Factors that open the Estrogen Window and increase lifetime exposure and risk include:

• Early period (before age 12)
• Short menstrual cycles
• Late menopause (age 55 or later)
• Childless or had first child after age of 30 (pregnancy temporarily closes the window)
• Lack of breast feeding (breast feeding temporarily closes the window)
• Medically prescribed hormones
• Exposure to artificial estrogen simulators (Hormone Replacement Therapy)
• Age
• Obesity and high-fat diets

Early period (before age 12)

Estrogen exposure occurs with each menstrual cycle. Women who start menstruating at a very young age have an increased breast cancer risk that may be linked to this longer lifetime exposure to estrogen.

In western civilization, the age of first period has declined from 17 to about 13 over the past two centuries. The younger a woman starts menstruating, the higher her risk for both pre- and post-menopausal breast cancer.

Typically, the risk associated with early-onset periods (at age 10, for example) is about twice that of late-onset periods (at age 16). Some studies show that for every year menstruation is delayed, the risk for breast cancer drops by 4-12 percent.

Short menstrual cycles

Estrogen levels rise leading up to menstruation. Over a lifetime, women with short menstrual cycles (the time between periods) of say, 27 days, will have more cycles in a fixed number of years than those with a 29 day cycle. Women are exposed to more estrogen if they have more cycles. Thus, by lengthening the cycle, women have fewer cycles over their lifespan and are exposed to less estrogen. Lignans, available in Brevail, have been found to increase the length of the menstrual cycle, and therefore may reduce lifetime exposure to estrogen.

Late menopause (age 55 or later)

Estrogen exposure occurs with each menstrual cycle. So, the older a woman is when she goes into menopause, the greater her risk for breast cancer because she's had a higher number of cycles over her lifetime.

Childless or had first child after age of 30

Women who had their first full-term pregnancy after age 30, and women who have never borne a child have a greater risk of developing breast cancer. During pregnancy, estrogen levels surge so high that there is a small immediate risk of breast cancer, but the long-term effect, particularly with breast-feeding, decreases risk.

Starting at about age 45, childless women are at an increased risk for breast cancer in comparison with women who have had children, with the risk being from 20 to 70 percent greater.

Lack of breast-feeding

Menstruation and ovulation usually stop, or are delayed, during breast-feeding. This means the exposure to estrogen basically stops. A baby's suckling sends signals to a part of the brain (the hypothalamus) that triggers a series of hormonal events, leading to the temporary ceasing of ovulation. Depending on how long women breast-feed, the inhibition may last for a year or longer. This ceasing of ovulation, however, lasts for a shorter period of time for obese breast-feeding women. Women who choose not to breast feed will re-start ovulation soon after childbirth.

Medically Prescribed Hormones/Hormone Replacement Therapy

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increases risk over time because it increases estrogen and progestin exposure.

Age and Lifestyle Risks

The older a woman is, the greater her risk for breast cancer becomes. About 80% of all breast cancer cases occur in women 50 and over. There is some irony here. One would think that postmenopausal women would be somewhat "home free" due to lack of menstruation and estrogen exposure. However, cumulative collateral damage to the DNA can result in breast cancer later in life. Furthermore, postmenopausal estrogen (as we call it) is produced in the body's fatty tissue, and is more toxic than that formerly produced by the ovaries.

The following data shows the likelihood of developing breast cancer in any given year, by age:

0-39 years = 1 in 231
40-59 years = 1 in 25
60-79 years = 1 in 15
Birth to death = 1 in 8

Obesity and high-fat diet

Most people know that ovaries produce estrogen in a woman's body, but few people understand that estrogen is also produced in fatty tissue. The more fatty tissue a woman has, the more estrogen will be produced. Thus, a heavy body weight increases the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women, in particular.

At menopause, the ovaries stop producing estrogen, so the exposure to estrogen should naturally drop. However, because excess fat cells facilitate continued production of estrogen, obese women may continue to produce estrogen (lengthening the opening of the estrogen window). Furthermore, a high-fat diet also increases the risk of breast cancer because tumor cells obtain nutrients from fat.

"Good" vs. "Bad" Estrogen

Reproductive organs, particularly the breasts, ovaries, and uterus, are highly sensitive to estrogen. While estrogen is important for cardiovascular health and bone density, paradoxically, estrogen levels also critically influence or determine risks for breast cancer.

The term "estrogen" actually includes a group of closely related compounds, the better known of which are estrone, estriol, and estradiol (the most abundant), all produced primarily in the ovaries.

The different types of estrogen can be likened to different types of cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol will help prevent heart disease and the "bad" are known to clog the arteries and cause heart disease).

The body converts estradiol either to a "good" estrogen (2-hydroxyestrone), which can help reduce risk of cancer; or the body converts it to a highly toxic estrogen (16 apha-hydroxyestrone) that is more potent, is long-lived, stimulates breast cell growth, and can be cancer causing. While too much regular estrogen can be a bad thing, it is the highly toxic estrogen, in any amount, that can greatly increase the risk of cancerous tumors.

