Transcript

Hello ladies, it’s Kylie from the hormone hub. How are we? This is an episode that I’ve really been looking forward to. All right, estrogen. Do we have [00:01:00] too much or too little? Okay. At either end of the spectrum, either having too much estrogen or too little can be problematic. So today we’re gonna chat about what is estrogen, what does it do for us?

What happens if we’re too high? What happens if we’re too low and what we can do about either end of the scale. So while estrogen is essentially a female hormone, men do make it in small amounts, for sure. It plays a big role in our reproductive health. It also promotes new bone growth, preventing osteoporosis.

It helps support our cardiovascular health and also protects us from insulin sensitivity as well. So the challenge with estrogen is when it’s too much in comparison to other hormones, particularly in, you know, in ratio to progesterone. And also if there’s too much of a particular type of estrogen in, you know, relationship to the other types of estrogen and [00:02:00] also when it is too low. So, you know, essentially that’s generally when we’ve been through menopause. So estrogen is one of our main sex hormones it’s made in our ovaries. And also it’s good to know that small amounts are also made in our fat cells and also our adrenal glands.

So when we go through menopause, our ovaries stop making estrogen. But our body still makes small amounts in our fat glands and adrenal glands. So the more fat mass that we are carrying, the more estrogen our body’s producing. So estrogen, you know, obviously plays a big role in our fertility.

So it gives us, you know, when we go through puberty, it gives us boobs. It gives us curves. It lays down fat on our hips, our thighs, our bums. So, you know, that lower half of our body. Now when there’s too much estrogen, it can promote fluid retention. And often, you know, [00:03:00] when women wake up feeling flat, feeling bloated, retaining fluid, I’ve heard clients talk about, you know, they, they gained three kilos overnight.

Now I want you to know that this isn’t body fat, it’s fluid that’s being retained and estrogen’s a big driver of this. So until, you know, our hormones sort of return to balance and settle down. You know, this is a really good reason to also chuck your scales out ladies, because you know, fluid that we’re holding onto, you know, does not count as body fat. Get off the scales.

All right. So there are a lot of other reasons for fluid retention, but estrogen is the likely culprit when it comes to excess estrogen. So if we are, have too much estrogen, this is where we, this can drive headaches, including migraines. It can increase our blood clotting. It can kill our libido, like seriously, let’s face it, who’s feeling sexy when you’re feeling all bloated [00:04:00] and puffy. It can interfere with our thyroid production and, you know, there’s also big health consequences of having too much estrogen. So too much estrogen, if we think of that as being quite inflammatory. So our, you know, estrogen is our dominant hormone when we are menstruating and in the lead up to our menstrual cycle.

And, you know, really we produce a relatively small amount of progesterone and, you know, when we’re under stress, our body shuts down progesterone so that, you know, if you kind of think about it, that just having that low progesterone and that higher level of estrogen, the ratios can go out so quickly and so easily.

So, you know, when it comes to stress, estrogen is our dominant hormone because, you know, in the lead up to, yeah, like I said, you know, when we’re under stress, our body prioritizes the stress hormone’s not progesterone. So this is because, [00:05:00] you know, it’s kind of like a natural built in thing. Our body doesn’t want us to go off and conceive a baby if we’re under stress, you know, it could be that there’s a famine and you know, now is not the time to have a baby. It could be that, you know, we are being chased by a tiger. You know, we don’t wanna like get pregnant right now, so this is where our body goes and shuts down our happy calming hormone, which is progesterone.

So, yeah, so estrogen and cortisol, both signal our bodies to store fat. You know, when we’ve lost that happy hormone, calming, presence of progesterone, you know, estrogen and stress hormones take over, you know, they signal our body to store fat and if we sort of think of progesterone, like I said, our happy calming hormone.

If we have got a naturally low level of progesterone, or, you know, we are going through [00:06:00] perimenopause, our body is naturally producing lower levels of progesterone. This wreaks havoc on our emotional physical wellbeing. So we can go from feeling happy, healthy, balanced, energized. We can have great clarity of mind, you know, even calm mood and, you know, to having like the total opposite.

So if you are feeling brain foggy, if you are feeling utterly exhausted, puffy, heavy, bloated, full of fluids, that feeling that your clothes are getting tighter by the minute. And, you know, this can be just for the first part of your cycle. So when we sort of look at, and you might have heard the term estrogen dominance, so this gets thrown around, it’s not a medically diagnosed condition.

