Relieving Yourself of Excess Estrogen

Earlier this year, a study was published comparing the hormonal levels of women with and without breast cancer. If estrogen makes most breast cancers grow, then one would expect that the level of estrogen would be higher in women who have breast cancer, compared to women who don’t, or at least who don’t yet.

And indeed, no surprise, that’s what they found—significantly more estradiol freely circulating through their bloodstream of those with breast cancer. But the study also looked at diets and hormonal levels. These were all omnivores; the women eating vegetarian did even better.

This may help explain why, in a study of the “Relative Risks for Breast Cancer by Levels of Animal Product Consumption,” there appears to be a trend between lower breast cancer risk the more vegetarian someone eats. And it was researchers at my medical alma mater, Tufts, that figured out why, in a landmark article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

See, the way our bodies get rid of excess cholesterol is to dump it into the digestive tract, knowing full well that there’ll be lots of fiber in there to grab it, hold onto it, and flush it out of the body (though, hopefully, you chew a little better than that).

We did, after all, evolve quite a long time before Twinkies and Wonder Bread, and the ascension of royal establishments such as Burger King and Dairy Queen. So, our body just expects it; just assumes our intestines are going to be packed with fiber all day long—seven times more than we’re getting now. We did evolve eating some meat, but plants don’t tend to run as fast, and so the bulk of our diets was made up of a lot of bulk.

And that’s how your body gets rid of excess estrogen. Vegetarian women have increased fiber input, which leads to “vegetarian women [having] an increased fecal output, which leads to increased [fecal] excretion of estrogen and a decreased [blood] concentration of estrogen.”

And this just wasn’t in theory; they measured it. “Subjects were provided with plastic bags and insulated boxes filled with dry ice for three 24-hour fecal collections.” You’ve heard of popsicles, well, they had them make more like poopsicles.

And here you go. In any one 24-hour period, the vegetarians were fecally excreting more than twice as much estrogen as the omnivores. And, measuring the estrogen excretion versus the size of the fecal output, you can see: the bigger the better. See the heavyweight Vs versus the welterweight Os? No wonder vegetarian women in the United States have been found to have such lower rates of breast cancer.

It’s great that many women stopped hormone replacement therapy, stopped taking extra estrogens. Well, another way to rid yourself of excess estrogens is in the way nature intended.

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Dianne Moore.

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• Mills PK, Beeson WL, Phillips RL, Fraser GE. Dietary habits and breast cancer incidence among Seventh-day Adventists. Cancer. 1989 Aug 1;64(3):582-90.
• Goldin BR, Adlercreutz H, Gorbach SL, Warram JH, Dwyer JT, Swenson L, Woods MN. Estrogen excretion patterns and plasma levels in vegetarian and omnivorous women. N Engl J Med. 1982 Dec 16;307(25):1542-7.
• Aubertin-Leheudre M, Hamalainen E, Adlercreutz H. Diets and hormonal levels in postmenopausal women with or without breast cancer. Nutr Cancer. 2011 May;63(4):514-24.

Images thanks to Cindi Pierce, Renee Comet at the National Cancer Institute, and Gastrolab.

• alimentación a base de vegetales
• alimentos procesados
• cáncer
• cáncer de mama
• dietas paleolíticas
• estrógeno
• evacuación
• fibra
• hormonas
• menopausia
• productos de origen animal
• salud de la mujer
• salud del colon
• salud mamaria