The Link Between Estrogen & Anxiety

This is Dr. Nicole. I am so happy to get to connect with you today. There's a topic that I've been studying and you're not going to want to miss this. Today we're talking about anxiety and estrogen. And I'm going to give you an introduction to this amazing topic. And there's going to be more information coming out as I write it all up and create a publication for you. And so stay tuned. I think it's going to be really great. And as we dive in, the first thing I want to do is talk about who this is intended for and who's going to make the most amount of benefit from this lecture. And so if you struggle with moods that go with your hormone cycles, or if you struggle with mood changes that go regularly through the month as your estrogen levels rise and drop, does that impact your well being? Do you have irregular menstrual cycles? Do you struggle with PMS or pmdd, or did your mood cycles start when you hit puberty? This could be for men or women. Do you have mood cycles that change with postpartum disorder or with menopause? And do you have a history of trauma or a history of ptsd? If you do, then this information is for you. And so I want you to stay tuned because a ton more is going to be coming out. And today I'm going to share with you an amazing finding that has to do with estrogen and your anxiety. And there's something that we've been finding in the research that is groundbreaking. It's absolutely amazing. They're working on creating a pharmaceutical to support this pathway that I'm going to teach you about. And I dug, dug, dug, and I found out that there's actually a plant specifically that works incredibly well for this. And so I'm going to share everything with you that I can today in about 15 minutes. And then stay tuned because like I said, I'm going to be putting this in a podcast. I'm going to be writing it up. I'm going to give you all the information as I get it organized for you. But the most important thing is if you struggle with anxiety, if you have estrogen in your body, which is everybody, men and women, then this is going to be important information for you because we want to make sure that we're getting to the root cause of why you feel the way you feel. And, and we have to look at hormones with respect to this. So what I want to be the high yield piece of information for you. If you don't get Anything else out of our time together. I want you to know that estrogen is useful in treating ptsd, in treating anxiety, in treating depression and other issues pertaining to mental health, but not just estrogen. Estrogen. Because sometimes people don't do well with estrogen. Have you ever noticed this where someone will be given birth control, hormone replacement therapy? Men will be given testosterone. In addition, sometimes they'll be given estrogen, just depending on their levels. And have you ever noticed how some people feel quite a lot better and how other people feel quite a lot worse? It's a lot more complicated than just taking straight estrogen. And so we know that estrogen can be really helpful for some people. But the question that we have to ask is, number one, why is it helpful for some people in reducing anxiety, improving depression, reducing trauma responses? And the second question is, why does it make other people significantly worse? What's going on in terms of statistics with estrogen? We know from the clinical research that estrogen impacts your mental health, it impacts your cognitive health. That's why we see, when people are pregnant, they may feel like they have baby brain, they can't remember things. As well. Our estrogen is quite a lot lower and progesterone is higher during that time. We also see this during andropause and menopause, where people feel like their brains aren't as sharp. They don't feel as optimistic and confident or clear or crisp. And so they're told, oh, well, you're just getting old. But it could be something having to do with your hormones. Women are twice as likely to have anxiety disorders as men. Depressed women, on average have lower mean levels of estrogen and depression is twice as, as more common, twice as common in women than men. And we've actually seen in the researchers an article by Glover in 2015 where they said, and I quote, anxiety disorders tend to emerge around puberty, when the sex organs begin to release hormones that have activational effects on brain activity. And we also see in another article, Soares, from 2008, that women are especially susceptible to depressive episodes during sex hormone changes, specifically the luteal stage, which is after ovulation, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause. So the question that I ask next is what's actually going on with estrogen? And we've seen in the research that estrogen has three major impacts on our body. Number one is estrogen is impacted by and can impact genetic expression. Number two is estrogen can impact the way that your cells send information, which is called cell signaling. Number three is Estrogen can impact brain plasticity. And brain plasticity is what keeps our brains young, healing, regenerating. And people talk about antioxidants and all sorts of things to help with brain plasticity. But estrogen actually plays a significant role in that. And then the last one is that estrogen actually changes the way that the receptors on the membranes of your cells actually send information. We've seen in brain studies, where we actually do brain imaging, that fear regulation in the brain will change across the menstrual cycle. So we see that fear regulation and the production of estrogen go hand in hand. We see that when people are ovulating, when women are ovulating and their estrogen is spiked, that we have an attenuation or a modification or a reduction in amygdala activity. Your amygdala is the emotional seat of the brain. So when we're ovulating, people tend to feel less anxious, they tend to feel better, as opposed to in the early follicular cycle, which is right after your period stops and your cycle starts over and your estrogen is low, when the low estrogen is occurring, that there's more activity in the amygdala. And so a lot of people after they have their period, they start to feel worse and worse and worse. So the question that we have to ask is, well, what is all of this boiling down to? Why does that happen? Did I just inherit a change in the way my body metabolizes estrogen or is it something that happened in my environment and what can I do about it? And the answer is yes. And both, number one, is that we have seen that there is inheritance patterns in estrogen. And so sometimes we see that if somebody's mother had issues like PMS or PMDD or, or other menstrual emotional related issues, that it's likely to have been coming down in the family line. They have other women, relatives that experience that same thing. And then we've also seen that trauma can be passed down epigenetically and directly. And so there's a lot of studies that have been conducted, specifically animal studies, where they're looking at the expression and behavior of. And one gene that is particularly of interest that we're talking about today is that trauma can change the regulation of your estrogen receptors. So here's where we get into the exciting stuff. We have three main types of estrogen receptors and I want to talk with you about two of them. The first is estrogen receptor alpha. The second is estrogen receptor beta. We've