Using Grape Seed Extract for Female Hormone Replacement Therapy

Female hormonal problems are difficult for most natural doctors to address. The main reason is that we’ve heard so many bad things about drugs used in hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Grape Seed Extract

By now, you’ve heard of the wonders of grape seed extract. It’s in NutriPlex Formulas’ Super Greens, in the amounts used in many of the leading studies. As of late, grape seed extract is being heralded as being able to balance female hormonal health.

What the science shows

Aromatase is the enzyme that converts androgen to estrogen. Grape seed extract (GSE) contains high levels of procyanidin that have been shown to be potent inhibitors of aromatase.*

Breast cancer and too much estrogen

Too much estrogen – that’s the prevailing consensus among researchers as the reason women have hormonal problems, including cancers. Especially breast cancer.

Researchers found that grape seed extract can suppress estrogen in cancerous tissue – which produces excess amounts of estrogen – without inhibiting critical estrogen production from healthy tissue.

** The same researchers, a the Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope, say there’s more than just the procyanadins at play in grape seed extract. This is yet another testament to the multiplicity of nutrients within a food (grape seeds) as opposed to an isolate (resveratrol).

Resveratrol could be a safer alternative

Resveratrol (found in grape seed extract) could prove a safer alternative to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in postmenopausal women and could help prevent breast cancer, according to a study published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.

The study indicates that resveratrol is the most likely candidate of the phytoestrogens to offer safer HRT and chemoprevention of breast cancer due to its estrogenic activity and high antitumor activity.

* Cancer Res. 2006 Jun 1;66(11):5960-7; Kijima I, Phung S, Hur G, Kwok SL, Chen S., Grape seed extract is an aromatase inhibitor and a suppressor of aromatase expression.

** Wheeler, Mar, Grape seed extract suppresses estrogen in breast cancer, Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope, investigator Shiuan Chen, PhD, Duarte, CA, 2006