Rosemary as a Phytoestrogen?

Zhao, Lee, Ma, Huang, Sun, Li, Chen, and Niu (2012) studied the effects of carnosol, an antioxidant on estrogen receptors. This is an attempt to find a solution to postmenopausal cardiovascular symptoms that do not bear a cancer-causing risk such as hormone replacement therapy.

Estrogen receptor a played a bigger role in this study that estrogen receptor b but it was clear that carnosol was effective overall in this study.  Carnasol played a significant role in reducing induced oxidative stress in a vascoprotective way.  Meaning, it prevented cell death caused by oxidative stress.  It displayed phytoestrogenic activity in BAECs. 

The estrogen receptors have also demonstrated antioxidant properties, especially estrogen receptor a which inhibited some of the carnosol activity. This study showed carnosol used the estrogen receptor pathway to exert its antioxidative properties.  However, the binding ability is different due to the structure of the phytoestrogen cells.  When the cells were pretreated with carnosol 24 hours prior to induced oxidative stress, the cardiovascular cells were not damaged by the oxidative stress. 

The authors of the study say there are existing studies which indicate daily intake if carnasol in animals is well tolerated.
 
Have a Great Day!
 
Zhao, P., Lee, D. Y., Ma, Z., Huang, L., Sun, L., Li, Y., Chen, J., and Niu, J. (2012). The Antioxidant Effect of Carnosol in Bovine Aortic Endothelial Cells Is Mainly Mediated via Estrogen Receptor α Pathway. Biological Pharmacological Bulletin, 35(11):1947–1955