You have likely either read one of my previous articles or you follow my fb live videos, I like to talk about phase two estrogen detox, the liver and of course the rold our gut health plays. What I don’t often talk about is how important our bile is. Yes we need to support our livers for detoxing excess estrogen, that is absolutely imperative. But we also need to keep in mind that if we are not taking care of our bile production we are still going to be in a big pile of estrogen pop. You see, bile packages up the estrogen and sends it on its merry little way into your gut and out via your stool. The problem with this is that if you don’t have adequate gut bacteria, you run the risk of having too much of an enzyme known as beta-glucuronidase. This undoes the wrapping on the box that keeps the excess estrogen in check, this means it sets it free. We don’t want that.
I’m not saying beta-glucuronidase is a bad guy, I’m saying too much of it is.Glucuronidation is an important part of our Phase 2 detox pathway in the liver it helps with excretion of carcinogens, lipid soluble hormones and steroid hormones. We need it because it:
- breaks down complex carbohydrates
- nutrients that are ingested need to be absorbed, we need it for this.
- helps us detox from a variety of toxins, carcinogens, hormones, and drugs, which are naturally glucuronidated in the liver to facilitate bile excretion. High levels of this enzyme inhibits the conjugation process by separating toxins from their ‘conjugate bond’ which then allows them to be reabsorbed creating tons of issues.
This is how having a gut that is out of balance might be working against you in the estrogen dominance department, not just general health.
There are three major factors that affect your gut flora.
- antibiotics
- poor diet
- stress
We need to ensure we are managing our stress, and getting adequate sleep especially if we are going to deviate from a healthy diet form time to time. If you need antibiotics be sure to re-inoculate after, same goes for those who suffered a serious increase of stress. Moving, divorce, death, marriage all of these things are considered stressful events and would require you to re-inoculate just as you would if you took antibiotics. My personal favorite is Natren Healthy Start.
Be sure you are drinking enough water, taking a good quality magnesium supplement (I prefer bisglycinate), getting enough fiber and of course fermented foods like sauerkraut.
Something else to consider adding is a supplement I typically only recommend to my higher protein patients (25-35 percent protein), calcium-d-glucarate (CDG).It has been shown to decrease your LDL cholesterol, help with protein digestion, and remove toxins… like excess estrogen. It also helps the liver detox for a longer period of time, I mean HOURS longer. There is so much data on this that patients who have been on Tamoxifen for treating estrogen dominance are being swapped over to this instead due to its effectiveness at preventing cancer. It has been shown to reduce estrogen receptors by as much as almost 50% while also lowering serum estrogen levels. If you have confirmed estrogen dominance, or are overweight (tis puts you at higher risk of estrogen dominance) you may want to give this supplement a go. You can add a little N- AC to the mix for extra liver support.
Haven’t had your full master hormone panel run? Maybe we should chat
