New Health Care Trends Involve Environmental Endocrinology

Today's newest emerging field is called environmental endocrinology. Doctors are now learning how environmental endocrinology and the effect of daily stressors like light, food and crowding on multiple endocrine systems, controls the rate of aging and the quality of life. This field is now converging to become what we call menopause medicine.

Envronmental endocrinology has roots in the earliest calendars, which historically were lunar calendars, based on the time interval from one new moon to the next, or also known as lunation. Colder climates mandated that a year was determined by the end of winter. But in warmer countries, where the seasons are less pronounced, the Moon became the basic unit for time.

Calendars were first developed by women as their natural body rhythms corresponded to observations of the moon. 28 days is not the true average of the female cycle. In ancient mythologies it is clearly related to the full moon, but in the modern world the female cycle is disturbed by what some researchers believe to be the existence of artificial lights and the use of artificial hormones. Many light sources including TV and computer screens, have probably perturbed the female cycle, and shortened it.

A woman's menstrual cycle responds to many subtle environmental cues and one of these is the presence of other women. Those who work closely together, or who live together, can set off each other's menstrual cycles. It happens via pheromones-chemical substances that are secreted by the skin. After the nasal receptors pick up the scent, the pheromones stimulate their endocrine systems, driving their menstrual cycles towards a similar pattern.

There's also evidence for photoperiodicity controlling estrogen reception along with the obligate melatonin response. Estrogen receptors are blocked by melatonin. Once light increases with the waxing moon, melatonin secretion diminishes, and allows more estrogen.

Doctors who are studying environmental endocrinology are in the vanguard of an elite group of forward-thinking physicians and researchers trying to put the scientific method back into medicine, spearheaded by a researcher named T.S. Wiley.

The courses focus on the following topics: Insulin and cortisol metabolism over the course of a lifetime; the interplay of insulin, SHBG and estrogen; the effect of quality of sleep on sex steroid production; the seasonal variation in hormone fluctuation through shunt physiology; the action of sex steroids on immunological, emotional and neurological disorders; how to use and adjust the Wiley Protocol to solve all of the side effects of menopause'hot flashes, migraines, joint pain, incontinence, hemorrhaging, endometriosis, hypo and hyperthyroidism, fibroids, PCOD, insomnia, acid reflux, gall bladder disease, thinning skin, vulvodynia, low libido, IBS, anxiety and depression; the connection of insulin and sex hormones to cancer; C-reactive protein and cardiovascular risk: the eyes of the hippopotamus; non-Genomic actions of steroid Hormones in Reproductive Tissues; complex actions of sex steroids in adipose tissue; and the cardiovascular system and brain: insights from basic science and clinical studies

"Since my involvement with Wiley and environmental endocrinology, I have become more keenly aware of the nuances of hormonal interaction and understanding the molecular aspects of hormonal relationships," said Courtney Paige Ridley M.D."It answers the questions being posed regarding cancer and other dysfunction afflicting not only menopausal women but those women with significant alteration of cycle created by interaction with our estrogen toxic environment."