Tidbits #30: Your Brain Craves Estrogen

Menopause is a hot topic right now. In 2024 Dr Lisa Mosconi published ground breaking research showing for the first time how estrogen decline affects brain regions directly.

Imagine you have a factory

You are the manager of a huge, complex factory. (You are the boss - you make make anything you like :).

Typically a factory has a several front and back doors. Some doors will accept delivery of a number of items, but other doors will only accept one special item.

There are several sections inside including a planning office, soldering, sawing, cutting, parts assembly, maintenance, temperature control, and a lunch room - feel free to add sections as you imagine what your factory looks like. Make sure there is a coffee station! There is also a big road near the front and back doors, and some smaller roads around. Trucks drive by with various items, sometimes they stop to deliver things for you and other times they drive past on their way to somewhere else.

For a long time things are ticking along nicely. As manager you send routine emails to suppliers and stuff gets delivered as you need. All your workers are (mostly) happy and produce high quality output.

Occasionally, you need extra supplies but this problem is easily solved with a few extra emails or simply hailing a passing truck.

But then one day, your supplies of a critical product start to become unreliable. It doesn’t come for days or too much is delivered at once. You send a few extra emails, sometimes it works and you get the stuff you need.

Meanwhile, things inside the factory are starting to become a bit frantic.

You have to reduce output and workers are getting injured as they try to maintain product quality with less than ideal input. Some stations are on idle. The cleaning crew is on go-slow and rubbish is piling up. The temperature control in very unreliable; too hot… then too cold - nobody can figure it out. Stress levels are rising and everybody is struggling to think clearly. Workers are getting injured, seemingly for no reason at all. Emotions rollercoaster between anxiety, depression and complete apathy.

As manager, you do the logical thing:

• You send MORE and MORE EMAILS.

• You shut down sections to focus on absolute essentials.

• Some workers are made redundant.

Coffee intake skyrockets, as those that are left, try to do everything. But this makes them agitated.

Sleep is not a thing.

During a creative brainstorm session, your team hypothesise that perhaps the suppliers changed ownership and they have rerouted the trucks. The trucks can’t find the dedicated door!

• The proposal to INSTALL MORE DOORS is accepted. At least we have a better chance of hailing down passing trucks.

I know - it doesn’t quite work that way. But I hope the image help to illustrate what is happening.

This is what is happening in your brain when estrogen supply falls off a cliff during the transition to menopause.The delivery of estrogen becomes erratic then stops completely. Many areas of your brain is not working properly. Your brain sends more and more messages to the ovaries asking for more estrogen. In an effort to acquire any estrogen in the passing bloodstream, estrogen receptor density increases (more doors for the factory).Your brain is crying out for more estrogen!

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