Dear Dr. Milrod:<\/p>\n
A close friend is undergoing radiation treatments for serious breast cancer. She recently said her many years of estrogen treatments may have been the cause; she went that route because she had severe hot flashes and other unpleasantness associated with menopause. I had thought estrogen has been minimized as a possible cause of breast cancer. Another friend made a decision NOT to have estrogen at about the same time, and her health is flourishing, except that her post-menopausal libido seems to have languished to occasional routine exchanges of affection, but she seems happy enough with “later life” pleasures. Would estrogen have prolonged her libido?<\/p>\n
Confused in California<\/p>\n
Dear Confused in California:<\/p>\n
1. Synthetic estrogens and progesterones have all been implicated in elevated rates of breast cancer. To my knowledge, large scale trials with bio-identical hormones have not been supported by major research universities\/private companies.<\/p>\n
2. Testosterone, progesterone and luteinizing hormone surges would have prolonged her libido more than just estrogen. Remember that once ovarian function shuts down, the main source of testosterone in females is off – there is some residual testosterone produced in the adrenal glands, but no longer enough free circulating T to produce any noticeable libido. N.b. that testosterone supplements in transdermal\/parenteral form do not necessarily produce increased libido in post-menopausal females, although modest elevations in some women have been noted. Some women respond favorably to estrogens, however, there is a big difference between supplementation and endogenous hormones. Some women do not respond to supplementation, regardless of the method of delivery.<\/p>\n
Christine Milrod, PhD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Dr. Milrod: A close friend is undergoing radiation treatments for serious breast cancer. She recently said her many years of estrogen treatments may have been the cause; she went that route because she had severe hot flashes and other unpleasantness associated with menopause. I had thought estrogen has been minimized as a possible cause […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexandlifecoaching.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}