Men and Their Female Hormones:
The Estrogen/Progesterone/ Prostate Connection
Common wisdom tends to blame prostate cancer on the male hormone testosterone. This derives primarily from the known stimulating effect that testosterone has on existing prostate tumors, and their tendency to regress when surgical or chemical castration treatment is applied to these men. But some questions still remain. For example, if testosterone causes prostate cancer, then why is it a disease of older men with lower levels of the hormone, as opposed to younger men with higher levels? You would expect the reverse to be true. Instead we find that estrogen may be the culprit. Embryologically the prostate corresponds to the female uterus. The uterus is highly sensitive to estradiol (estrogen) induced cellular proliferation leading to such problems as endometriosis, fibroids, and uterine cancer. Theoretically the prostate may be sensitive to estradiol as well. As men age more of their testosterone gets converted to estradiol, and this may account for prostate enlargement and cancer. We routinely test for this.

Also, like women, men’s progesterone levels drop with age, thus depriving them of the anti-estrogen and anti-cancer effect of that hormone. In young men, testosterone counteracts the smaller amounts of estrogen present, accounting for the absence of the disease earlier in life.

Recently traditional medicine has been studying the effect of estradiol treatment for men with testosterone independent prostate cancer. These are tumors which resume their growth even after testosterone has been removed from the body by castration (usually chemically induced these days). Interestingly results in 24 men showed greater than 50% reductions in PSA in 3 of the 24 men studied. But there was no mention of how many may have had the PSA increase. A better approach would be to study natural progesterone in these men. Progesterone inhibits the enzyme 5 alpha reductase which is responsible for converting testosterone into the more troublesome form of DHT. It prevents this conversion more effectively than either Proscar (the common drug for enlarged prostate glands) or Saw Palmetto (the commonly used herbal approach).

Men with enlarged prostate glands or prostate cancer should get their hormones checked, and under the supervision of a knowledgeable natural medicine physician should take low dose natural progesterone therapy as a transdermal cream. Follow-up testing will be needed for safety and efficacy. But low dose progesterone therapy offers a dramatic and exciting new way of preventing and treating prostate problems in men.

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