Dr. Elizabeth Boham explains that hormones don't typically cause cancer, but they can fuel growth in existing tumors that have estrogen or progesterone receptors. Triple-negative breast cancers lack these receptors and won't respond to hormonal signals, while receptor-positive cancers can be stimulated by both the body's own hormones and those from therapy.
What I would say about hormone therapy or hormones in general is we're not necessarily thinking that the hormone therapy is causing the cancer. And I say this to women all the time, but we do know that hormones can cause cancer to grow. I mean, I had a triple negative breast cancer, which means there was not this elevated amount of estrogen receptors or progesterone receptors on the cancer cells, but there are also the estrogen receptor positive and progesterone receptor positive cancers that have this excessive amount of receptors on them, not the normal amount, but lots and lots of extra ones. So we know that hormones can cause cancer to grow. That's how I explain it to women. We're not necessarily thinking when we do hormone therapy in a healthy bioidentical way that we're causing the cancer, but could it cause cancer to grow? You know, yes, absolutely. And our own estrogen and our own progesterone and our own testosterone can cause a cancer to grow.
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