Hi Pollie
since recently people have had issues with other links I've stopped adding them. Even decent medical sites have too many adverts and stuff. Also a lot of sites these days have virii and malware lurking so best to let others find their own
A simple google should find you information on the subject.
All I'll say is that your correct estrogen will be stored in fat
But fat also acts as a buffer and this is part of the reason they have found this result.
Also, recent paper articles talked about loosing weight to boost your hormones, yes it will as you'll end up using up estrogen stored in fat as you loose weight. But this might be short lived boost for some.
I know a lot of people who are overweight but very very healthy and active. Risks to our health can happen to people of normal weight too.
For example type 2 diabetes - often this is associated with people being overweight. Yet I have a relative being treated for type 2 who has been fit, healthy and certainly not overweight during their life.
As with menopause its just a case of how each of our bodies works then how our bodies stop working.
This will happen at different times and because of different reasons for everyone.
Keeping our weight stable and retaining muscle mass into old age is now being seen as a more positive thing than being very lean and lower muscle mass.
Hope that helps further.