Is Estrogen imbalance responsible for your symptoms?

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 including 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
• Adenomyosis
• Insomnia
• Depression/ anxiety or irritability 
• Fatigue
• Low labido
• Infertility 

The list goes on…

What we ideally want to happen in the body is: (1) we make estrogen (2) our bodies use it and (3) we effectively excrete it.

Often though estrogen is not excreted properly through the detoxification pathways. It hangs around the body and is recycled and used again, and this is what can cause all sorts of unwanted symptoms.

What are your detoxification pathways? Your liver, gallbladder, kidneys, lymph, gut, bowel intestines, lungs and skin. When these organs aren’t functioning properly you can start to feel the undesirable effects.

Its not hard for any one of these detoxification pathways to become sluggish or not be effective 100% of the time. And there are so many things that can affect how we detox:

• Everyday chemicals
• Lack of exercise
• High sugar diets,
• High processed food diets
• Low vegetable intake
• Low fibre intake
• Alcohol
• The pill
• Poor sleep
• Smoking
• Stress

So what helps with correct estrogen metabolism? Here are 7 ways to enhance your estrogen detoxification naturally:

• Eat foods from the apiaceae vegetables family – carrots (raw, organic skin on), cummin, 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.