Heart Attacks Are On The Rise Among Young Women

[haidut]

The bad news for the "young" just keep on coming. As I posted last week, the chronologically young do appear to have become the biological old.
The "Young" Have Now Become The Old

This week, the front page news is that heart attacks in young women have seen the largest increase than any other age group in either sex. There are also an increase in risk for younger men but the increase in women was five times bigger. This matches well with another recent study posted in the above thread showing that lifetime risk of stroke is currently at least 25%, and that risk extends all the way down to people in their early 20s. Unfortunately, nobody is even mentioning estrogen and estrogen/progestin containing BC pills as the main likely cause of this increase. I don't even know how CNN has the nerve to say that the poor doctors are confused and "trying to figure out why". Cardiovascular event risk closely tracks the prescription rates of estrogenic contraceptives, and this relationship/correlation has been known since the 1970s. The public is being fed the same lies that this increase is due to obesity or lack of exercise, yet as I posted in another thread the Millenials are much skinnier (on average) than generation X or boomers and have much higher rates of physical activity than the two generations before them. So, ironically, the data so far suggests that being chronologically young, physically active, and skinny is actually a risk factor for heart disease.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.118.037137
Heart attacks rising among young women, study shows - CNN
"...The risk of having a heart attack appears to be rising among young women, according to a new study, and researchers are trying to figure out why. When analyzed across five-year intervals, the overall proportion of heart attack-related hospital admissions in the United States attributable to young patients, ages 35 to 54, steadily climbed from 27% in 1995-99 to 32% in 2010-14, with the largest increase observed in young women, according to the study, published recently in the journal Circulation. During those periods, there was a rise in these admissions from 21% to 31% among young women, compared with 30% to 33% among young men, the study showed.

"...The study findings are "particularly striking because the population is aging, and yet we're seeing that a higher proportion of heart attack patients are young patients," said Dr. Harmony Reynolds, co-leader of the Sarah Ross Soter Center for Women's Cardiovascular Research and an associate professor of medicine at the NYU School of Medicine in New York."

 

[lampofred]

 

[charlie]

Sad.

 

[mujuro]

But but but, estrogen improves lipid profile!

 

[Cirion]

I was actually just discussing estrogen with my mom the other day. She is all concerned because hers is rather low, but she does acknowledge that high estrogen is probably not good. Is there an "essential" amount of estrogen and if so how much? Or is it much like debating upon the "essentiality" of PUFA?

 

[tankasnowgod]

I was actually just discussing estrogen with my mom the other day. She is all concerned because hers is rather low, but she does acknowledge that high estrogen is probably not good. Is there an "essential" amount of estrogen and if so how much? Or is it much like debating upon the "essentiality" of PUFA?

Well, the "PUFAs" that are talked about here can't be produced by humans, while estrogen is. So, not really the same thing at all. Although you can get estrogen from drugs, or even foods like soy and flax.

Estrogen is a stress hormone, so it's likely similar to other stress hormones- potentially useful elevated in very short term situations, but not something you want chronically elevated, and beyond that, most modern ranges are likely skewed too high. At the same time, anything you do to "crush" estrogen is going to have other side effects, for example, Letrozole will not only dramatically lower estrogen, it will also suppress progesterone, so very possibly a net negative, even in men. Things like the unaromatizable steroids (including exemestane) reduce estrogen, but don't eliminate it, and at lower doses, don't have similar negative effects of suppression of the more beneficial hormones.

 

[schultz]

I was actually just discussing estrogen with my mom the other day. She is all concerned because hers is rather low, but she does acknowledge that high estrogen is probably not good. Is there an "essential" amount of estrogen and if so how much? Or is it much like debating upon the "essentiality" of PUFA?

A low blood estrogen can be indicative of low progesterone levels because when progesterone is low the estrogen stays in the cells and isn't released into the blood.

From "Rainmaking Time: Energy Protective Materials"
KG: So I take it from listening to you and from reading your work that you are not into anti-‐aging, even bio-‐identical anti-‐aging hormones via oestrogen.

RP: Definitely not because the older and more stressed a cell or tissue is, the more oestrogen it tends to produce. A young healthy person produces oestrogen primarily in the ovaries with some in the adrenal glands cortex. With stress, aging, falling thyroid function, the ability to synthesis progesterone – every cell in the body develops the ability to make oestrogen and loses the ability to excrete it into the bloodstream – so simply by becoming deficient in progesterone, your blood test won’t show that you are deficient in oestrogen, because progesterone is needed to get the oestrogen from the cell into the bloodstream. But inside the cell is where oestrogen works, and so your fat cells, brain cells, skin, every tissue in the body has the capacity to make oestrogen when it is under stress. People with diabetes, their tissues all through the body are producing excess oestrogen.

