Estrogen Dominance Part II: How to Crush Estrogen Dominance Completely!
Last time, I gave you everything you needed to know about estrogen and estrogen dominance. Estrogen dominance is becoming a big problem today, because toxins in our environment, our food, and even our homes are overloading our liver and polluting us from within and without.
First, let me review the chief causes of estrogen dominance I’m seeing today:
The Chief Cause of Estrogen Dominance
There is one big cause of estrogen dominance. Toxicity.
We are overburdening our liver with toxic food and from living in a toxic world.
When you look at endocrinology specialist Dr. Paula Owen’s list of some 13 chief causes of estrogen dominance, you’ll notice something that begins to stand out in glaring clarity. Toxins.
If you want to understand the connection between a toxic body and estrogen dominance, just look at alcoholic men. Alcoholic men often develop gynomastia (man breasts) because they cannot remove toxins or excess estrogen from the body, due to a compromised liver. In that case, an overload of toxins is creating estrogen dominance.
Same with us. We are breathing in toxins from the environment everywhere, from cleaning products used in office buildings and business and often, applying them to our skins in the forms of deoderants, cosmetics, fragrances, and sunscreens. We are eating and drinking toxins gleaned from food, water, plastics, Styrofoam and all kinds of pesticides and herbicides we breathe in everywhere we go.
This is why one of the chief causes of estrogen dominance is too little fiber in the diet. Without enough fiber, you cannot help the body eliminate toxins via waste.
So, yeah, all kinds of toxins can lead to estrogen dominance.
Here’s the kind of eating, habits, or conditions that can create toxic overload and estrogen dominance, to review:
Too much body fat – body fat itself produces estrogen, so reducing the amount of fat on your body through clean eating, intermittent fasting, and lots of exercise is crucial!
Now, let’s talk about ways to reverse this estrogen dominance, and by reading this list above, I think you will see that we live in a highly “feminizing” environment today. We all need to fight back against estrogen dominance in today’s highly toxic overloaded world we live in.
What you want to start aiming for is CLEAN for 2017. Clean in all things.
The Jackson Litchfield Estrogen Dominance Reversal Program
This is about detox folks. You have got to give you liver a break. Think about it this way, if you cannot control everything we have to breathe in, from powerful disinfectants used at the stores and workplaces we visit, to pesticides, herbicides, and toxins that permeate the air outside wherever we walk, save our own back yard, we have to try to limit toxic exposure in the foods we eat, in the products we use, and strive to balance estrogen with high quality supplements that help balance estrogen in the body.
I’m going to tell you how to do all that today.
Solutions to Estrogen Dominance that Work
Eating Clean
If you read my article “The Jackson Litchfield Guide to Eating Clean, Nutrient Dense, and Toxin Free,” then you know I’m all about going local and organic whenever possible.
Not only are these kinds of foods free from risk of GMOs and pesticides that burden your liver and digestive system with toxins, they also supply you with crucial nutrients and vitamins that satisfy your system because you’re giving it what it needs.
To overcome estrogen dominance you have to get the hormones out of the diet, the pesticides out of the diet, and anything out of the diet that overburdens or toxifies the gut and liver.
If you’re estrogen dominant then, and especially if you’re showing strong signs of estrogen dominance you want to eat super-clean. I recommend:
Instead you want to reach for foods like these
You might think, I cannot afford “organic” meat. But really, you cannot afford not to eat clean. It will save you medical expenses later, and you’ll also find you eat less and won’t eat as often once you satisfy all your nutritional deficiencies.
See, those junk food cravings are really just signals your body is giving you that it’s not getting something it needs. Although you may mistakenly interpret these as “I need quick energy via sugar, caffeine, or quick release carbohydrate” your body may be wanting hard-to-get-minerals in food today like
What I’ve found is that supplementing with nutritional yeast and wheat grass juice helps get many had to get minerals and nutrients that are lacking in our soil today to give the body maximum energy in a clean form that is easily digested by the gut and liver. When you get your minerals from food, you’re not overburdening the body with gelatinized supplement after supplement.
