Symptoms of estrogen dominance

Estrogen dominance is a term used when your estrogen levels are higher in comparison to progesterone and other hormones in your body. This can occur at any stage of a women’s life and often through the perimenopausal years.  Whilst estrogen is beneficial in many ways for a women’s health, if not correctly metabolised or balanced with other hormones, such as progesterone, it can cause unwanted symptoms such as:

• PMS
• Weight gain that is difficult to shift
• Irregular menstruation, heavy bleeding
• Endometriosis/Fibroids/cysts
• Insomnia
• Depression/ anxiety or irritability
• Fatigue
• Low libido
• Infertility

How you become estrogen dominant

What we ideally want to happen in the body is we make estrogen, our bodies use it in various ways, and then we effectively excrete it out of the body. Often though estrogen is not excreted properly through the detoxification pathways, it hangs around the body and is recycled and used again, causing unwanted symptoms.

What are detoxification pathways – proper functioning of the liver, gallbladder, kidneys, lymph, bowel intestines, lungs and skin. It is not hard for any one of these detoxification pathways to become sluggish or not be effective 100% of the time. Things that affect them are – everyday chemicals, lack of exercise, high sugar diets, high processed food diets, low vegetable intake, low fibre intake, alcohol, the pill, poor sleep, smoking and stress just to name a few.

How to correct estrogen dominance

7 Ways to enhance your estrogen detoxification naturally:

• Eat foods from the apiaceous vegetables family – carrots (raw, organic skin on), cumin, celery, coriander, parsley and fennel.
• Eat foods high in insoluble fiber such as – raw carrots, apples, pears, green beans, rice, almonds, avocados, pistachios.
• Eat more brassica foods – cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, silver beet, brussel sprouts, broccolini and kale.
• Avoid alcohol – research has shown that it only takes one alcoholic drink a day to change the way our estrogen is metabolised.
• Limit chemical exposure from everyday household products – soaps, personal care items, cleaners, fly sprays, deodorisers, reheating in plastic containers, drinking from plastic bottles etc.
• Exercise – exercise helps move our lymph around the body which helps to naturally detoxify waste hormones and other chemicals / toxins.
• Drink filtered water – filter out chemicals that can slow down those detoxification pathways such as chlorine.

Think this is you? Book in with Samantha now to find out if you are estrogen dominant. There are functional tests that can help you work it out for sure.

By Samantha Van Dort – Fertility & Womens Health & Hormone Naturopath