Oestrogen Dominance: how and why it happens
What is oestrogen dominance?
After many years of reading books, attending courses and listening to experts on the subject of menstrual and fertility health, one common theme keeps coming up: oestrogen dominance.
Oestrogen dominance is where there is an excess of oestrogen in the body in relation to the other significant hormone of the menstrual cycle — progesterone. The ‘dominance’ can be a result of too much oestrogen, or, too little progesterone. So, in essence, it’s about the oestrogen to progesterone ratio being a bit out of whack.
(For the purpose of this article, I will speak to the scenario of too much oestrogen as opposed to too little progesterone because progesterone is released as a result of ovulation and would therefore require a whole conversation around ovulation health, which I can address again in future.)
Oestrogen dominance is one of the causes or contributing factors to many menstrual symptoms or conditions including: fibroids, endometriosis, period pain, PMS, PMDD, PCOS and acne. And so, it is therefore important to have some understanding of what it is, what we can do about it and how we can avoid making it worse.
How it happens?
Oestrogen dominance as a result of excess oestrogen happens for two reasons. Firstly, it happens because our lifestyle means that we are ingesting chemicals that act as ‘oestrogen mimickers’ in our bodies and elevate the levels of oestrogen in our system.
Or/and, it happens because every month our liver needs to detoxify oestrogen from the body for the healthy functioning of the menstrual cycle. Then for whatever reason, the liver is not able to fully do its job properly resulting in excess ‘waste’ oestrogen.
In the first instance, these oestrogen mimickers come from diet, cosmetics, household cleaning products and even gases in the environment. In our diets, they can be present in highly processed foods. In our cosmetics, they are the ‘parabens’ in many products such as lotions, soaps, deodorants, toothpaste, even nail varnish.
Think: everything you put on your skin will go into your body.
Secondly, when our liver is overworked, clogged up or tired, then it cannot do its job of clearing the oestrogen from our bodies. An overworked liver can be a result of many factors including: too many stress hormones, poor diet, poor sleep, a low-carb high-protein diet, too much alcohol or medication, not enough cardio exercise and more.
Why it happens?
After much reading and reflecting on the topic of oestrogen dominance, I have come to the opinion that oestrogen dominance is actually a social problem as well as a health problem.
What do I mean by that? I believe that it happens to so many women (myself included) as a result of the way we live and move through the society we have. We happen to live in a very fast-paced society today that is addicted to productivity, achievement and results. Going slow, pausing and taking time off are seen as counter-productive, as a way to recover from burnout, or because we need to get better from illness.
Moving slow and resting are not seen as something we can do to contribute to productivity and creativity. Therefore, we only really move slow or pause when we have to. Because that is the society we happen to live in, it therefore means there is a lot of pressure to rely on convenience foods for energy, we don’t prioritise self-care and we use harmful products because they are convenient, or do a better job to hide bags under the eyes for example.
In short, we are often in survival mode both from an endocrine system and a nervous system point of view.
In my work I like to think VERY holistically. I look at biology, neuroscience, psychology, systems, relationships, communication, creativity and spirituality. After much thought on the subject, my own contribution and reflection to the topic of oestrogen dominance as a social issue is this:
Oestrogen dominance is an evolutionary survival response in the body to an over-worked culture or environment.
It’s so easy and tempting for women to read the self-help books and discover they may have oestrogen dominance and then see it as a ‘problem’ they caused contributing to poor health and the manifestation of menstrual difficulty. Our inner critic can run riot with this. While it can be true that oestrogen dominance is a problem, I believe that the body is always on our side. The nervous system is always on our side and from a big-picture perspective, the human body is evolving and adapting to the environment for survival and safety purposes.
It’s not our fault. We did nothing wrong. Rather, the body is trying to keep up with life and oestrogen dominance is one way of doing that in order to survive.
When we think about the ‘roles’ of the reproductive hormones from an energetic point of view, the role of oestrogen is the ‘get stuff done’ hormone. It’s the yang, or, masculine hormone that is required to take action, create systems and structures, and to lift our energy and mood after menstruation.
While progesterone is the feminine, yin, ‘be present with what is’ hormone, the calming and soothing hormone to support potential pregnancy (let’s even look at linguistics: pro-gesterone, meaning to support gestation).
Therefore, you can see why we perhaps have on a somatic level, an over-reliance on the ‘role’ of oestrogen which has caused an evolutionary response resulting in ‘oestrogen dominance.’
What can we do about it?
Now that we’ve looked at what oestrogen dominance is, why it happens and that actually we’re not to blame, what can we do about it?
It can be a tall order to take matters into our own hands to reverse oestrogen dominance so, I would always recommend working with a coach (like me), a nutritionist, a functional doctor or even a psychotherapist depending on who you feel drawn to and what area in your life you feel is a big contributing factor.
Changes to lifestyle are not easily implemented because they require a change in relationship with ourselves and our behaviours, which is why I always suggest to seek support with that.
In short, we need to first take responsibility for it and then take small, manageable and realistic steps to reduce excess oestrogen. Here are a few ideas:
Replace some cosmetics with paraben-free equivalents. I have an Instagram story here about my favourite paraben-free cosmetics.
Be mindful not to use too many harmful household cleaning products or replace them with ones that contain fewer harmful ingredients. I like this one.
Eat the rainbow with lots of fruit and veg.
Do a liver detox. I like Alisa Vittis’s detox and Patrick Holford’s.
Reduce alcohol.
Take herbs like Milk Thistle to support the liver. I suggest sourcing them from a herbalist or homeopath rather than the pharmacy brands as those ones contain a lot of alcohol as a preservative required by industry standards.
Rest during menstruation and take downtime unapologetically when you can.
Practice the art of Menstrual Cycle Awareness: this is part of what I teach and coach so you can work with me 1:1, attend a workshop or take part in my next online course.
Want to learn more? I’m now offering online courses here and if you fancy some 1:1 coaching you can find out more about that here. Contact me here for talks or workshops.
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