seen in the Research that estrogen receptor alpha is more associated with increased activity of anxiety. So if your body produces more of these alpha receptors, if you give them estrogen, it may push them down a pathway to develop more of an anxiety state, as opposed to people who have a predominance of estrogen beta receptors. If you give them estrogen or you specifically target that receptor, then their anxiety can go down. And so we've seen in trauma, whether it's trauma in the, when you're a fetus and it's post, it's prenatal, that we can see that those receptors actually change as a result of trauma when you're in the womb. And we've seen that postnatal trauma can actually cause changes in your estrogen receptors. And so trauma can lead to overexpression of estrogen receptor alpha, which can then predispose you for anxiety and thereby a likely greater adverse reaction to birth controls and in hormone replacement therapy later in life. And so the other thing I want to talk with you about is that this estrogen conversation will impact your entire body. We have estrogen receptors in your brain and in your central nervous system, as you know. But did you know that you have estrogen receptors in your lungs, in your bones, in your joints, in your muscles, Your immune system cells have estrogen receptors. The breast tissue in men and women have estrogen receptors. The endothelium has estrogen receptors, your liver has estrogen receptors, your gut, your gastrointestinal tract, your skin, your ovaries, your mitochondria, your uterus, all of these different parts of your body have receptors for estrogen. And so when we're thinking about estrogen levels as they rise and drop, it's going to affect people across the board. And so when we're thinking about I have anxiety with brain fog, or somebody has anxiety with digestive upsets, or they have anxiety that ebbs and flows with the hormones, then we have to look at that behavior of your estrogen. So all of this being said is there's one amazing finding that I discovered doing my research, and what the research is showing that is, if we can specifically prefer targeting estrogen beta receptors, it's an effective form of treatment for ptsd, anxiety and depression. And so they're developing a pharmaceutical for this. And I went and I looked at the development of this pharmaceutical, and I was looking for the active ingredients. And there's one key active ingredient that seems to be, across the board, absolutely amazing and is showing great results in clinical trials. And there's a botanical medicine that has this. The other thing about this botanical medicine is that this herb has been shown to be good for anxiety. It's been shown to help with oxidative stress in the brain. It's been shown to improve mood, and it does this without creating all sorts of other side effects. It's cost effective, it helps your adrenal glands, which is that stress fight flight response that we know that estrogen can modify. And this herb is effective, it's safe, has a low to no side effect profile and you can widely get it at almost any health food store. And so the question you're probably asking, well, what is this herb? What is this active ingredient? And I'm going to have you stay tuned for that because I'm going to be posting an entire piece of literature on this topic for you. I'm going to tell you how to figure out what's going on with your estrogen. Does your estrogen play a role in your emotional well being and what you can do about it? The key is individualization. This is why we found that if we just throw straight old estradiol at people that we have an increased risk of cancer. Some people feel great, other people feel worse. We have to get down to the nitty gritty of what's happening with your genetics, what's happening with trauma. And that's what the ACT method is all about, is we go through each of these sequences step by step to figure out exactly what's going on in your brain, in your body, so that what you use is targeting these root causes so that you get success, so that you actually get your life back. So the first step, what I want you to do today, what your homework is, is to start to pay attention to, especially with women, pay attention to your cycle. If you're cycling, still journal out how your moods are. Is your anxiety increasing, is it decreasing? And if so, when? As opposed to, is your anxiety just like a steady 10 out of 10 all the time? We want to figure out what the patterns are and then at the same time start to track your cycles. There's many free apps I like Period Tracker. You can download that onto your phone, it doesn't cost you anything. And you can start to track everything in there. And so you can actually go in and each day of your cycle you can put in specific little notes of my anxiety and you can rate it on scale 1 to 10 so that you're starting to get data to see is there a relationship between where I'm in my cycle every month and how I'm feeling emotionally. If your cycles are irregular, write down exactly what you're noticing. Today you had spotting. This day you had gas and bloating. This day you had depression. This day you had a panic attack. And start to keep track of what that looks like. And then the second thing is get an idea of your family history. What was it like for your biological mother, your biological grandmother and your maternity side. Start to put some of these pieces together about your hormonal history. And then stay tuned because I'm going to be coming back and I'm going to be sharing more and more information with you. I'm very likely going to put this in a podcast and we might actually even make a mini course. But whatever happens, I'm going to make sure that you can get this information for free in a way that is digestible and useful and actionable. So today we've been talking about estrogen and anxiety. And so if you have estrogen, by the way, men and women both have estrogen, then this is a good lecture for you. And so stay tuned. I'm going to be back here posting more and more information. I did a little teaser on my Instagram. If you haven't seen that, check it out. DrNicoleCane on Instagram. Also, I'm going to be posting YouTube videos on this topic. If you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel, please do that. And if you can like and share this video that helps me know what content is available for you and it also helps our algorithms so that Facebook enables us to get the information to you. So please, like, please subscribe and please share and check back soon because I have a ton of information for you, including this amazing, wonderful herb that can help regulate estrogen, stimulate your estrogen, B, bring down your anxiety, bring down your depression, help heal trauma in a way that is safe, effective and natural. Everything will be referenced by PubMed studies. And so don't be afraid to give it a try because this stuff is amazing. It's legit. So this has been. Dr. Nicole. You can learn more about me by going to my website, www.drnicolecane.com. also, get started on anxiety Freedom by checking out our Anxiety Freedom warriors page and get the free book and get in the community and we're here to support you. They get a lot of information before I put it here, so if you want to be ahead of the curve, get in there. All right, my loves, it's been great to see you. I'll be back on Wednesday, 1 o' clock Eastern, every Wednesday, every Friday. So we'll talk to you soon. Bye.