From "Herb Dotors: Hormone Replacement Therapy"
"And as soon as progesterone decreases and can no longer force estrogen out of the cells, the blood estrogen level will drop, but the estrogen inside the cells will increase. Publications by some – I think they’re Norwegians , Batra and others and by Richard Landau in University of Washington showed that the tissues of old organisms retain much estrogen in the tissues than the tissues of young animals. And the fact that you don’t find it in the blood is simply because estrogen sticks inside the cells in proportion to the deficiency of progesterone."

Edit: Also, @tankasnowgod makes a good point. Estrogen is easily made in the body, especially in the aging organism. PUFA needs to be consumed in the diet.

 

[schultz]

I was just reading the Ray e-mail thread. There has been a sort of mania on the forum where guys think they have low estrogen (usually because they "feel" like they do) so I thought this was an interesting response from Ray.

@Dan Wich posted this, but he mentioned that someone sent him the exchange so the question wasn't asked by him.

On having estradiol levels under the lower end of the reference range:

Ray Peat said:
"When testosterone is normal, it will locally be converted to estrogen as needed, so I don't think the low serum amount matters."

 

[haidut]

I was just reading the Ray e-mail thread. There has been a sort of mania on the forum where guys think they have low estrogen (usually because they "feel" like they do) so I thought this was an interesting response from Ray.

@Dan Wich posted this, but he mentioned that someone sent him the exchange so the question wasn't asked by him.

On having estradiol levels under the lower end of the reference range:

Ray Peat said:
"When testosterone is normal, it will locally be converted to estrogen as needed, so I don't think the low serum amount matters."

...and to add to Ray's quote, DHEA will be even more effective as estrogen precursor. T has relatively poor affinity for aromatase but DHEA rapidly converts into androstenedione and the latter has much higher affinity for aromatase then T. So, if a person has normal T or DHEA, it is highly unlikely their estrogen will be low (in tissues).

 

[lampofred]

A low blood estrogen can be indicative of low progesterone levels because when progesterone is low the estrogen stays in the cells and isn't released into the blood.

From "Rainmaking Time: Energy Protective Materials"
KG: So I take it from listening to you and from reading your work that you are not into anti-‐aging, even bio-‐identical anti-‐aging hormones via oestrogen.

RP: Definitely not because the older and more stressed a cell or tissue is, the more oestrogen it tends to produce. A young healthy person produces oestrogen primarily in the ovaries with some in the adrenal glands cortex. With stress, aging, falling thyroid function, the ability to synthesis progesterone – every cell in the body develops the ability to make oestrogen and loses the ability to excrete it into the bloodstream – so simply by becoming deficient in progesterone, your blood test won’t show that you are deficient in oestrogen, because progesterone is needed to get the oestrogen from the cell into the bloodstream. But inside the cell is where oestrogen works, and so your fat cells, brain cells, skin, every tissue in the body has the capacity to make oestrogen when it is under stress. People with diabetes, their tissues all through the body are producing excess oestrogen.

From "Herb Dotors: Hormone Replacement Therapy"
"And as soon as progesterone decreases and can no longer force estrogen out of the cells, the blood estrogen level will drop, but the estrogen inside the cells will increase. Publications by some – I think they’re Norwegians , Batra and others and by Richard Landau in University of Washington showed that the tissues of old organisms retain much estrogen in the tissues than the tissues of young animals. And the fact that you don’t find it in the blood is simply because estrogen sticks inside the cells in proportion to the deficiency of progesterone."

Edit: Also, @tankasnowgod makes a good point. Estrogen is easily made in the body, especially in the aging organism. PUFA needs to be consumed in the diet.

Great answer.

 

[Cirion]

Funny you say that because I also mentioned to my mom she might benefit from progesterone but she claimed she tried some progesterone cream with no positive effect.

 

[alywest]

Funny you say that because I also mentioned to my mom she might benefit from progesterone but she claimed she tried some progesterone cream with no positive effect.

I would get her some pansterone or progestene in the tocopherols. I personally think either of those would do more to help with the issues she's experiencing than raising estrogen more. The thing most people including doctors don't seem to realize is that estrogen in older women is tissue bound, so it doesn't show up on blood tests. The DHEA would help her "balance out." Just not too much because if you take too much DHEA it converts to estrogen.

 

[schultz]

Funny you say that because I also mentioned to my mom she might benefit from progesterone but she claimed she tried some progesterone cream with no positive effect.

She should try progesterone in Vitamin E. I doubt most, or any, of the cream supplements do much since progesterone will very easily crystallize, even in things like oil apparently. I tried to get my mom to take progesterone in Vitamin E since she takes a cream progesterone, but she sort of just ignores me. She also takes estradiol.... *sigh*

 

[ShotTrue]

Nathan Hatch mentions Prog-E ? I think is the supplement. He claims only natural progesterone, not bioidentical, will be beneficial.

Are we saying that exemestane doesn't lower progesterone? Because I once used 12.5 mg exemestane and had terrible joint pain for 3 days.
For too low estrogen I find red clover to be a useful supplement, but I'm a guy who messed with AIs too much