But certainly it’s something that we can all relate to. So what we’re talking about is higher levels of estrogen in relation to progesterone. So this estrogen dominance [00:07:00] for, you know, want of a better terminology. It’s the main biochemical basis of PMS because we are not producing enough progesterone, which is all of our beautiful, calm, fat burning qualities.

So, you know, the symptoms that you’ve got too much estrogen going on and, you know, include low progesterone, PMS symptoms, premenstrual migraines, irregular, or heavy, excessively heavy periods, anxiety, nervousness, and that feeling that, you know, you can’t take in a full breath, you know, so you’ve got that shallow breathing happening and then, you know, these are all signs and symptoms of low progesterone.

So estrogen dominance, irregular periods, excessive vaginal bleeding, bloating, fluid retention, breast swelling and tenderness, decreased libido, irritability, depression, weight gain [00:08:00] around the tummy and hips, cold hands, feet, headaches. These are all common hormonal imbalances in menstruating women. I always feel like I’m bringing a bit of doom and gloom to the podcast when I talk about this stuff, but, you know, just be mindful too, not all of these symptoms happen for all women and none of them last forever either, but it’s good to know, you know, what’s happening. So if you are sort of nodding yes to any of these, know that you’re not alone, know that it’s your, you know, there’s something hormonal going on and then, you know, you’re able to do something about it for sure.

So, so, have faith, it, it does get better, but you know, what I want you to do is just, or what I wanna do is just highlight, some of these hormonal imbalances. So it goes to show that, you know, there’s a lot happening, through perimenopause and, you know, like, I’m starting to, you know, get more and more clients sort of mention that they they’re seeing it in their kids as well.

So if you’ve got, teenage daughters or, you know, in their [00:09:00] twenties and you know, you’re starting to recognize these hormonal imbalances in them as well, or potentially you’ve had this, your whole kind of menstruating life as well. So, so what we need to do first up is figure out, like, do we have the symptoms of estrogen dominance?

Is it because we’ve got too much estrogen? Or is it because we have significantly low progesterone or is it both? So, you know, if we had low progesterone, we may actually in fact have the right levels, the optimal levels of estrogen, but because your progesterone is low, which is really common mind you, in perimenopause, that’s one of the first sort of physiological things that happens is our natural production of progesterone drops. So you know, so we’ve got low progesterone and then we’ve got excess estrogen, you know, floating around. So when [00:10:00] we’ve got this excess estrogen, we’ve gotta think about where it’s coming from. So it can come from environmental exposures.

So this is where, you know, it can come from. And, you know, we see it in young girls. So young girls, particularly if they’ve got, excess body fat, because remember our fat cells produce estrogen. This can happen not just in young girls, it can also happen in boys, women, men, you know, our fat cells do produce estrogen and this increased estrogen in our environment, which comes from things like pesticides, herbicides, plastics. So, you know, we never wanna put any or heat, any kind of plastic. You know, don’t put it in the dishwasher, don’t put it in the microwave because it appears that it’s affecting our endocrine systems. So it’s good to be sort of aware of those environmental, sort of estrogenic driving chemicals that we’re naturally [00:11:00] exposed to.

And also our liver plays a huge role in balancing our hormones. So when we’re talking about all this excess estrogen, so it can come from environmental, you know, exposure, it can come from because we’ve just naturally got low progesterone or it can be our body recycling estrogen. So what happens here? So our liver is responsible for breaking down any excess hormones, any toxins, chemicals, alcohol, caffeine, you know, all the things and getting rid of it now because our body makes estrogen, it’s not a priority for our liver. If our liver is already a bit busy doing other stuff. So if our liver’s a bit sluggish, if it’s a bit overworked, it’s going to prioritize what it needs to and detox what it needs to because yeah, for our body, as far as it’s concerned, estrogen, isn’t a high priority. So if you think of a vacuum cleaner filter, and I’ve used this analogy, you know, a [00:12:00] hundred times before.

So you may have heard it already. It’s when you know, we pull out our vacuum cleaner, can’t be bothered emptying the filter. It’s kind of full, but we do the vacuuming and it picks up the bits anyway. So then we go, go all right, then off we go, toddle off to the bin, empty out our vacuum cleaner filter, pop it back in, go back and do the vacuuming.

And we’re like, whoa, man, this makes a difference. Now our liver is the same. We give it some love. We make sure it’s working more effectively. And then all of a sudden it’s filtering things a bit better and I’ll get onto how we do that in a second. So when our liver decides to recirculate this estrogen around, it changes the form that it’s in.

So, you know, we’ve got lots of different forms of like four kind of key forms of estrogen in our body. And one of these particular forms that it gets turned into when it starts getting recycled in our body. So if you think we’ve got this month’s estrogen, then [00:13:00] that recycles, we’ve got last month’s estrogen.

