THE ESTROGEN STORY

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Now let's deal with what I will call the estrogen story. Estrogen, of course, is the female sex hormone that is released by the Graafian follicles prior to ovulation. But it is known that breast and cervical cancers, for instance, are usually triggered by imbalances in estrogen metabolism. The risk associated with breast, uterine, and cervical cancer is known to increase not only with an increased blood estrogen level, but most particularly with an increase in a particularly dangerous estrogen breakdown product. This story really began back in 1896, when Dr. George Beatson, a Glascow surgeon, observed that removal of the ovaries (containing those estrogen-releasing Graafian follicles) had quite a benefical treatment effect on many cases of women with breast cancer (Beatson, 1896). In 1990, Key and his associates compared estrogen levels in 300 British women with a larger sample of women in rural China. He observed that not only was the average estrogen level in the Chinese group much lower, but their incidence of breast cancer was one-fifth that of the British group (Key, et al, 1990). In 1992, a World Health Organization "Vangard Study" concluded that 303 women in three major U.S. cities who lowered their intake of fat calories to a 20-25% level also greatly lowered both their blood estrogen and cholesterol levels.(Henderson, 1992)