Ornament

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Ronnie Falcao, LM MS, a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA

Ornament

Phytoestrogens in Foods and Herbs

The Best Thing You Can Do for Mothers, Babies, Birth and Families is to Become Net Savvy!

I just had my mind expanded this morning by Laureen Hudson's hour long online session on how to use the internet to get a message out. Laureen's session “Creating an Online Presence," gave me a wealth of information in a short time and impressed me with how many people are out there who completely rely on the internet for their information. I needed that, and maybe you do, too.  

  - Ina May Gaskin 

 I just hung up the phone from doing the hour long session with Laureen Hudson on “Creating an Online Presence”.  Laureen’s know-how and expertise were enough to wake up even the birth oldtimers like me and Ina May to the many unused opportunities of the internet.  Laureen’s engaging and easygoing teaching style made even those scary (to me) terms like “hypertext, streaming, wordpress, technorati, feedreader and trackback” start to make sense.  Her passion is to reach the generation of young women who have not yet given birth BEFORE they fall into the black hole of aggressive obstetrics.  I came away from the class today with lots of ways to improve my website and make it more modern, usable and interesting for readers.  This class will run again this coming Friday (August 22) and I heartily recommend it.  
- Gloria Lemay


 
REGISTER NOW! SPACE IS LIMITED! 

Cost: $35 per session 

Each session will be 60 minutes in length 

Creating An Online Presence
Sunday, September 7 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific / 8:00 p.m. Eastern
Friday, September 19 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific / 3:00 p.m. Eastern
Monday, September 22 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific / 12:00 p.m. Eastern 

Search! 
This session will include a case study of Dr. Amy and how we shoot ourselves in the collective feet by visiting and commenting on her website.  (PS Hope you enjoyed the Gotcha! page from our last email!)
Sunday, October 5 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific / 8:00 p.m. Eastern
Friday, October 24 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific / 3:00 p.m. Eastern
Monday, October 27 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific / 12:00 p.m. Eastern   

I have had three non pregnant patients recently with rather profuse vaginal bleeding not responsive to hormonal therapy, all of whom had elevated bleeding times with normal PT, PTT, and platelet count. One patient was using "Herbalife" which is a combination of various herbs sold as a weight loss regimen, one was taking ginseng regularly, and one consumed "green tea" daily. None had von Willibrandt's and all bleeding times normalized after discontinuing herbal preparations. Anyone else seen anything like this? Any words of wisdom in Kelly's herb book?


I have never 'seen' it, but I've read of quite a few herbs and what not that can act as phytoestrogens. Some articles on this phenomenon are,

Hopkins, M.P..; et al. 1988. "Ginseng Face Cream and Unexplained Vaginal Bleeding." Am J Obstet Gynecol 159:1121-2.

Pearce, P.T..; et al. 1982. "Panex Ginseng and Eleuthrococcus Senticosus Extracts - In Vitro Studies on Binding to Steroid Receptors." Endocrinol. Japon 29(5):567-73.

Also vitamin C, or ascorbic acid up to 1 g/d can significantly increase the efficacy of exogenous estrogens.

Soy protein, has also been known to have a 'moderate' or 'slight' estrogenic properties, which are 'thought' to help with osteopenia/osteoporosis.

A small list of phytoestrogens are:

Note that large toxic amounts of some of these substances would have to be consumed if the efficacy of some of phytoestrogens were to be comparable to that of estrone or estradiol!!! Anyways, it's quite a science, and I'm sure you could do a Ph.D dissertation on this topic.


This Web page is referenced from other pages containing related information about Well-Woman Care, Herbs, and Prenatal Nutrition

 




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