Hi everyone, I want to talk to you guys today about hormone balance and how to make sure
that you have healthy levels of estrogen in your body and not too much estrogen.
For a lot of women out there, they have symptoms of excess estrogen in the body, such as PMS,
heavy periods and breast tenderness.
And sometimes it means that they have too much estrogen in their body overall, or it
means they don't have enough progesterone, which is really the byproduct of healthy ovulation,
they don't have enough progesterone to balance the estrogen that they do have.
And so today I'm going to talk to you guys about some healthy ways to balance estrogen
levels in your body.
It's important to know that, when it comes to testing your estrogen levels, it can be
very tricky because a blood test really only gives you a snapshot of that moment and the
reality is that your estrogen fluctuate so much, sometimes within hours, that it can
be very hard to get an accurate gauge of what your estrogen levels are through a blood test.
At our clinic we actually use a urine test that not only looks at the end products of
estrogen metabolism, but it helps us know whether you're breaking down your estrogen
in a healthy way so that you're not at a great risk of breast cancer or fibroids or things
of that nature.
So it is really important to get the right test when you're looking at your actual estrogen
levels in the body.
Now, high estrogen levels usually come from not being able to clear the excess estrogen
out of your system and also having poor detoxification pathways through the liver.
So in order to detoxify estrogen, once estrogen goes around the body and has the effect that
it needs to have on all of your tissues, what is left over is supposed to be detoxified
through the liver so that you can excrete it.
And in order to have healthy detoxification of estrogen, you need to have adequate levels
of cofactors like B vitamins, zinc, selenium and also certain amino acids especially the
amino acids methionine and glycine.
And unfortunately, and this is something not many people are aware of, the amino acid glycine
is really not found very much in the muscle meat that we eat.
So when we go out and we eat steak or chicken breast, those are all the muscle meats of
the animals, and glycine is actually high in organ meats like liver and heart and also
in collagen tissue.
So collagen powder or eating the gristle or drinking bone broth are great sources of glycine
and most of us are not getting enough in the diet.
Also, we really live in a chemical soup nowadays.
Unfortunately there are so many chemicals in our environment that mimic estrogen and
can bind to our estrogen receptors in the body and so they act like estrogen, stimulate
those receptors and that can also create a state of symptoms where it's like having too
much estrogen in the body.
Another thing that's really important for having healthy estrogen levels is to make
sure you're having a daily bowel movement.
Earlier I mentioned that the liver is responsible for , it's called decongestion it has to make
these estrogens water soluble so that they can be excreted and get out of the body through
the bowels.
Well, if you're constipated, than all of those estrogens that the liver is trying to get
rid off just get recirculated.
And so if you're constipated and you've got excess estrogen, it really creates a vicious
cycle.
Also, if you have unhealthy gut bacteria, sometimes those bacteria can actually deconjugate
the estrogen that your liver just conjugated, making it active and available again.
And so here your liver is trying to get rid of the excess and the bacteria reversed the
process that your liver just did and all of those estrogens just get recirculated again.
So looking at gut health, making sure that you have a healthy balance of intestinal flora
and that you're having a daily bowel movement are essential when you're trying to get your
estrogen levels under control.
Also, a person can actually be hypersensitive to estrogen if they have a lot of chronic
inflammation going on in their body or if they are deficient in iodine, because iodine
has an effect on the estrogen receptors.
So those are some other factors to consider when we're looking at ways to reduce the amount
of estrogen we have in our body.
And so what are some of the things that you can do if you think that you have excess estrogen.
Well, first thing to do is to make sure is that you have healthy live detoxification.
So making sure that you have adequate levels of B vitamins, zinc, selenium, magnesium and
also methionine and glycine and collagen is a great way to get extra glycine in your diet.
I also love recommending that people eat sulfur rich vegetables, because the sulfur compound
in those vegetables help the liver to conjugate those estrogens and to clear them out of the
body.
So, broccoli, cauliflower, onions and garlic, anything that is in the brassica family.
Cabbage is another great one, would be really great for helping to support the detoxification
of estrogen.
And so another thing you wanna do to balance your estrogen levels, is to make sure that
you're getting enough progesterone to help balance that estrogen and we primarily get
our progesterone through ovulation.
So make sure that you're ovulating every month and here is how you can tell; wake up every
morning at the same time and before you get out of bed, take your temperature and keep
a record to see if there is a temperature surge in the middle of your cycle around day
fourteen.
When the body is making progesterone through ovulation, the body temperature rises and
so that is a very reliable indicator that you're ovulating.
And then if you don't see that temperature surge, you know that there is an issue there,
because the lack of progesterone can cause by default an excess estrogen.
So work with your provider if you find that you're not ovulating.
There could be some underlying issues there, like polycystic ovarian syndrome, nutrient
deficiencies, stress and thyroid disease.
So those are all very important to rule out.
There are also some really important dietary changes to make if you want to get rid of
excess estrogen in your body.
So number one, you're going to have to avoid alcohol or at least greatly reduce it, because
that really increases your levels of estrogen.
Also, you'll want to avoid anything that is proinflammatory, so dairy, sugar all of those
things that create systemic inflammation in the body, tend to make you hypersensitive
to estrogen.
And they cal also have effects on your ability to have bowel movements, which again you will
be reabsorbing all of that estrogen.
And so, I hope you guys found this video helpful, comment below and let me know if you have
any other questions and I'll see you next time.