Integrative Health Blog
Estrogen Dominance Doesn't Mean What You Think
Posted by niha staffon Mon, Mar 05, 2012
Many women have heard the term ‘estrogen dominance’ (ED) but are not sure of the meaning. Estrogen dominance is a term every woman should be familiar with. PMS, infertility, post menopausal symptoms, and breast cancer often relate to ED. Estrogen Dominance doesn’t mean that a woman is high in estrogen. Rather, it means that the estrogenic effects are stronger than the (counterbalancing) progesterone effects. If we think of the analogy of the body as a car, the estrogen would be the accelerator (stimulant) and the progesterone (calmer) would be the brakes. We could have too little ‘accelerator’ function and still be crashing into cars because our ‘brakes’ are even weaker.
DEFINITION:Estrogen and Progesteronework with each other either as opposites or as complementing hormones.Estrogenis a stimulant (anxiety, insomnia, cellular proliferation at breast, uterus etc) andProgesteroneis a calmer (patience, sleep, inhibits cell division). They also complement each other (Estrogen decreases bone loss while Progesterone promotes bone growth).
CONCEPT:Estrogen dominanceis a condition in which a woman can have deficient, normal, or excessive levels of estrogen, but has too little progesterone to balance the estrogen level. It means apredominanceof estrogenic effect as opposed to progesterone effects. It is the balance of the two that matters more than how much we have. A woman can have a low estrogen but a lower progesterone (re. effects) and be estrogen dominant.
Common symptoms of Estrogen Dominance :Anxiety, irritability, anger, agitation, Cramps, heavy bleeding, prolonged bleeding, clots, Water retention/weight gain, bloating, breast tenderness, lumpiness, enlargement, fibrocystic breasts, mood swings, depression, weepiness, headaches/migraines, food cravings, sweet cravings, chocolate cravings, Muscle pains, joint pains, back pain, acne, foggy thinking, memory difficulties, fat gain, especially in abdomen, hips and thighs, cold hands and feet (i.e., stressed adrenals), blood sugar instability, Insulin Resistance/syndrome X, irregular periods, decrease sex drive, Gall bladder problems, infertility, insomnia, osteoporosis, endometriosis, polycystic ovaries, uterine fibroids, cervical dysplasia (abnormal cells on PAP smear), allergic tendencies, autoimmune disorder, breast-uterine-cervical-ovarian cancer.
What causes Estrogen Dominance?In a word, STRESS. Lets define stress. Stress is anything that causes us to adapt or threatens our survival. The source can be emotional (e.g., difficult people or circumstances), physical (injury/pain, noise), chemical (pesticides, heavy metals etc.), hormonal (non-bioidentical hormones, excessive thyroid replacement etc) or biological (e.g. bacterial, viral, parasitic).
How to fixEstrogen dominance:Remove or reduce the stressor as you can. Avoid re-exposure. Support adequate progesterone levels (natural/bio-identical only!). In my next blog, I’ll give information on how to sensibly balance the progesterone. A good book that teaches how to balance female hormones isNatural Hormone Balance for Womenby Uzzi Reiss. If you’re not sure of what you’re doing, a safe way (only if you’re not pregnant) is to use Chaste Tree or Vitex (same thing) 1-2 tabs daily, 1stthing in the morning.
Appearance of Estrogen Dominance on thermogram:
Thermographic (infra-red) image of the back. The colorized shows regional heat patterns best (red is hot and blue is cold). Thus the right shoulder has more red because there is inflammation there. The grey scale shows vascular patterns best. The leopard spot pattern is one of several patterns suggestive of estrogen dominance. On day 2 of hormonal balancing we already see a disappearance of the estrogenic leopard spot appearance, thus we can see the estrogen.