Page 189 - The Memory Program How to Prevent Memory Loss and Enhance Memory Power
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Recently, several large-scale studies, including the Women's Health Initiative under the auspices of
the NIH, have been launched to evaluate the direct effect of estrogen in preventing and treating mild
memory loss. This massive investment means that it is likely that our knowledge about the effects of
estrogen on memory will leapfrog over all the other promemory medications in the coming years.
How about a Male Estrogen?
How about a male estrogen to prevent not only memory loss but also heart attacks and strokes that
are more common in men than in women? There is work afoot to try to develop compounds that
retain many of the properties of estrogen without producing its feminizing effects such as changes in
breast size and other physical features. The antiosteoporosis medication raloxifene (Evista), which
some have informally labeled as estrogen-light, has fewer feminizing properties than regular
estrogen, but it is still not suitable for use by men. A recent study in women showed that Evista was
much less likely to lead to breast cancer than estrogen, and this compound may be worth testing in
women with mild memory loss.
The irony about estrogen is that it is a steroid, as is the male hormone, testosterone.
Corticosteroids are thought to damage hippocampal cells, but sex hormone steroids may actually
protect the same cells. Testosterone therapy in men has not been studied as much as estrogen in
women for a couple of reasons: a high risk of prostate cancer, and the need to give testosterone by
injection rather than orally. Since more and more researchers are taking an interest in sex hormones
and related compounds, male sex hormone therapy to prevent memory loss, and perhaps depression,
may make its debut in the future.
How Estrogen Works in the Brain
Estrogen has the following effects that individually or together may be responsible for its promemory
actions:
1. Promotes the growth and survival of cholinergic nerve cells in the brain, probably by
stimulating a substance called nerve growth factor.
