Posted by Larry Hoover on November 2, 2004, at 11:50:07
In reply to Re: Bowel toxins,enzyme peptide conversion of aminos? » Larry Hoover, posted by raybakes on November 1, 2004, at 7:51:15
> But we do have an epidemic of estrogen sensitive cancers - if the feedback worked well surely these cancers wouldn't be occuring? It wasn't really the beta glucuronidase I wanted to focus on, it was again the balance of the bowel and it's implications on the health of the rest of the body.....
That epidemic is far more likely to be due to pollution than to anything else, in particular.
I'm a few years out of the loop, but back when I was in it, I was studying and reporting on the environmental impacts of xenoestrogens. Xeno- means from outside, and the suffix is obvious. Anything that enters an organism and acts like estrogen is problematic. My research was primarily with respect to aquatic organisms, but a good part of it was human impacts.
Let me just say that hundreds of different compounds were found to have estrogen binding affinity, and multiple agonism and antagonism effects. Within different tissues, a substance (even estrogen itself) will have different effects at the same concentration. Tamoxifen, used to treat estrogen-sensitive breast cancer, inactivates estrogen receptors in breast tissue, but not elsewhere in the body (at least in a relative sense). Another example is the effect of DDE (metabolite of DDT) on estrogen-dependent calcium pumps in the oviduct of birds. The birds' breeding behaviour was not affected (they still had normal estrogen-dependent breeding behaviour), but they were unable to produce eggs with shells thick enough to withstand the weight of the parent during incubation. We nearly lost the bald eagle because of this.
When you start thinking hormones, it gets more complicated than anything else I can think of.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:407758
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20041022/msgs/410588.html