Always, the body wants its vitamins and minerals in a whole, natural complex as you do in the form of good clean food, if it can get them that way. Supplements second.
Although I advocate eating nutrient-dense, however, there are good adaptogenic herbs and supplements that really work for reversing and alleviating estrogen dominance and I’ll discuss these momentarily.
Oh yeah, water.
You want to have filtered water in glass bottles. You cannot trust plastics, folks, even if they do have a number “5” on them, they are still filled with harmful chemicals that leach into your food and overburden the liver and you need a clean liver and well-functioning gut, digestive system, and bowels so that you can clear any hormones you do absorb from the environment completely from your body.
And regular tap water is filled with numerous poisons.
Help Your Body Clear Estrogen More Effectively
There are several ways to help your body clear estrogen more effectively from the body. First I want to discuss the importance of fiber and the liver.
The Importance of Fiber
Fiber is very crucial to overcoming estrogen dominance. That’s because excess estrogen is excreted by the bowels. When you are constipated, in fact, your body will reabsorb the estrogen your body is not eliminating!
As Dr. Ronald Hoffman, a complementary practitioner and author of Intelligent Medicine notes,
A low-fiber diet causes estrogen levels to be higher, while a diet high in fiber results in estrogen levels in the bloodstream. Why? Excess estrogen is excreted in the bowel. When stool remains in the bowel for a longer time, as in constipation, the estrogen is reabsorbed. Studies have shown that women on a high-fiber diet have lower levels of circulating estrogen. Lower levels of estrogen mean less estrogen stimulation of breast tissue, for example, which reduces the risk of breast cancer.
So load your diet up with clean, organic high fiber vegetables like
Vegetable Fiber in grams
Split Peas 16.3
Lentils 15.6
Black beans 15
Lima Beans 13.2
Artichokes 10.3
Peas 8.8
Broccoli 5.1
Brussel’s Sprouts 4.1
Try a Paleo Diet and Clean, Clean Eating
The Paleo diet detoxifies the liver and gut of all kinds of toxic overload through avoidance of gluten, refined carbohydrate and sugar, and estrogenic foods like beans and soy. If you have estrogen dominance, I highly recommend a strict Paleo diet for 3 to 6 months.
But you have to eat organic, grass fed, clean proteins. There’s no way you can reduce estrogen overload if you’re consuming estrogens in estrogen-injected cattle, fed hormones to make them grow bigger and yield more meat.
Eat, Drink, and Supplement the Liver for Maximum Estrogen-Clearing
There are some simple ways to help your body burn fat off the liver and help the liver function for maximum detoxification. And we need maximal liver function to clear toxins and estrogen from the body.
As Hoffman adds,
The liver is a filter of sorts. It detoxifies our body, protecting us from the harmful effects of chemicals, elements in food, environmental toxins and even natural products of our metabolism, including excess estrogen. Anything that impairs liver function or ties up the detoxifying function will result in excess estrogen levels, whether it has a physical basis, as in liver disease, or an external cause, as with exposure to environmental toxins, drugs or dietary substances.
Not only is estrogen produced internally, it’s also produced in reaction to chemicals and other substances in our food. When it is not broken down adequately, higher levels of estrogen build up. This is true for both men and women, although the effects are more easily recognized in men. Alcoholic men with impaired liver function develop a condition called gynecomastia, with estrogenic characteristics including enlarged breasts, loss of male pubic hair and eunuch-like features.
There are supplements that have even helped individuals reverse even advanced cases of hepatitis and cirrhosis. The liver is one of the most forgiving and healing organs in the body, and although avoiding most all medications and detoxifying the body is crucial, three supplements have proven especially effective at helping heal a damaged or fatty liver and helping it to operate as well as possible.
What is recommended is a protocol high quality vitamin E, milk thistle, and high quality fish oil. It works. See study.
If your liver is in need of healing, especially if you abused alcohol or drugs in the past (overloads of toxins) I recommend those two supplements, a good, high quality supplement with a UPC liver to begin functioning and detoxing again normally. This, of course, will help your liver to clear excess seal for each. This will help your liver to repair, help alleviate fatty liver disease, and help your estrogens again normally as well as eliminate waste better overall.