And then, you know, if we’ve got estrogen from previous months, you know, even if you know your body’s great at producing progesterone really well. If we, you know, have all this excess estrogen, we can end up with too much and, you know, regardless, and our body just can’t keep up with it regardless of where it came from.

So internally, externally, what we need to do is make sure that we are able to detoxify and excrete efficiently our excess estrogen, once it’s done its job in the body. 

Okay. So what can we do about high estrogen? So while it is really common, it’s actually not normal to have high estrogen. All right. We are not supposed to get PMS.

Your periods are just supposed to turn up with no fluid retention, no bloating, no cramping, no food cravings, no mood swings. And it just doesn’t, it just doesn’t turn up, you know? So think of it as your body asking you to do something differently. If you are having, you know, any of these kind of signs and [00:15:00] symptoms, what’s your body asking you to do.

What’s it asking you to eat? What’s it asking you to drink? Is it asking you to move more, think, be still, reduce your stress. So when we think of too much estrogen, it can also play a role in hormone driven cancers. So we wanna be mindful of, of this. We can’t just sort of dismiss it. So it’s that new recycled form of estrogen that, you know, there’s direct links to show that that excess estrogen has a link to, you know, breast cancers, ovarian cancers, cervical cancers.

So this is where, you know, we really want to, to make sure that we, we, you know, take this kind of seriously. So when we feel stressed. We know that a, you know, a big part of having too much estrogen is because our body’s prioritizing our stress hormones versus making our calming [00:16:00] hormone progesterone.

So this doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to get rid of everything. You know, we need to turn our life upside down, but if we just did one thing, if we took better care of our liver, we know that this, you know, high estrogen, this estrogen dominance would be less of a problem. So looking after our liver is one of the best steps that we can take to, you know, make sure we are clearing that excess estrogen.

This in turn keeps our breast tissue a lot healthier. You know, things like fibroids, polyps, you know, like any kind of hormonal driven anomalies can be helped by supporting our liver. So we know that alcohol consumption is linked with breast cancer. So we really do need to have a think about how much we’re drinking.

And, you know, the research is also suggesting that if you have a family history of breast cancer, there actually is no safe level of alcohol consumption. And this is a [00:17:00] big thing because what I want you to think about is, you know, Alcohol doesn’t have to be something that we do on the daily. It can, you know, you can still save it for special occasions.

You can cut it down for, you know, one or two nights a week. And my rule of thumb with clients and, you know, something, I also try and live by cause as you know, you know, I love my glass of wine, but I do try and have just one or two drinks one or two days a week. So, and, you know, then moving on to caffeine, like, are you having a double shot latte?

Could it be a single shot? Can we go from two or three coffees a day and cut it back to one coffee a day. So we don’t have to get rid of, you know, all of these things completely. But what I want you to do is think about reducing the load on your liver. So are you doing better than before? If we’re doing better than before.

That’s awesome. Okay. And what I encourage you to do is try it for a couple of [00:18:00] cycles to see how you feel, you know, do you have less bloating? Do you have less fluid? What are we eating? Are we eating lots of leafy green vegetables? Are we eating enough vegetables? Are we eating enough fiber? Are we eating enough food?

You know, there’s so many women I speak to, you know, just not eating enough food ladies. It’s okay to eat. Okay. So we wanna think of this as a big, you know, prioritize what’s on your plate, make sure you’re getting your veggies in. Make sure you’re getting that, that fiber in. Now also exercise, move your body. You know, everything works better when we are moving. Okay. If you think about everything moves when we move all right. So if we wanna move out that excess estrogen, we need to move our bodies, you know, and that doesn’t necessarily mean we need to go and join boot camp or CrossFit.

It just means moving in a way that feels good for you, because it feels good for you you’ll keep going. All right. So now we’ll sort of like move on [00:19:00] to the ladies who may have symptoms of low estrogen. So generally, you know, the ladies who’ve been through menopause, or are well on their way to menopause will know the signs and symptoms of low estrogen.

So, this is where we are talking about hot flashes. We’re talking night sweats, where, you know, you might notice that your periods become, you know, lighter, less regular. We know that, you know, and this is how we can see that your body is naturally producing less estrogen. So things like it also has a knock on effect to, you know, emotionally, anxiety that we’ve never had before can kick in, that brain fog, feeling overwhelmed, insomnia, it can be a big one for a lot of women and dryness. So dryness of your, if you think of estrogen as a lubricant, so, you know, dry skin, dry hair, some lady’s hair might be falling out. [00:20:00] Brittle nails, dry eyes, vaginas, painful sex. You know, this is all a sign that your estrogen levels have dropped, and we wanna make sure that you are supporting that.

