Endogenous Estrogen: Estradiol (Nursing)

00:00 Now, great pictures here to help you get the idea. We're talking about premenopausal women, so before menopause, obviously a younger woman. The ovaries are the primary source of estrogen.

00:14 Endogenous estrogen sources in premenopausal women is the ovaries. Right? The follicles, as they develop, they're putting out estrogen. Now for men, they actually have small amounts of testosterone are converted to estradiol. Okay, so men have a little bit of these 2. Women have a lot higher doses. Just like the other sex hormone, testosterone, women have a little bit of testosterone, men have a lot more of that than women do. The same thing with estrogen. Women have much more estrogen, men have smaller amounts but it is present in their bodies too. Now the reproductive actions of estrogen in females, that's what helps females develop what we call secondary sexual characteristics in the breast and in the endometrium. It also helps regulate that menstrual cycle. Now, think back. When is estrogen higher? In the 1st half of the menstrual cycle or the last half of the menstrual cycle? Right? The 1st half of the menstrual cycle. Now what's the name of the 1st half of the menstrual cycle? Cool. Follicular phase. If you've got that, good job. Now what I just did with you is what I want you to do throughout all your studies. As you're going through the information, tell yourself stop. What do I know about this? Why does it matter? If you ask yourself questions or you ask your study partner questions, that's the best way for you to learn. Reading and highlighting information is actually just kind of the lowest form of learning.

01:47 It's not great for retention. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but asking questions is the best way to help your brain recall/retain information. So, we've got endogenous estrogen, what it does in females, it helps the secondary sex characteristics and it regulates the menstrual cycle.

02:05 In males, it helps with sperm maturing and maintaining libido. So, I bet a lot of men don't know that but that's its role in their body. Hey, there's our friend, Nurse Nathalie. See, I love that she has that friendly smile. She's going to help us talk about the non-reproductive actions of endogenous estrogen. Okay, estrogen does some pretty cool things in your body. Besides just messing with the menstrual cycle in your uterine lining, it does some other things that are really helpful.

02:35 So let's walk through them. First of all, endogenous estrogen, that means the estrogen my body makes blocks bone resorption and causes a positive effect on bone mass. Okay, that's a little clinically.

02:49 Right? So, what it means is in result it gives me strong bones. Nurse Nathalie and I are going to go through a list of things with you and I want you to write some notes as we go. So, right next to that one. Right? Strong bones. This is really beneficial to us. Right? We all want strong bones.

03:12 Because once you have a fracture, it's really problematic to recover from. So, if someone should take a stumble or a fall, we don't want their bones to fracture, want them to be strong. As a woman ages, your endogenous estrogen levels decrease. So therefore your bones, that's why we're more at risk for osteoporosis, are kind of really weak bones. So that's why super cool that endogenous estrogen helps us keep strong bones. Alright, that's the first one. The next one, you may not even realize that we have estrogen receptors on our vascular smooth muscle. So when the estrogen receptors on our vascular smooth muscle, when they receive estrogen, it causes less vasoconstriction. Okay, that is beneficial to us because with less vasoconstriction, I'm going to have better perfusion and lower blood pressure. So, estrogen helps me kind of maintain my blood pressure. Right? I have less vasoconstriction so I have a healthier blood pressure and I've got better tissue perfusion. Strong bones and better tissue perfusion, but it gets even better as we say in America "and that's not all." Estrogen receptors on the endothelium also cause nitric oxide production, which gives us vasodilation. Again, boom, we're going to have a better blood pressure and a better perfusion. So it helps me in my vascular system. It takes my bones and it also hits my blood system. Right? Because it's going to help my blood pressure. So first of all I've got 2Bs, bone and blood pressure. Now lastly, it hits the cholesterol levels. Estrogen, the kind my body makes, that's why it's important to understand and see endogenous estrogen helps my cholesterols by lowering the bad cholesterol (LDL) and raising the good cholesterol (HDL). Okay, so it goes after my bone and my blood. So my bones get stronger, my blood pressure gets better, and the cholesterol levels in my blood, I have less bad cholesterol and more good cholesterol.

05:24 See what we did there, we kind of chunked information and you hear me use that term instead of just trying to look at a list. When anyone's brain looks at a list like this with 4 boxes, you can't remember what's in there. You can try and memorize words but you won't hang on to it very long. The effort that you're putting into this video series as you're taking your own notes as we go along will pay off big for you as a professional nurse and when it comes to exam time. So make sure you're writing notes as we go along on our notes.