Supplement Review: Ipriflavone

Nature’s Answer to Estrogen

The New Nutritional Medicine

If you’re a woman, it’s likely that you have already had to, or soon will have to, grapple with the complex issue of treating osteoporosis with traditional drug regimens. As we’ve seen, the most common of these is estrogen replacement therapy (ERT). In spite of the controversy surrounding estrogen replacement therapy, one fact is clear: hormonal therapy does treat osteoporosis. But its potential for unwanted side effects, most notably, breast and uterine cancers, can be very frightening.

Recent research has identified natural substances that mimic the beneficial aspects of estrogen, without their potential side effects. The most promising of these substances are isoflavones. A significant amount of data has been published on their ability to maintain healthy bones. Researchers took isoflavones one step further and discovered how to refine and synthesize from them the compound known as ipriflavone.

Ipriflavone and Healthy Bone:
How it works?

Ipriflavone can safely increase bone mass and density without the deadly side effects of ERT and other traditional treatments. It’s widely accepted around the world and is a registered drug for the treatment of osteoporosis in Europe, Japan and Argentina. Some of the findings the piqued the interest of scientists showed that ipriflavone:

• Increases the total amount of calcium retained in bones.
• Preserves bone by inhibiting the activity of bone breaking osteoclasts.
• Promotes the production and activity of bone building osteoblasts.
• Decreases the activity of nitric oxide, which results in decreased activity of bone breaking osteoclasts.
• Ipriflavone works primarily in bone tissue and not on other organs. Thus, it doesn’t have the deleterious effects that estrogen does, like increased risk of uterine cancer.

Ipriflavone as a Complementary Therapy

As we’ve notice, isoflavones are recognized by the body as estrogen. Ipriflavone, on the other hand, isn’t exactly recognized as estrogen but rather, mimics the action of estrogen, a slightly different mechanism with the same end result. So ipriflavone can work in the body like estrogen, without estrogen’s negative effects.

Ipriflavone can be a complementary therapy to other compounds as well. Combination therapies using ipriflavone and other bone building compounds like calcium may be more beneficial than ipriflavone used alone. The most impressive human studies on osteoporosis have used ipriflavone in conjunction with calcium, generally in the range of 500mg to 1, 000 mg a day. Studies have also shown that ipriflavone, in con junction with vitamin D, can help reduce postmenopausal bone loss better than either of these two substances alone.