Are your Oestrogen levels making it hard to lose weight?

It’s pretty simple. When there is excess (bad) oestrogen in comparison to your very own progesterone, the result is Oestrogen Dominance.

Keep in mind women of different age groups will experience a range of different symptoms.

Oestrogen dominance with an even lower amount of progesterone, of course comes with a list of personalised symptoms, in which some women may be more familiar with than others:

• Weight gain

• Painful periods

• Flushes

• Fibroids

• Endometriosis

• PCOS

• Infertility

• Breast tenderness

• PMS

• Decrease in bone density

• Anxiety

• Abnormal pap smears

• more serious ones like breast and cervical cancer.

• Males – Prostate problems/low libido/belly weight

Lets make this simple, excess estrogen increases body fat. Fat tissue produces and stores more estrogen. The oestrogen in turn, causes the body to increase fat tissue, and on the cycle goes. 

Could my levels of oestrogen be making me fat?

Oestrogen dominance is not caused by menopause or your hormones alone. In our Western society, we are continually exposed to xenoestrogens (pronounced: Zee-no-estrogen), foreign oestrogens which pass into our environment through pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, plastics, fuels, car exhausts, dry cleaning chemicals, industrial waste, meat from animals which have been fattened with oestrogenic drugs, and countless other household and personal products which many of us use every day. 

But…i’m going through menopause, i have no oestrogen – right?

It’s more about the type of oestrogen we are exposed to, an easy way to categorise oestrogen is into two groups; “negative” and “positive”- also know as E1, E2 and E3 when using salivary hormone profile tests.

Oestrogen itself is never the problem, it’s the type of oestrogen you have and even through menopause we still have oestrogen, just limited amounts. 

How can progesterone help?

Progesterone reduces the conversion of a positive oestrogen to its most dangerous metabolite – negative oestrogen. Research has shown that women who are low in progesterone are at greater risk of breast cancer (over five times as likely to get it).

Not only does progesterone help make you feel calmer, but has many positive effects on the body:

• Protects against breast & endometrial cancer

• Improves adrenal function ( adrenal fatigue)

• Improves mood

• Improves libido

• Decreases fluid retention. Fluid retention is caused by either too much oestrogen or too little progesterone.

• Increases fertility ( assists with implantation of egg) 

What’s next for me?

If you can relate to some of the above symptoms and find yourself apart of the majority of oestrogen dominant women, don’t be alarmed.

With a high percentage of women taking the oral contraceptive pill or hormone replacement therapy (known to be filled with lots of synthetic oestrogens), we have to be equipped with the right knowledge of what to do next -

Oestrogen metabolism is all about keeping our liver and digestive tract including out gut health functioning optimally and our oestrogen exposure to a minimum, so our bodies can conjugate, eliminate and detoxify all our hormones, including the negative ones. A sluggish liver or digestive tract means the body has the ability to recycle any hormones that haven’t been detoxified and eliminated into what you now know as a “negative” oestrogen.

Progesterone is your key to happiness

Peri menopausal women who have been deficient in progesterone for a long time may find that initially on starting progesterone supporting herbs or supplements may experience some water retention, headaches and swollen breasts -these are symptoms of oestrogen dominance and will slowly decrease as we support progesterone production and eliminate any excess oestrogen.

Our practitioners use Healthscope Pathology to investigate further with Salivary hormones profile testing. Uncover your hormones with Salivary hormone testing and your individual symptoms, allow your practitioner to treat you accordingly based on your results to achieve the best possible outcome