Does the idea of giving testosterone to a woman sound odd to you? Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. The fact is a woman makes 3 times as much testosterone as estrogen month after month during reproductive years. Your body first takes good healthy cholesterol (more on that later) and turns it into testosterone and then some of that is converted into estrogen. At menopause when this process slows down we begin to see disease risk and weight gain increase in women. In part, due to declining testosterone.
Breast cancer is the #1 killer of women between the ages of 45 to 65. Guess what kills breast cancer? Testosterone. Testosterone reduces the ability of breasts cells to grow and multiply and it triggers breast cells to die. Estrogen is not evil but all by itself, without testosterone or progesterone it can be a signal for breast cell growth and even promote cancer. Testosterone counters that potential and ensure breast health.
Let’s explore the simple truths of testosterone therapy for women:
- Women make more Testosterone than estrogen their whole lives
- When hormones leave your body disease enters.
- Testosterone slows or stops breast cell growth and triggers apoptosis (healthy cell death)
- Testosterone use may reduce breast cancer risk by 50%
- Testosterone use after breast cancer diagnosis enhances outcomes and shrinks tumors.
The use of “drug” therapy such as Provera, commonly prescribed to women as a part of hormone replacement therapy at time of menopause, is not healthy. This is not hormone therapy, this is DRUG therapy. It increases breast cancer risk 26%. In the Adelaide study of 2004 they gave testosterone to 508 women receiving typical drug based menopause therapy and saw a 26% reduction in breast cancer. Testosterone was able to offset the negative influence of Provera.
Over the past 2 decades, studies have explored giving women testosterone plus anastrozole, a drug that blocks testosterones conversion into estrogen, to women at time of menopause. The occurrence of breast cancer occurrence was cut by 55% in women only getting occasional doses. In women committed to testosterone therapy year round the reduction was 77%.
Testosterone plus anastrozole has been studied as a treatment for breast cancer. In a case study from 2013, a 90 year old woman who declined surgery for her breast cancer received 3 small pellets of testosterone placed in her breast next to the tumor. There was a 7-fold reduction in tumor volume in just 6 weeks and by 3 months they documented a 12-fold reduction in tumor volume.
A 52-year-old women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer to lymph nodes in her chest received testosterone and anastrozole pellets along with diet change and integrative treatment but did not receive any chemotherapy, radiation or surgical intervention. PET scan showed a 70% reduction in tumor mass in just 8 weeks.
If you have ever heard or read that Hormone Replacement Therapy or “HRT” increases risk for breast cancer then this is in reference to giving women DRUGS in replacement for their natural hormones. Using BIO-IDENTICAL hormones, identical to the hormones your body makes, when done by properly trained physicians, does not increase a women’s risk for cancer and if truly done well, will reduce her risk substantially. The scientific studies bare this out repeatedly for more than 2 decades.
Bioidentical hormone use or testosterone is not the only tool to reduce risk. Your lifestyle choices are HUGE and play a major role. See the article on this website discussing what you can do today to avoid breast cancer. “Breast Health – How to avoid breast cancer” will review 20 different decisions that you make every day that increase or decrease your risk.
