
Great article…I am 62 years old and I am on Bioidentical hormones and I feel wonderful!!! Let the women say what the woman needs not a man…I read his article and was shocked what he was saying. I am a premier member for his supplements and vitamins. You really need to be your own advocate.