Barbara Minton, respected health and wellness
writer, reports
[Researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston] have discovered that,
while estrogen may cause breast cancer, for a large group of women with the
disease, estrogen is also by far the best treatment for it. Thank you to my
good friend for allowing me to share her article with my readers.
Blockbuster News for Women with Breast Cancer
– Estrogen May Actually Cure Breast Cancer
by
Barbara Minton
(The
Best Years in Life) For many years women have been told estrogen
causes breast cancer because it encourages breast cell proliferation. In cases
where estrogen has lost its balancing hormones, progesterone and testosterone,
this statement is considered true. However, a team of researchers headed by a
special doctor at the Department of Breast Medical Oncology at MD Anderson
Cancer Center in Houston has now shown there is more to the story. They have
discovered that, while estrogen may cause breast cancer, for a large group of
women with the disease, estrogen is also by far the best treatment for it.
For
them, estrogen kills breast cancer cells quickly and completely, without
terrible side effects. And it ends the need to worry. The group of women
able to effectively kill breast cancer cells with estrogen is those having
estrogen deprivation, a condition in which the body has for some time failed to
produce estrogen. This failure can be the result of completing menopause, or it
can be the result of hysterectomy. The single determining factor is the
complete loss of estrogen.
To
understand the great importance of this discovery, here are some statistics
from the Susan G Komen Foundation. Fewer than five percent of women diagnosed
with breast cancer in the U.S. are younger than 40. Rates of breast cancer
begin to increase after age 40 and are highest in women over age 70. The
average age for a diagnosis of breast cancer is 64. This means this news
pertains to the majority of women with breast cancer, and to
those who may be diagnosed with it in the future.
The
average age for menopause, when hormone deprivation begins, is 51. Once
complete estrogen deprivation is established, women can benefit from estrogen
treatment to kill breast cancer cells and put an end to their disease.
Treatment need be no more complicated than visiting a doctor for a prescription
of estrogen in one of the many forms in which it is offered.
Once
estrogen deprivation is established, there is no need for surgery,
chemotherapy, radiation, or hormone blocking drugs such as tamoxifen or arimidex.
Brainchild
of “Father of tamoxifen” may save many women from breast cancer
In
1978, the FDA approved a triphenyl ethylene-based drug known as tamoxifen. The
man behind it was Dr. V. Craig Jordan. Despite his success, the issue of
patients becoming resistant to the drug bothered him greatly. Long-term
tamoxifen use in humans “seemed like a recipe for
disaster,” he said. However, the belief that estrogen blockers
were required to thwart the growth of breast cancer persisted in his mind, even
though he saw holes in the theory.
Reports
dating back to the 1940s had shown that giving breast cancer patients estrogen
seemed to stop growth of the disease. In fact, estrogen was routinely used to
fight breast cancer in women long before hormone blocking drugs such as
tamoxifen came along. Approximately 30% of patients responded favorably to the
treatment.
In
the 1990s, a graduate student in Jordan’s laboratory, Doug Wolf,
transplanted tamoxifen-resistant tumors from mouse to mouse, and treated them
all with estrogen. He found the tumors disappeared. Of that experiment, Jordan
said, “Estrogen didn’t stimulate the growth of these tumors anymore. It killed them.
They just melted away”. But he and Wolf still didn’t know the underlying
mechanism of how that happened.
Jordan
set out to determine how the same hormone often responsible for activating breast
cancer could also kill it off. He came up with the theory of estrogen
deprivation as the key. When women still making their own estrogen take more
estrogen, it can fuel the growth of tumors. But when the patient is not
producing any estrogen of their own, giving them estrogen causes tumors to
quickly shrink away.
In
his inaugural article, Jordan evaluated genetic changes to estrogen deprived
breast cancer cells during the first week of estrogen therapy. The changes he
found were stunning. The endoplasmic reticulum, which is the internal structure
of the cell, quickly grew inflamed, triggering the cell’s death. Further, Jordan found that cancer cell death occurred
with relatively low doses of estrogen.
“In bodies that have been starved of estrogen, the hormone comes back as a
jet fuel,” he said. That fuel overwhelms the estrogen receptors
in breast cancer cells, causing them to invoke a death signal. “The dramatic
cell kill I get with estrogen is better than anything I saw with tamoxifen”, he
said.
Unfortunately,
Dr. Jordan seems to be still attached to tamoxifen, and he wants it to continue
to be the first-line treatment. Then when tamoxifen resistance is established,
patients can be given estrogen treatment. Since he is a part of the medical
establishment, he may have no other choice but to play down his discovery.
Standard cancer treatments are very big business.
Tamoxifen
has a long list of side effects that include hot flashes, vaginal dryness, low
libido, mood swings, nausea, change in the uterus, increased risk of blood
clots, endometrial cancer, depression, dementia, and reduced size and function
of the brain.
Replacement
estrogen has none of those symptoms and may work with the other steroid
hormones to restore the life force in women who have experienced breast cancer.
How
long does it take to establish estrogen deprivation? That depends on the person
and her hormonal terrain. For me it took six months, after stopping synthetic
hormone replacement when diagnosed with invasive hormone-positive breast cancer
eleven years ago. Now that there is this documentation supporting what I
instinctively knew back then, I can write about my experience for the first
time.
Any
woman wanting to stop breast cancer with estrogen should be tested to see if
she has achieved estrogen deprivation. Once that is established, be sure to use
bioidential estrogen, which is estrogen that exactly replicates what a woman
makes in her own body.
And
plan on frustration as doctor after doctor refuses to treat you because he has
been taught only that estrogen causes cancer. The best route to finding a
doctor who will treat you is probably to go to the nearest compounding
pharmacy. Tell the pharmacist what you want to do and ask him or her to
recommend a doctor. Compounding pharmacies are where bioidentical hormones are
made, so the pharmacists know the doctors. Usually doctors who prescribe
bioidentical hormones are those specializing in hormone replacement or
anti-aging medicine, but some may be gynecologists.
Since
my journey began I [Mrs. Minton] have replaced all hormones that were deficient
in my body, and I am now truly living the best years in life.
