Short (~8–10 minute) podcast snippet in which Dr. Aaron Hartman explains how gut health influences hormone regulation—particularly estrogen detoxification via the liver, bile, and gut—and describes common clinical signs of estrogen dominance (fibrocystic breasts, heavy/painful periods, acne, PCOS). He gives practical recommendations: ensure daily bowel movements, increase specific fibers (notably flax), eat colorful polyphenol-rich fruits and vegetables and cruciferous vegetables, use probiotics and target beta-glucuronidase when indicated, and favor healthy phospholipid fats (phosphatidylcholine, extra-virgin olive oil) while avoiding seed/hydrogenated oils.
Chapters
What is the biggest thing that's messing up your hormones? It's something you probably haven't thought about, but it's super common, especially women in their mid-30s to early 40s, that's affecting them. And this is your gut health. So why does your gut health affect your hormones? Well, within the hormonal hierarchy, which is a part of hormone optimization therapy, we have to focus on certain things that are super important for your hormones and one of those is your gut health. Why? The reason is because your hormones, primarily estrogen, are detoxified through your liver and, and so to your bile and your gut. Welcome back. Once again, we're doing these short little once a week, 8 to 10 minute snippets to answer questions you all have asked. This is based on questions people pose to us, social media and the clinic, through our different newsletters, et cetera. So we're answering those questions that we can hit about a lot. And today we're going to talk about the association. What, what is the biggest thing that's messing up your hormones? It's something you probably haven't thought about, but it's super common, especially women in their mid-30s to early 40s, that's affecting them. And this is your gut health. So why does your gut health affect your hormones? Well, they're within the hormonal hierarchy, which is a part of hormone optimization therapy. We have to focus on certain things that are super important for your hormones and one of those is your gut health. Why? The reason is because your hormones, primarily estrogen, are detoxified through your liver and so to your tub and your gut. So if your gut health is off, it can actually affect hormone function. So, so how does this, what does this look like? Well, there's a thing called estrogen dominance where you tend to have extra amounts of estrogen that this can look like. Things like fibrocytic breasts, heavy periods, painful periods, excessive bleeding. These are very common things that actually have to do with the inability to detoxify hormones from, for your body and they can build up in your, in your system. So what is sort of some common health issues I'll see with young ladies and middle aged and even older women related to some of these hormone and their gut? Acne is a big one. You know, it's really interesting how acne is actually in many women an expression of excessive amounts of testosterone or testosterone overage. And some of the treatments for this are things like birth control pills which lower your testosterone levels. Rhinolactone, which is a medication used to treat acne in women lowers your testosterone. If you have an excessive amount of acne, it's associated actually with metabolic syndrome derangements in your GI tract. This also is a part of pcos, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a hormonal dysregia regulation where young ladies will have excessive amounts of testosterone with insulin resistance that affects your cycles and your gut bacteria and your GI tract are a big part of your metabolic function. So acne is something we'll see. What are some other things that young ladies will see and even middle age will see related to excessive amounts of estrogen in their GI tract? Fibrocystic breast. So this is an issue where you get lumpy, lumpy breasts, fibroids, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which I mentioned before. These are all expressions of your gut microbiome or the bacteria in your gut affecting your sex hormones. A lot of the traditional ways we deal with this are just giving by, by giving birth control pills or different hormone blockers which have a lot of untoward and negative downstream effects. So this is a big thing that can be affecting your hormones, your gut. So what are, what are, what are three simple things you can do that can have a massive impact on hormone regulation? Well, the first thing is to have a daily bowel movement. If you have slow bowel movements, you can actually lead to strep staph overgrowth related with sibo, which is another thing. And you can also get yeast over overgrowth. And yeast overgrowth is especially associated with estrogen dominance. You know, sometimes this will show up with vaginal irritation, discharge, itchiness, ear inflammation. Sometimes it'll come, it'll show up as recurrent quote unquote vaginal infections or UTIs, that the urine dips revolves negative and nothing's found. This is related to irregular to overgrowth of bacteria, particularly strep and staph and or yeast in the GI tract, which ultimately colonizes the lower the urogenital area in females. And so just having a daily bowel movement can have a massive impact on vaginal symptoms, vaginal infections, hormone related things.
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So what are some major things you can do to have a daily bowel movement? One Getting accurate fiber, of which flax is probably the best single fiber for regulating hormones. It has these lectins in it that actually help bind estrogen and it also helps lower your risk for breast cancer as well as heart disease. So it's a great, great fiber. There are additional fibers you can use to help moving your bowels if you have significant constipation issues. Using things like magnesium citrate or natural calm can be helpful as well and sometimes even buffered vitamin C to help move the bowels. But you have to have one to two bowel movements a day. If you're not, it's going to adversely affect your hormones. What's another thing you can do to help with this whole detoxification process? Eating colorful fruits and vegetables. Your yellows, greens, oranges, purples. These polyphenols or plant chemicals actually help your body detoxify estrogen. How they actually feed healthy bacteria that are associated with this process. One of the advanced tests we do is actually a stool test and it looks for something called beta glucuronidase. And this is an enzyme that's specifically seen elevated with certain bacterial overgrowths in the GI tract that results in estrogen dominance. And that's super easy to treat with a supplement called calcium D glucarate by getting the right kind of bacteria in your gut with the right kind of colors, your polyphenols or your pre prebiotics, then your probiotics are the bacteria and they make the things that help with detoxification of hormones. So we talked about moving your bowels, we talked about some fiber colorful things. You can also eat certain foods that actually super help you detoxify. These are your cruciferous vegetables. These are things like broccoli, cauliflower, sauerkraut, brussels sprouts. Arugula is actually one of the favorite at our house for eating that. They have certain types of sulfur based chemicals that are super important for detoxification, especially hormones. These are, these are all things you can do that can help improve hormone function. And the older you get, the closer you get to perimenopause, the bigger deal it is to keep these, these levels more controlled. So we talked about the pro box, we talked about the fiber, we talked about the bowel movement. The last thing I want to talk about is healthy fats and their impact on your hormones, particularly phospholipids. These are, these are healthy fats that actually help flush out your liver. They help take gallbladder sludge, which is very common in women. That can be related to gallbladder pain, right upper quadrant pain, and ultimately gallstones. You can minimize the sludging or crystallization by certain kinds of fats, especially using phosphatidylcholine or phospholipids. Extra virgin olive oil also as well can help with gallbladder contractions. Clearing out your bile. But eating healthy, real fats, avoiding seed oils, avoiding the kind of fats that gum up stuff. And these are all your things that are your trans fats, your hydrogen oils, so your margarine, you know, the things you can't believe. It's not butter. They're really not butter, right? Crisco. These kind of hydrogenated fats, trans fats, cooked seed oils, all will gum up the little small ducks in your liver and can lead to liver inflammation, which can be associated with fatty liver. And it's interesting how getting healthy fats like extra virgin olive oil and phospholipids like phosphatidylcholine become a huge part in regulating hormones. So these are a couple things I want to talk about, questions women have been asking me through the social media. How can you maximize your hormones? These are a couple basic things I hope were helpful in your health. If you have any other additional questions and concerns, please put those below. Every week we'll be putting out like a little, little thing like this towards the end of the week, trying to answer questions people have asked us. So if you want to get your question answered, please drop it in our social media and hopefully this was helpful. Take care and we'll talk to you soon.