How to Detox the Liver for Estrogen Clearance
Lemon Water
Lemon water is one of the most liver-friendly beverages on Earth. It literally strips fat off the liver. Many times people with fatty livers crave the taste of sour or lemon. That’s because their bodies want more choline. Lemons are high in choline and often people with liver problems crave sour because the liver wants that lemon to function better. See study, study.
A glass of lemon water every morning will help your body eliminate toxins as well as estrogen.
ACV
You’ll often hear fitness professionals talk about drinking apple cider vinegar. And apple cider vinegar really works to heal the liver and hormones in all kinds of ways. It helps to both manage blood sugar, enhancing fat burning by suppressing insulin, and in burning the fat off the liver and clearing toxins from the liver.
In fact, just two tablespoons of ACV in water before a high carb meal can help you manage blood sugar spikes. Did you know that? Whenever I am going out to eat with friends, I always use this remedy any insulin spikes that will be caused by hidden sugars or MSGs in food. MSG like sugar, really spikes insulin. It also exhibits a protective effect upon the liver, helps the liver heal, and helps burn fat off the liver as well. Overall, it will help your liver function better and, thus, eliminate more estrogen from the body. See study.
Fortify the Gut to Help Eliminate Excess Estrogen from the Body
Leaky gut and gut dysbiosis not only inhibit the gut’s ability to eliminate wastes and contribute to unbalanced hormones in the body overall, the reason gut health is so crucial for reversing estrogen dominance is because While a healthy gut can help to eliminate excess estrogens from the body, an unhealthy digestive tract which is fueled by refined carbohydrates, processed foods, gluten and alcohol can lead to leaky gut and a lack of healthy bacteria in the gut can lead to up-regulation of an enzyme called B-glucouronidase, which breaks apart the bound estrogen molecules the gut is trying to excrete as waste and move on to the bowels, creating smaller estrogen molecules that are dispersed and absorbed in the gut.
As researchers note, this up regulation of B-glucouronidase is one of the “biggest causes of excess estrogen in women and men,” adding that “Beneficial bacteria can prevent this from happening by reducing dysbiosis as it is high levels of the bad bacteria that uncouple the bond between estrogen and acid.”
How to do this. Go with a full on protocol of prebiotics and probiotics. Good ones. See my
“Ultimate Guide to Gut Health.”
Exercise
Cardiovascular exercise is crucial for helping the body to clear excess estrogen from the body. Thus, I recommend for everyone today a blend of both high intensity cardio and resistance training 4 to 5 days a week. In this study, for example, researchers found cardiovascular exercise to reduce breast cancer risk by helping to mediate estrogen metabolism in the body.
In an earlier study, researchers found that 171 minutes of cardiovascular exercise per week, divided into five sessions, reduced serum estradiol levels by 16.7% and 11.9% in estrone. So men with estrogen dominance, work some daily cardio in with your resistance training to help you get rid of that estrogen!
Get the Belly Fat off the Body
Belly fat acts as an endocrine gland, taking on a life of its own. In women, belly fat manufactures excess testosterone, which leads to the accumulation of facial hair. Worse, it throws off estrogen and progesterone balance as well. In men, belly fat manufactures estrogen, which can lead to gynecomastia.
You cannot “target” belly fat. You can tighten your abdominal muscles. But the only way to get rid of belly fat is diet and exercise.
Stress Management
Stress causes the body to “steal” progesterone to manufacture the stress horone cortisol, which often leaves an excess of estrogen in the body. Try yoga, meditation, relaxation tapes, Pilates, and other forms of exercise that focus on stretching, breathing, and relaxing.
Locate All Endocrine Disruptors in Your Home
Replace all plastic cups, bowls, plastic containers and water bottles with ceramic, glass, and stainless steel. Even BPA-free plastics contain endocrine disruptors.
