Your Inner Estrogen:
An Individualized, Natural Approach to Understanding and Balancing Your Hormones Before and After Menopause
 

INTRODUCTION

What’s This Book About?

Most women produce estrogen throughout their lives in one form or another. Even menopausal women continue to make estrogen. Sometimes the amount of estrogen produced is too little and sometimes it’s too much. Understanding how much estrogen is in YOUR body can potentially help you identify your risks for certain diseases including, but not limited to, osteoporosis, breast cancer, uterine cancer and heart disease.

What do I mean by “inner estrogen?”

Some of the hormones in your body are bound to proteins and are not “free” to produce their intended effect. Your “inner estrogen” is the active, “free” estrogen that you have floating around, at any given time, in your own body: YOUR inner estrogen. This is not a scientific term, but rather a phrase that I find helps to emphasize the active form of estrogen within women’s bodies. It’s likely different from the amount of estrogen in another woman’s body and certainly different among women before and after menopause! Similar to many other hormones, your inner estrogen will fluctuate a great deal making it difficult for any one laboratory test to accurately reflect your overall estrogen status.

There are also many “external” estrogens that women are exposed to that might increase or decrease your inner estrogen, depending on your age, personal circumstances, and lifestyle. You are probably not even aware of this exposure. Some of these things can make you healthier and others might possibly put you at risk for disease.

The focus of this book is to help you better understand your own UNIQUE inner estrogen, so that you can have a good idea of what YOUR body is producing naturally and also learn to recognize the possible effect of various external estrogens on your hormonal balance.

No one will ever know your body better than you! This personal knowledge, together with the tools and information described in this book, may help to enhance the quality of your life while decreasing your risk for disease.

The Estrogen Self Assessment Tool (E-SAT)

The Estrogen Self Assessment Tool or “E-SAT” is a collection of simple observations, which you can easily learn and use in your daily life (described in detail in Chapter 3). It can help you make lifestyle choices that can impact your inner estrogen in a positive way. It can also help you make important choices about hormone use that are specific to YOUR personal situation and needs. No two women are the same when it comes to their hormones.

What this book is NOT about!

This book is NOT about which estrogen pill, patch, pellet or cream you should use. We’ve been there – done that! Rather, it’s about reading your body’s cues, paying attention to specific signs and symptoms related to estrogen, and then using this information to understand how much personal, inner estrogen you have and how to balance it. It’s about knowing what you can do to enhance this estrogen or decrease it, depending on your own

individual needs.

There are several ways to balance your inner estrogen without a prescription!

You will notice that I never use the term “hormone replacement therapy" or “HRT” because it is quite frankly, incorrect. The term “replacement therapy” implies that women have a deficiency and that’s simply not the case. After menopause, it is NORMAL to have lower levels of estrogen. It is NOT a disease state. However, for some women, supplementing with estrogen will enhance the quality of their life. That’s a personal choice and a very individualized decision.

Although most professional organizations encourage health care providers to take a personalized approach, especially when managing hormonal issues, there simply is not enough time in ten or fifteen minutes, to provide this kind of service. Using the information in this book, women will be able to participate more fully in their health care, sharing the knowledge they have about their own inner estrogen, so that together with their health care providers, they can make better and more informed choices for their health.

Shared wisdom for women’s health

Finally, you can help to fine-tune the E-SAT tool and inform researchers about other changes you are noticing, by sharing your experiences on the web site designed just for this purpose: http://www.innerestrogen.net

By describing your experiences using the E-SAT, you can also help researchers ask questions that have particular interest to women.

TOGETHER, we can make an important contribution in shaping the future of women’s health practice and research.

© 2006 by Pat Camillo