Estrogen is anabolic and helps build muscle –
I’m not posting this to debate or argue with anyone. Its simply a post to perhaps enlighten some of the guys that never considered this topic and have only heard otherwise (ie, that estrogen is a female hormone and will cause you to become weak and girly).
First off I’ll go right to the science , then after that I’ll give my own thoughts and the ‘bro-science’ .
In the 1980s a study was done on farm animals (sheep and cattle). The purpose really for the ranchers was to see how they could get more LBM, ie, meat, out of a single animal before it was sent to be butchered. They injected the animals with Estrogen. Some of the results were
- Total weight gain and feed efficiency improved 15% in animals that were injected with Estrogen. The weight gain was from more protein and less body fat (ie., LBM increase)
- Anabolic actions such as protein synthesis, nitrogen retention, etc. occurred in these animals
- 33% more protein was deposited in animals that were given synthetic estrogen and they also had 18% less body fat then animals that did not receive the estrogen. The animals who were given the estrogen had a significant increase in protein synthesis.
- Higher levels of growth hormone, insuln, and glucose, were found in the animals that were given estrogen. All of which hormones promote anabolism and muscle growth.
The Cattle that received Estrogen built muscle more efficiently and were essentially bigger and way more jacked (having more muscle and less fat) then the cattle that did not receive estrogen injections.
I’ll post a clip from this study in another post
So, estrogen is anabolic in animals and helps build muscle (a reason why ranchers inject estrogen into their cattle to this day). What about humans?
I have written a ton of posts about this on here , so a lot of you guys have heard my arguments. Here is just a small snip from someone more educated then myself (having a PHD in Pharmaceutical Chemisty as well as a Medical Doctor).
“”” We all know that estrogen is important for having good cardiovascular health. It's associated with lower blood pressure and better cholesterol profiles. It is also known for preserving bone in postmenopausal women. What may be news to you is this bone preservation is secondary to estrogen preserving the muscle! Post-pmenupausal women lose muscle without hormone replacement therapy. As the muscle decreases the bones get softer because there is no structural need to withstand the forces of the now smaller muscles. So if it preserves muscle...
I'm totally serious, it can and here's how. There are 2 estrogen receptors: ER-alpha and ER-beta. After muscle damaging, exercise rats were injected with estradiol. I am shocked to report that satellite cells were recruited upon ER-alpha binding and IGF-1 levels increased after ER-beta binding. This means estrogen acts on its own receptor in tandem with testosterone to synergistically facilitate cell growth and splitting. In other words, estrogen gets you more muscle cells and makes the ones you have bigger.
Additionally, in an unknown mechanism, estrogen helps reduce inflammation to damaged muscles. Another interesting finding was that the absence of ER - alpha resulted in less GLUT4 expression. GLUT4 is the insulin receptor found in muscle. This means estrogen helps shuttle in nutrients to the muscle for growth by helping insulin, a powerful anabolic hormone, bind to muscle. Along with its direct signaling for muscle growth and it driving growth nutrients into the cells, estrogen as we know is a 'wet' hormone. It causes your body weight to rise as you hold on to more water.
What this means for muscle growth is more intramuscular water stretches the fascia that surrounds the muscle, making your pumps greater and increasing the capacity of the muscle to hold that pump. More pump, bigger muscle.
This makes sense if you look at the bro science. Wet steroids like testosterone and deca help you put on more muscle than the dryer variants that don’t aromatize “””
I’ll add some more of my own opinions and findings here in other posts, as this one is getting rather lengthy.