AN UNLIKELY CULPRIT IN WEIGHT GAIN
Dr Steven R. Goldstein is a Menopause Specialist in NYC in private practice for over 25 years. Regarding Menopause and Weight Gain, Dr Goldstein writes: It has been known for quite some time that estrogen promotes lean body mass. At menopause, women no longer make estrogen and many patients experience the upsetting phenomenon of developing redistribution of weight to the abdomen; in medical terms known as "centripetal adiposity," or what it says in the article, turning women from "pears" to "apples." In addition, most of you know that at menopause, women lose bone because bone is an estrogen dependent organ. When women stop making estrogen at menopause, there is a fairly rapid loss of bone. Now for the interesting part. Estrogen is produced by ovaries in response to a substance that comes from the pituitary gland known as FSH (follicle stimulating hormone). Follicle stimulating hormone causes follicles in the ovary to produce estrogen. At menopause the ovary is incapable of producing estrogen and so the pituitary puts out more and more FSH in an attempt to get the ovary to respond. In premenopausal women there is what is called a negative feedback loop. That means that when estrogen is produced it drives the level of FSH from the pituitary to a very low level. Thus in menopause, FSH is high and estrogen is low, in premenopause estrogen is high and FSH is low.