Has anyone heard/ tried oestrogen therapy please?

Hi, apparently estrogen and hormone related therapy can alleviate schizophrenic symptoms. Professor John Studd has an office in London and works with hormones for good mental health. I’m tempted to visit but it’s three hundred pounds simply for one consultation. I could save up… what do you think?

I’ve gone off chasing elusive substances that were supposed to cure me - gabapentin, omega-3, sarcosine. I don’t know if any of them helped. I’m still taking the omega-3 and sarcosine. 300 pounds is a lot of money, but it’s up to you if you want to spend it on hormone therapy. Hormones are pretty strong med’s.

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i asked my dr about this…he said unless your level is low it’s not a good idea as prolonged use can lead to breast cancer. get your levels tested first, that’s my advice. good luck :slight_smile:

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Thanks Jayne, I’m going to try testing my hormones beforehand as you suggest! This can be done on the NHS I hope…

Just talk to your regular doctor. The medications they use for estrogen treatment (in schizophrenia) are the same ones they use in helping women who are past menopause and who want to increase estrogen (oestrogen in the UK).

Here are some of the research studies:

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By the way - please let us know what you end up doing, and if it helps (or what your regular doctor says about it)

Thanks so much for this information. I shall be returning to the boards pending any progress so hopefully watch this space in case there is added hope. I believe that it may be successful as a drug in combination with usual antipsychotics for schizophrenia… but time shall tell I suppose!

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and @SzAdmin

Estrogen for feminine neurosis, borderlinism and psychosis has been around since the 1930s that I know of. It can work, BUT… it’s a case of putting the appropriate therapy with the appropriate condition.

Sz (and all the other psychiatric conditions) are the results of very complex combinations of genetic, epigenetic and behaviorally conditioned (or "learned*) circumstances. IF the pt’s condition is considerably driven by female hormone imbalance, estrogen therapy may produce a beneficial result, including reduction of emotionally connected psychotic thinking and behaviors. If the pt’s condition is not strongly connected to hormone imbalance, however, I wouldn’t expect much from such tx. (And most sz is not all that endocrine.)

The ethical physician will test for the hormone imbalance and report the results of such testing truthfully. Unfortunately, however, there are waaaaaaaay too many examples of not testing or misreporting the results just to get the pt “hooked” and under the spell so the unscrupulous “doc” can vacuum the pt’s wallet.

Further, I have run into a good half-dozen cases where the gullible female pt was pronounced so bollocksed that she was referred (to some pal of the first doc) for partial or complete hysterectomy. (Hysterectomy was a recognized and widely accepted psychosurgery a half century ago.) Thus, the pt’s wallet (or insurance) is further tapped. It’s an industry in some locales.

If this was my wife, g/f, mom, daughter, lover, etc., I would locate a board-certified endocrinologist who does not advertise such treatments, and send her to him or her. Females docs in this world tend to be more trustworthy, though not always.

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Yes - but there has been a lot more research in the past decade or so about this as a possible treatment for schizophrenia (as the above links show).

But - your point is very valid. I’d avoid the independent practioners who make lots of money from these types of things and who likely over-prescribe just because they can, and they are financially incentivised to do so. Start with your regular doctor or psychiatrist - then as NotMoses suggests - a female endicronologist.

Not sure if this guy is just trying to line his own pockets - but I’d be skeptical of his services:

(this is the one that Mouse mentioned in her first post:

Dr. John Studd

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Oh, Kayryyyyyyst. That guy is famous the world over… but highly controversial (in no small part for some of the “experiments” he did in Rhodesia years ago, as well as for the unwarranted assertions he made in a # of his published papers). He’s also been accused of hiring web techs to make sure that controversy is cleaned off the Internet as rapidly as possible.

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Ah - yes - seems that he’s done some questionable things: I’d avoid the guy if it was me.

Doctor who removed patient’s ovaries without her consent found guilty of misconduct

John Studd, the Harley Street gynaecologist who removed a 35-year- old woman’s ovaries without her consent, was last night found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council.
Mr Studd, 60, a member of the council of the Royal College of Obstetricians, was found guilty of a failure to undertake sufficient medical or supervision of Jacqueline Bartley’s ovaries before he undertook the operation.

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Yes, at 850 pounds for the initial consultation plus blood test and follow up apt. the team aren’t doing it simply for love! However, health comes at a price and hopefully there are cheaper avenues which will reveal whether such treatment is effective…

yep, your gp can do it. mine did and found it was low but witin the “normal to low” range so did not want to offer oestregen because if the risk of breast cancer…x

Yes, I went to my GP earlier and have booked a blood test to determine my hormonal range today… Fingers crossed. I had also heard of overdosing the body with oestrogen… it causes breast cancer for one in a thousand women… so it’s important to check and see whether your body needs it first…

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You might talk to your psychiatrist about this also. It seems to me that there is a difference in estrogen / oestrogen treatment for deficiency, and estrogen treatment for schizophrenia - these are two different issues.

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Hi, if you look on Wikipedia regarding estrogen as an effective treatment for schizophrenia it states that estrogen treatment is used for schizophrenia only when levels are deficient… so I think it is only good at improving positive symptoms in patients who have low estrogen levels in the first place not as an adjunctive…

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Wikipedia is a start - but not always the best place to see the status of research on something.

I look at this research study that was recently completed and they don’t say anything at all about “low levels of estrogen” - they just added it to men and women and they did better:

"This is the first study to show that daily, oral adjunctive raloxifene treatment at 120 mg per day has beneficial effects on attention/processing speed and memory for both men and women with schizophrenia. Thus, raloxifene may be useful as an adjunctive treatment for cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia."

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Here is a review of a group of studies, and again - it doesn’t say anything about a person’s existing level of estrogen.

CONCLUSIONS:

Estrogens and SERMs could be effective augmentation strategies in the treatment of women with schizophrenia, although potential side effects, partially associated with longer duration use, should be taken into account. Future trials are needed to study long-term effects and effects on cognition.

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There is also a risk of blood clots with hormones.

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Unfortunately there’s a risk when taking almost any medication now. (Sigh.)

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