Beat the bad news on estrogen and cancer

The Endocrine Society has come out with a new health report, and it’s bad news for our bodies.

The ES looked at over 1300 new studies on chemicals in the environment, and they are more confident than ever that these substances are linked to reproductive and developmental problems, thyroid impairment, reproductive cancers, lower IQ, heart and weight problems, and diabetes among others.

If you had been a doctor in the field of integrative medicine 20 years ago, you would have only begun to see these changes in your patients that had never been seen before. Hormonal changes. Increases in cancer. Unexplainable thyroid problems, headaches, diabetes despite low blood sugar…

Those doctors who are also scientists, like our own Dr. Michael Cutler, suspected the flood of chemicals in our environment had a role in these health problems. Some of the chemicals are poisonous, but some have a more subtly destructive effect. They act just like estrogen in the body. This is disastrous for men’s health, and has cancer-causing effects in the reproductive systems of both sexes.

We’ve managed to fight many cancer to a standstill. But estrogenic chemicals could be a reason why the cancers that are still on the rise are the ones that affect the tissues at or near our reproductive systems.

“The Endocrine Society executive summary strongly emphasizes studies involving bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, persistent organic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyl ethers, and flame retardants such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers,” reports Science Magazine. These are all estrogen mimics, as are pesticides and weed killers.

The EC is calling for more funding to look at our hormone receptors, which are proteins that receive chemical signals from real hormones and fake chemical hormone mimics, and find out how endocrine disrupting chemicals might affect them.

Fortunately we already know a natural substance that can get rid of excess estrogen in the body. It’s called indole-3-carbinol.

It comes from cruciferous vegetables and gets converted by your body to a substance called DIM, which can greatly improve metabolism of good estrogens by stimulating beneficial estrogen production. At the same time DIM increases the good estrogen metabolites, there is a simultaneous reduction in the levels of bad estrogen metabolites, which include the 16-hydroxy estrogen. The bad estrogen metabolites are fueled by obesity and exposure to many commercial and household chemicals.

I3C also breaks down into isothiocyanate and glucoraphanin which help the body fight cancers in the reproductive systems, balance hormones and even fight inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.

You need 3 servings daily of broccoli, kale, bok choy, cauliflower, cabbage, or baby cabbage which have approximately 400 mg of I3C.

You can also protect yourself by supplementing with I3C, which is available at local health food stores.