Get rid of Teflon cookware. Teflon is a carcinogen and hormone disruptor, meaning all these toxins and xenoestrognes leach into the food you cook. It’s right up there with heating food in plastic or Styrofoam.
Get rid of hidden BPAs: BPAs linger in plastics you might not think about. Do you own a Kureig? Look at all that plastic! What about Saran Wrap?
Get rid of all non-organic, unnatural hygiene and beauty products. This is a hard one for a lot of people. But there are lots of xenoestrogens in anything cosmetic or aerosol-related.
Get rid of non-stick cookware. These are big endocrine disruptors as well.
Other Endocrine Disruptors
For a full list of all EWG’s Dirty Dozen of endocrine disruptors and products to get out of your home, click here.
Supplements that Will Help Balance Estrogen
In general, supplements that help to detox the body and the liver work especially well at helping balance estrogen, and I mentioned milk thistle (silymarin), vitamin E, and fish oil earlier.
Here are others that really help reduce excess estrogen in the body:
Important vitamins/minerals
Vitamins that are especially crucial for balancing estrogen are zinc, magnesium, and B6.
As Dr. Turner explains, “zinc, magnesium, vitamin B6 not only . . . support the breakdown and elimination of estrogen, but also to aid the function of enzymes responsible for the conversion of testosterone to estrogen.”
Other vitamins that are important are folic acid (B9) and (B12). All the B vitamins are important for liver function and estrogen balancing as well. I use nutritional yeast which has major amounts of B vitamins in a natural form that is easily synthesized by the body.
Take Aromatase-Blocking Minerals and Vitamins
Some minerals and vitamins such as selenium, zinc, green tea, melatonin, and citrus isoflavones help to block aromatase which help us stop transforming testosterone into estrogen. These nutrients have a proven effect of suppressing aromatase.
Diindolylmethane (DIM) and the 2-Hydroxy Pathway
When estrogen moves to the liver to be metabolized, it is metabolized in one of two pathways, one which is good, and one which is not so good, both of which result in very different estrogen metabolites.
The 2-hyrdroxy pathway is what we want. This pathway in the liver creates “positive,” healthy estrogen metabolites. These metabolites are released into the bloodstream and account for many benefits previously attributed to estrogen in its pre-metabolic state. These include the prevention of heart disease, the building of strong, healthy bones, and soft, supple skin.
The “negative” or “bad” estrogen metabolism pathway is the 16-hydroxy pathway.
Estrogen broken down in this pathway results in metabolites responsible for many of estrogen’s undesirable actions, including weight gain and an increased risk of cancers, especially breast cancer.
There is no better management for the symptoms of estrogen dominance and proper estrogen metabolism DIM. DIM, which is found in cruciferous vegetables, has the power to shift estrogen metabolism to the
It also boosts the production of 2-hydroxyestrone (2-OHE), which is also known as the good or protective estrogen hormone such as soy, red clover, and chaste berry extract in selected cases.
Calcium D-Glucarate
Like DIM Calcium D-glucarate is crucial for individuals suffering with estrogen dominance. This compound which is found in some fruits and vegetables such as cruciferous vegetables, oranges, and apples, has been proven to be especially skillful helping remove toxins from the body, including excess used hormones. Calcium D-glucarate preventing estrogens from being reabsorbed into the blood stream and deposited in the tissues of your body. See study.
Resveratrol
Many studies have shown that resveratrol can increase testosterone serum levels in the body as well as suppress estrogen by inhibiting the aromatase enzyme. See study, study.
Why You Need Magnesium Now More Than Ever
When estrogen is high and magnesium intake is low, the excess estrogen can quickly burn up magnesium making it even more deficient. In the face of low magnesium in blood calcium gains the upper hand and can lead to blood clots, atherosclerosis, kidneys stones, gall stones, heel spurs and calcium deposits in breast cysts and fibromyalgia.
Conclusion
I know that it’s frightening to recognize how toxic your immediate environment may really be. But don’t be afraid to make positive changes—ever. You never know when you’re making the change that will actually save your life, your health, and contribute that next ten pound weight loss to your list of yearly accomplishments.