So this is where it’s important to have a look at, you know, where you’re at. So 30% of women will sail through menopause and barely bat an eyelid, you know, not even have a symptom. Maybe one or two here and there. They’re gonna be fine. All right. Now, if you, if that’s you, that’s awesome. And do you really need HRT?

No, I, I don’t think, I don’t believe you do because you know, you’re not showing any signs or symptoms. Now 30% of women will have debilitating symptoms. It’s gonna affect their everyday day to day life. Okay. So hundred percent, you know, it’s okay to put your hand up and ask for help. And then the rest of everyone is going to lie in that [00:21:00] middle area.

Okay. So this is where, you know, you’ve gotta choose what’s right for you. And this is where I wanna help you know what your options are, know where you kind of fit in. So, you know, you can make the choice, but either way, wherever you fit, there is so much that we can do with, making sure that you are eating a, a balanced diet and the right , you know, balance of nutrients to support your blood sugar, to support your thyroid, to support, you know, your energy levels, and also exercise, daily exercise, manage your stress like getting on top of the way you respond to stress is huge. Now, if you are, in that sort of zone where you, you know, you’re thinking about HRT or as it’s now known MHT, which is menopause hormone therapy, we need to sort of have a look at, you know, where you are at. Okay. Because if you are taking the wrong type, there’s potential for you to make things [00:22:00] worse. All right. Now, if you, yeah, especially if you are experiencing debilitating everyday symptoms, you know, you need to know you’re making your, that you’re getting the right type. So if you are in perimenopause and you have high levels of estrogen or that ratio of estrogen to progesterone is out and you are put on estrogen therapy.

It’s giving you more estrogen. And the thing is, some doctors understand this beautifully. They understand perimenopause. They understand that high estrogen, low progesterone, and they understand that you need a progesterone support. You’ve already got plenty of estrogen. You don’t need any more of that, but a lot of doctors don’t get a lot of training in this area.

And the thing is bio identical or body identical hormones are fairly new in the medical world. [00:23:00] Okay. So a lot, you know, a lot of doctors don’t have the training. They don’t have the, you know, this in their toolkit. So what’s traditionally been available to, for, you know, doctors to prescribe has been estrogen only, and it’s in a synthetic form of estrogen, generally it’s in a higher dose, which means that, you know, it’s giving you more estrogen than you actually need.

So, what we wanna do is make sure that we’ve got, an estrogen in the form of a body identical form. So generally this is in a patch or a gel or a cream, so it’s absorbed through your skin. So this has the benefits of giving you a much lower dose of what estrogen therapy used to be. So, you know, a lot less risk.

So, like I said, if you are in perimenopause and you are given, you’ve already got high estrogen based on the symptoms I’ve talked about today, and you are given an estrogen [00:24:00] therapy, run, run a mile because that’s not the right form for you. You could also do with some progesterone support, which is going to help that ratio between progesterone and estrogen.

Now, even if you have been through menopause, you know, to go on a low dose progesterone. And generally again, it’s a body identical progesterone in the form of micro ionized progesterone. So this is a really low dose of natural, you know, estrogen, because if you are on the pill, the mirena, you know, any kind of, these are all progestins, which are synthetic progesterone.

So they’re not gonna be as beneficial for you as a micro ionized progesterone. So I hope that makes sense. It’s a bit of a mouthful I have to say. All right. So there’s all sorts of research coming out on who MHT or HRT is safe [00:25:00] for. And they’re even sort of looking at, you know, is a low dose HRT estrogen base, is it safe for women who’ve had breast cancer or a history of breast cancer. So, you know, there’s a lot of studies coming up to say that a low dose of estrogen can be helpful. Now this is certainly a very individual choice and something that you need to talk about with your doctor to find out, you know, what is right for you.

Now, if you are having symptoms, like I said, it’s certainly worth you know, let’s talk about it in the group. Let’s jump on a hormone help call and, you know, chat to me or chat to one of my team about it, because we’re happy to have the conversation with you and help steer you in the right direction. But please know that, you know, no matter what there’s is no magic pill.

Okay. Yes. Things can dramatically reduce or improve your symptoms. But you know, what you really do have control over is, you know, how you nourish your body, [00:26:00] how you move your body, how you manage your stress. These are, you know, basic foundations that will help you every time. Okay, ladies, I hope that was helpful.

And I will see you in the next episode.