Progesterone prevents dementia?
The UK Mail Online has an interesting article Should middle-aged women be taking natural HRT? Buried at the bottom is information about Progesterone and prevention of dementia. To quote:
When HRT was first developed, one of its key selling points was that it protected women against heart disease.
While studies have since proved that it does not have this protective effect, bio-identical versions might – and could even help protect women against dementia. The key is progesterone.
With conventional HRT, there’s little emphasis on boosting progesterone – it’s oestrogen that’s the real focus. In fact, progesterone (which is given in its chemical form, progestin) is included only to protect the womb, because taking oestrogen alone raises the risk of womb cancer.
However, in the past 18 months there’s been new evidence from a French study to suggest that a bio-identical form of progesterone might also protect against breast cancer and heart attacks.
Some French researchers believe progesterone might also lower your risk of dementia. ‘Oestrogen and progesterone both have a protective effect on brain cells, unlike progestins,’ says Dr Michael Schumacher, of the Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital in Paris.
‘There’s also some evidence that progesterone helps boost the activity of the gene needed to clear the plaque that is a sign of Alzheimer’s.’ Dr Nick Panay, from Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, and other menopause experts agree that bio-identical progesterone seems to have significant benefits over the progestins that British women are getting in HRT.
