Estrogen dominance is a destructive health condition where estrogen levels are too high in relation to other reproductive hormones. Since it’s rarely acknowledged in the conventional medical community, you’ll likely need to take your health into your own hands to diagnose and overcome it. Below is a list of five causes of estrogen dominance that you need to be aware of, which are often overlooked in estrogen dominance literature.
Hidden Cause #1: Excess Body Fat
– Fat cells store large amounts of aromatase, an enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of testosterone into estrogen.1
– The more fat cells you have, the more estrogen that is created.
– High estrogen cues your body to make more fat cells.
– High estrogen levels causes an increase in the production of Sex Hormone Binding Globulin, which makes testosterone unable to do its job.
– The decrease of free testosterone reduces muscle mass, increases fatigue, and lowers stamina and energy (interfering with exercise efforts).
-These factors combined, increase body fat accumulation, cause estrogen levels to rise even further, and worsen estrogen dominance symptoms – creating a vicious cycle that is hard to break.
Hidden Cause #2: Alcohol
– There is a well-established link between alcohol consumption and high levels of estradiol and estrone – two estrogen metabolites associated with estrogen dominance and hormonal cancers.2
– The association occurs because your liver is responsible for clearing toxins from the bloodstream (including alcohol and estrogen). When you drink alcohol, your liver becomes preoccupied with eliminating the alcohol toxins, which reduces its ability to clear estrogens from your system.
Hidden Cause #3: Caffeine
– Caffeine consumption stimulates the adrenal glands causing them to release stress hormones to prepare the body to fight.
– Regular consumption can exhaust your adrenal glands, and cause them to stop releasing adequate levels of essential hormones.
– Insulin is one of those hormones, and the impaired insulin causes blood sugar fluctuations, which in-turn, leads to chronic inflammation.
– Inflammation increases oxidative stress and can result in a reduction of testosterone and progesterone; both of which are required in order to keep estrogen level in-check.
Hidden Cause #4: Birth Control
– Birth control pills flood your body with synthetic estrogen, that is both foreign and unnatural.
– Your body metabolizes these synthetic estrogens into harmful versions of estrogen which increase estrogen dominance symptoms.
– Birth control pills increase the production of SHBG, which lowers testosterone levels, and makes estrogen dominance even worse.
– Birth control pills also suppress the production of natural progesterone, and progesterone is needed in order to keep estrogen levels in-check.
Hidden Cause #5: Animal Products
– Animals produce large amounts of estrogen by their very nature, and they are particularly high in estradiol which is chemically identical to the estradiol found in the human body.
– Animal products are a major contributor to estrogen dominance; and if you consume them, you are exposed to between 10,000 and 1,000,000 times more estrogen molecules than you otherwise would be.
– Conventionally raised animals are even more harmful because they’re often injected with synthetic estrogens to fatten them-up and make them grow quicker.
– The fats found naturally in animal products also increases the conversion of the healthful types of estrogen (such as estrone) into the more harmful forms of estrogen that are responsible for estrogen dominance and hormonal cancers.
~Written by Nick Delgado, PhD, CHT