Estrogen Fuels Cancer Growth

Estrogen increases risk of breast cancer simply because the hormone promotes growth of breast cells, including cancer cells. While estrogen does have many positive effects, too much estrogen, or certain bad forms of estrogen, can cause cancerous defects in cells that cause tumors.

Estrogen is secreted and circulates in the bloodstream throughout the body. The breast (and other organs and tissues) have a multitude of receptors on their cells' outer membranes, to which circulating estrogen can attach. Think of estrogen receptors as parking spaces on a living cell.

When an estrogen molecule "parks" in one of these receptors, a very strong stimulus is sent to the cells' DNA to multiply the production of breast cells. Rapid multiplication may result in a cancerous mutation in the newly formed cells. Once a mutation is formed in a cell, estrogen further fuels the fire by stimulating even greater breast cell replication with the potential of forming a breast tumor.

Managing your Estrogen Window Towards Optimal Breast Health

This information has been provided to inform and empower you toward taking positive steps to manage your estrogen window. Managing your estrogen window moves you from passive resignation to proactive and in control, and could well be the best thing you can do to reduce your risk for breast cancer and engage in proactive breast cancer prevention.

Exercise

Exercise can decrease the body's production of estrogen, lessening your exposure. Exercise can also help prevent the production of unhealthful body fat, addressed below.

Right Fat Diet

Bad fats such as saturated, trans, and hydrogenated fats are stored as unsightly adipose tissue. These bad fats can harbor and produce a particularly potent and toxic form of estrogen. On a positive note, healthy fats such as the Omega-3 fatty acids found in flax oil may be beneficial to breast health. \

Clean air, food and water

We may unwittingly expose ourselves to estrogen imposters in our air, food, and water known as xenoestrogens (pronounced zeno-estrogens) that mimic the unhealthful properties of estrogen in the breast tissue. Herbicides and pesticides are a few examples of potential xenoestrogens that we may be exposed to in our air, food, or water. A healthy environment free from xenoestrogen contaminants will help insure a healthy future.

Healthy Diet

The National Cancer Institute advocates a healthy diet consisting of at least 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day. Much of the power of these foods comes from phytochemicals in these foods. Phytochemicals are nutrient-like compounds found in foods that may have medicinal/preventative properties. Vegetarians with a diet high in phytochemicals including lignans not only have a reduced incidence of breast cancer and heart disease but also greater bone density.

Dietary Lignans

Women with diets high in certain plant phytochemicals, such as lignans, exhibit a very low incidence of breast disease.

With the industrial revolution came the processing of natural foods, with the resultant reduction of lignans in the food chain. Compound this with a shift in dietary patterns away from whole foods to refined and processed shelf-stable foods, and the result is a diet lacking in lignans compared to approximately 100 years ago.

Prior to the industrial revolution, mankind had consumed a lignan-rich diet through natural and unrefined foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. Such a diet had assisted in the natural elimination of excess estrogens and the decreasing of the impact of potentially dangerous estrogens.
Unfortunately, research has found that the current highly refined "Standard American Diet" which lacks fruit, vegetables, whole grains and legumes, has been associated with an increase in breast cancer.

A decrease in the consumption of food sources containing lignans has left women without the protection nature intended. Women have safely consumed lignans for centuries (through foods), and have benefited from their ability to balance and buffer the potential harmful effects of too much or bad estrogen. Increased consumption of lignans is a good example of how one can practice proactive breast cancer prevention.

Lignans may lessen full-blown estrogen exposure by gently narrowing the estrogen window, though not fully closing it. Like matching puzzle pieces, lignans imitate estrogen in basic shape, structure and function. Their strong resemblance to estrogen enables lignans to compete with, and displace, estrogen on estrogen receptors found on breast cells.

Once displaced, excessive or bad estrogens are harmlessly flushed from the body as waste. Although they are similar in shape, lignans are substantially less powerful than estrogen (which is a good thing) and, as such, narrow the estrogen window. Because they are less powerful and narrow the estrogen window, lignans have the effect of lessening the likelihood of estrogen-induced genetic damage.
Based on prevailing wisdom, we should aspire to ingest high-in-lignan foods and/or consider dietary supplementation with an enriched lignan-bearing product, such as Brevail, in order to achieve lignan concentrations similar to individuals on a very conscientious or vegetarian diet.

Lignans in Supplemental Form

Brevail is the world's first and only commercially available lignan product, making it easy for women to raise their physiologic concentration of lignans with a single daily nutritional supplement.

Brevail is concentrated, standardized, and purified from natural food sources to provide a guaranteed potency product at exacting dosages. The proprietary manufacturing methods used to produce Brevail significantly concentrate lignans and additional phytochemicals, accessory, and antioxidant nutrients into a single capsule per day.

Though Brevail is many hundred folds higher in lignan concentration than most lignan-bearing foods, it has no known adverse side effects. Brevail is the first and only product of its kind to have undergone stringent human, oral-dosing, pharmacokinetic studies to determine the optimal dose range to meet or exceed lignan concentration in women consuming a high-in-lignan producing diet and with a traditionally very low incidence of breast disease.

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