Getting more estrogen over one’s lifetime may be linked to healthier blood vessels in women’s brains later in life, a new study suggests.
At age 70, women who had used hormone therapy around menopause had fewer signs of damage to the brain’s tiniest blood vessels compared with peers who’d never taken hormones. The research also suggests a protective link to taking birth control pills earlier in life and having more years between a first period and menopause.
The findings add more evidence that women’s hormonal history, from the menstrual first period through menopause, is tied to brain health decades later, says lead author Giulia Lorenzon, PhD, a researcher at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and former postdoctoral researcher at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
“I think it is important to recognize that reproductive history is an important part of women’s overall health history,
