If estrogen is bone protective, why don't men show an accelerated rate of bone loss leading to osteoporosis? (I know that they show an age related decline, as do women, independent of hormonal effects)
This just doesn't make any sense to me and I haven't seen any text that can reasonably explain why this is the case...
Estrogen limits the rate of bone loss in women, but men, who have a low estrogen level to begin with, don't show an accelerated rate of bone loss. I've read the theory about why estrogen is bone protective and it makes sense, but it seems that the texts only address this in the context of pre- versus post-menopausal women and don't or can't explain why the rate of bone loss in men <<<rate of bone loss in post menopausal women.
If I had to reason it out, I'd guess it probably had something to do with long term exposure to estrogen modifying bone remodeling pathways to such an extent that they reach a new steady state of new bone formation rate and resorption rate - in other words, NET bone turnover in pre-menopausal women and men is the same but the magnitudes of bone remodeling and bone resorption differ in these groups (ex. hypothetically, with estrogen, the rate of bone resorption is much higher than that of men but the rate of new bone formation is proportionally higher in women such that NET bone turnover is the same in pre-menopausal women and men). Loss of estrogen after being exposed to it for so long disrupts this balance and leads to an accelerated rate of bone loss, while in men, you don't have to worry about this because your bone homeostasis was never influenced by estrogen to begin with. This is just pure speculation on my part however...
This just doesn't make any sense to me and I haven't seen any text that can reasonably explain why this is the case...
Estrogen limits the rate of bone loss in women, but men, who have a low estrogen level to begin with, don't show an accelerated rate of bone loss. I've read the theory about why estrogen is bone protective and it makes sense, but it seems that the texts only address this in the context of pre- versus post-menopausal women and don't or can't explain why the rate of bone loss in men <<<rate of bone loss in post menopausal women.
If I had to reason it out, I'd guess it probably had something to do with long term exposure to estrogen modifying bone remodeling pathways to such an extent that they reach a new steady state of new bone formation rate and resorption rate - in other words, NET bone turnover in pre-menopausal women and men is the same but the magnitudes of bone remodeling and bone resorption differ in these groups (ex. hypothetically, with estrogen, the rate of bone resorption is much higher than that of men but the rate of new bone formation is proportionally higher in women such that NET bone turnover is the same in pre-menopausal women and men). Loss of estrogen after being exposed to it for so long disrupts this balance and leads to an accelerated rate of bone loss, while in men, you don't have to worry about this because your bone homeostasis was never influenced by estrogen to begin with. This is just pure speculation on my part however...
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