Menopause can bring on a laundry list of changes and health concerns that, let’s just say, no woman in her right mind is too thrilled about. To top it off, it’s long been recognized that post-menopausal women are also at higher risk of osteoporosis — a condition that causes your bones to weaken and become more prone to fractures, especially in your wrist, spine, and hip.
And although doctors have thought that the loss of estrogen during menopause might be the cause of this osteoporosis link, they really didn’t know why until a recent study at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU). In fact, the Tokyo scientists not only found the molecular link between estrogen and bone aging but also a clue as to what you can do to prevent it.
Estrogen and healthy bone structure- Osteocytes (specialized cells in your bone matrix) help to maintain its structure, and there are many factors which help them work better and more efficiently, one of which is a newly discovered protein called Sema3A. The protein, discovered by the Tokyo scientists, led them to suspect there might be a relationship between the protein and estrogen that could explain why women are at such high risk for bone loss following menopause.
Scientists learned three things:
- When estrogen goes down, so does the protein Sema3A.
- When estrogen and Sema3A go down, so does bone mass.
- You can prevent bone mass loss by supplying extra estrogen.
We believe that, as women lose estrogen with age and Sema3A levels drop off, osteocytes begin to die and bone loses the ability to maintain its supportive structure.
