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What is Estrogen Dominance?

In this video Dr. Stengler talks about a very common problem among women today: Estrogen Dominance.

Hi I'm Dr. Mark Stengler and today I talk to the women out there about estrogen dominance, a very common problem we see with our patients very common in the American population.

And so if you have conditions such as autoimmunity, cervical dysplasia, breast tenderness or fibrous cystic breast disease, maybe had a history of breast cancer, endometrial thickening, or endometrial cancer, endometriosis, infertility, osteoporosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, PMS, low thyroid uterine fibroids, you may have what's called estrogen dominance.

This basically is where estrogen is dominant your body. It's too high relative to the progesterone your body produces. So normally, in women, they produce estrogen and progesterone. And if you're estrogen level is too high relative to your progesterone, you have what's called estrogen dominance.

Now men can get estrogen dominance too and I'll be carrying that in a different video. But it's much more common in women. And so what are the causes?

Well, you can have environmental factors, hormone disrupting chemicals, from the environment. They're also known as endocrine disrupting chemicals. And examples are things like pesticides, fungicides, insecticides, plastics, plasticizers, industrial solvents, heavy metals, and things even like pharmaceutical birth control pills. These things all contribute to estrogen dominance in the body, in the female body.

So you need to be aware of that. Also if you have poor liver detoxification, so your liver's an organ which detoxifies as many compounds, but including hormones. So if your liver is not working optimally, due to bad diet, due to stress, due to medications you've used, maybe recreational drugs, maybe you've have a fatty liver, all these types of things can lead to poor metabolism of estrogen, where it doesn't get broken down and excreted out of your body, normally through your stool through your urine.

And that can lead to problems with estrogen dominance. And that's why holistic doctors, like myself will often get more high fiber foods in a diet, we'll get fresh green juices in the diet, foods with foods which eliminate estrogen, or help with liver detoxification, things like artichoke, chicory root, for example, are very good examples of a healthy liver foods.

If you have poor bowel elimination, if you tend towards constipation, that's a problem, because a lot of estrogen does get eliminated through the stool. So if you have constipation, estrogen actually recirculate from the Column back into the bloodstream, and we don't want that. We don't want excess estrogen stimulation of your cell receptors in your breast, or your uterus and other areas of the body, creating imbalance.

'Cause again, remember in the body estrogen tends to promote growth, in a good way. It has also other benefits. But progesterone keeps those growth effects in check. So we don't want the estrogen too high, relative to their progesterone.

If you're overweight, that's a problem because fat cells contain an enzyme, which manufacture more estrogen. So it's important lose weight if you're overweight. And weight loss has been shown to reduce circulating estrogens.

Also if you have prediabetes, or Type 2 diabetes, we know the insulin resistance tends to heighten the effects of estrogen in your cells. So we need to get a better handle on that.

Be careful with alcohol. Alcohol increases estrogen levels in the body, in men as well. And with increased age, and changes in metabolism, when women are more prone to estrogen dominance. Especially women who have applied cystic ovary syndrome, women that have PMS, women that are premenopausal, 'cause normally the first hormone to drop before the estrogen is the progesterone.

So again you get that relative high estrogen compared to progesterone. And so that's the problem with estrogen dominance, either you produce too much estrogen and progesterone is normal, or you don't produce enough progesterone, so your estrogen is relatively to high, or you're estrogen's too high, and your progesterone is too low. So there's different scenarios that can occur.

And there's testing your integrative doctor can do. We do it. with the doctors at our clinic, the Stengler Center for Integrative medicine. So you can identify the problem. But if you have the conditions I talked about, there's a good chance you do have problems with estrogen dominance, and these nutritional and holistic approaches can be very helpful, and we go into a lot more detail on this with patients, and you can find more information also on my websites, at MarkStengler.com or AmericasNaturalDoctor.com.