Can you believe estrogen can help make fat cells healthier?

When I read this article I couldn’t believe that estrogen can help make fat healthy?  Did you know that hormone is one reason that men and women carry weight differently. When some scientists did tests on both a female and male rats they found out that estrogen helps their fat cells stay healthier.

Deborah Clegg of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas did a research that concluded that estrogen helps fat cells. They took a female rat and removed there ovaries and redistributed their fat from under there skin to their bellies and  found out when they gave them estrogen injections they stayed healthier and that both male and female rats have the same fat distribution patterns as humans.  Her earlier studies of human fat cells from men and pre- and post-menopausal women suggested that when estrogen binds to ER-alpha, the cell is more able to break down fat. Another molecule, ER-beta, makes the cell hold fat more tightly. Women have more ER-alpha in their bellies than men do.  Clegg produced both female and  male rats that lacked the gene for a molecule called estrogen receptor alpha that grabs on to estrogen and and tested the rats again and found that the rats could end up having diabetes.

 In the end Clegg found out that molecules that hold estrogen can help or make the growth of the fat cells smaller and keep them from have disease like diabetes and things.

Do you believe that it is really the estrogen keeping the fat cells smaller?
Should they  be doing the tests and rats?
Do you think it is hormones that make men and women carry weight differently?