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.