Testosterone and estrogen.
Newsgroups: alt.com,sci.med,sci.med.pharmacy,misc.health.alternative, alt.folklore.herbs,sci.life-extension
Subject: Re: Effective Herbal Testosterone Booster
From: parnold.connix.com (Patrick Arnold)
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 08:59:49
>Are you sure about testosterone as "the direct precursor to estrogen"?
>Doesn't sound right to me. Having become deficient in both I'm curious about why many women seem to "find" the power of testosterone (what's rattling around in their bodies self-produced) after menopause as mine has taken a loooong hike!
testosterone is the direct precursor to estradiol (the most potent endogenous estrogen) in the body. An enzyme called aromatase converts testosterone produced in the ovary to estradiol.
In post-menopausal women the ovary essentially ceases steroid production. The testosterone or other androgens (male hormones) produced thereafter in a womans body are of adrenal origin. Some of this androgen gets aromatized in peripheral tissues. Still, the androgen/estrogen balance might be off enough in these women enough to produce mild virilization (light facial hair)
From: parnold.connix.com (Patrick Arnold)
> Well found the chart..."estradiol" is from estrone and testosterone...I am uncertain about the explicit relationship of estradiol to estrogen...
"Estrogen" is a generic term describing all estrogenic hormones. Estrone and estradiol are the two major ones.
From: mbrandt.orion.oac.uci.edu (Mark Brandt, Ph.D.)
> : Are you sure about testosterone as "the direct precursor to estrogen"?
> Don't have my text books at hand...anyway cholesterol..notice sterol is the parent btw...
> A prof at my former school created a drug called an aromatase inhibitor, in other words it prevented the enzyme, an aromatase from turning testosterone to estrogen, Ciba-Geigy was paying her lab alot of money for her research. Also hormones are just messengers by definition, so what they do is trigger other events. I think in one of the Smart Drugs books there is the Cholesterol/to Estrogen chemical diagrams.
Testosterone is converted to estradiol (the most potent physiological estrogen) by a cytochrome P450 enzyme called aromatase.
In both males and females, circulating androgen levels are higher than estrogens. However, in males, the difference is greater. A combination of the relative levels of the two types of hormone, and of the absolute levels of testosterone and estradiol, is responsible for the phenotypic effects of the steroid hormones (e.g. breasts or beards).
In postmenopausal women, the ovaries no longer produce steroids. This means that the adrenals are the primary source of steroid hormones. The adrenals produce "adrenal androgens" which are steroids that can be converted to testosterone (and estradiol) in other parts of the body. However, adrenal androgen production decreases with age. In addition, androgen conversion to estrogens in other tissues is quite variable from person to person. As a result, some postmenopausal women retain significant estrogen production, while others are deficient in both androgens and estrogens.
From: eck.peewee.tower.tandem.com
Just some information that I have gleaned from my wife who went through lots of reading and studying to set-up her HRT regimen.
Estrogen is an umbrella term of which E1(Estradiol), E2(Estrone) and E3(Estriol) are three forms of "estrogen".
From: mbrandt.orion.oac.uci.edu (Mark Brandt, Ph.D.)
> Estrogen is an umbrella term of which E1(Estradiol), E2(Estrone) and E3(Estriol) are three forms of "estrogen".
The above is correct, except that estradiol is E2 ("di" = "2") and estrone is E1. The three compounds are all considered to be estrogens, although estradiol is at least ten-fold more potent than the others. Estradiol, estrone, and estriol are all produced in the body; other non-physiologically produced compounds are also called estrogens due to the fact that their actions are similar to those of estradiol.
