FEMALE HORMONES CAN KEEP US SANE

WOMEN’S hormones are typically blamed for mood swings but, in fact, they can provide a defence against many psychological problems and brain disorders.

Rather than promoting emotional instability, oestrogen is actually neuro-protective and improves mood.

Pregnant brains are flooded with levels of oestrogen that are 1,000 times higher than usual. As we’ve seen (main feature below), the hormones of pregnancy are geared towards mental sharpness.

Conversely, clinical studies indicate that our mental health is most fragile when oestrogen levels are dwindling, both over the course of the month and the course of a lifespan. Women have a lower incidence of schizophrenia compared to men before the age of 45. After this, twice as many women as men are diagnosed. High levels of oestrogen in young women are thought to delay the onset of the disease, according to a report last year in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry by Swiss investigators at Basel University. Rodent studies have found that oestrogen promotes growth of neurons and protects the health of synapses and nerve fibres.

Oestrogen also acts as an anti-inflammatory and an antioxidant, improves blood flow in the brain and helps it to regulate glucose as fuel.

If our mental health is so clearly vulnerable to the withdrawal of oestrogen, is there a place for oestrogen replacement as a therapy?

Jayashri Kulkarni, professor of psychiatry at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, believes so.

She has conducted trials that reveal women with schizophrenia being treated with antipsychotics who receive additional doses of oestrogen via a skin patch improve faster than women who only take antipsychotics.

Professor Kulkarni is so convinced of the positive effects of oestrogen that, instead of blaming ‘hormones’ for bad moods, she prefers to declare: ‘Isn’t she doing well because of her hormones.’