Women today spend at least a third of their lives in menopause, and many even a half in respect to the expected life span. Menopause is not a disease, it is a natural state of organism, depending on a number of factors, of which cultural and socio-economic are the most important, with the exception of physiological. Women of different areas and different culture experience this time completely differently. Discomforts that occur are individual, and can be: mild, medium, strong and severe. Results of the survey conducted in the United States, which were published in July 2002, have reopened the question of whether there are other ways besides hormone therapy. Women of the Far East do not know for premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and menopausal difficulties, and in these countries exists an extremely low occurrence of the breast, uterus and prostate cancers. This is caused by their diet in which soy is used daily, and for the whole life. Soy contains phytoestrogens.
Plant therapy – phytotherapy, with today’s knowledge, or confirming the effectiveness of plants that were in use for thousands of years, can hardly be classed as alternative medicine, although our doctors (with honorable exceptions) consider it folklore without scientific foundation. Phytotherapeutics are produced as any other drug according to the rules of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). In many European countries such medicines are prescribed by doctors and are prescribed at the expense of health insurance.
The plant contains a number of different chemical substances, depending on a number of factors: the soil in which it grows, the season when it is harvested, the climate of particular year, the time of harvesting. The plant is a living organism, which is essentially chemically changed when we pick it, sometimes it is desirable, and sometimes the change should be prevented. Drying is a process which again leads to chemical changes, and they also occur from the use of different solvents used so the certain ingredients could be extracted. These are all reasons why the medical system often refuses to use herbs as medicine, because they do not meet the basic requirement for targeted therapy – a specific concentration of the active component. The solution is standardized preparations used today. Many drugs without which we cannot imagine the present day have been synthesized from ingredients from plants and a thousand years of experience of their effectiveness. However, the production of synthetic drugs is cheaper and the substance with exactly defined composition is produced. That was the reason why the plants were first used as the underlying raw materials from which pure substance is obtained. Thus the first contraceptive pill from the plant wild yam was obtained, which is used in folk medicine as a remedy for menopausal problems. The present findings, however, are completely different, and today it is known that the plant is a chemical mixture, and not an accidental one, and given the totality of its performance, it is considered to be its advantage .
Phytoestrogens are compounds found in plants, and which act as estrogen, as indicated by the name, phyto = plant and estrogen. They appear in more than 300 plants in 16 different species, and chemically they are very different. By now 20 of them have been discovered, with isoflavones and lignans being most researched.
Their effect can be estrogenic or antiestrogenic, depending on the amount of estrogen in the body. At menopause, when a woman has less endogenous estrogen, phytoestrogens bind to free receptors acting as estrogens, and during woman’s reproductive period when elevated levels of endogenous estrogen is normal or elevated, phytoestrogens compete for receptor sites, or act as antiestrogens (reducing the overall amount of estrogen). After entering into the body (through food or medicinal preparations) they are absorbed and undergo chemical changes. Phytoestrogens in men interfere with the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone and thus slow the growth of prostate tissue, or act preventively in prostate cancer.
Menopausal discomforts occur due to decreased secretion of hormones, and the use of phytoestrogens leads to a reduction in symptoms without increase in breast cancer risk. One of the most important factors in the development of breast cancer is the length of time of exposure of the glandular epithelium of the breast and surrounding tissue to estrogen. Endogenous and exogenous estrogens are different. Exogenous estrogens or xenoestrogens are substances that at the cellular level exhibit estrogenic activity. Upon what depends the effectiveness of phytoestrogens?
• dose
• the amount of endogenous estrogen
• gender and
• overall health