E195: 3 Things You’re Doing to Cause Estrogen Dominance, PMS, and Painful Periods Without Even Realizing It

Do you ever feel confused about what your hormones are doing behind the scenes? If you're dealing with intense PMS, painful periods, or unexplained fatigue, estrogen dominance could be the reason. The tricky part? Some of the things you're doing every day could actually be making it worse—without you even realizing it.

In this episode, we explore:

• How to tell if estrogen is working for you or against you throughout your cycle
• Three sneaky habits that can throw your hormones out of balance—and what to do instead
• The unexpected truth about that popular estrogen detox supplement and why it might not be helping at all

If you’re ready to stop feeling confused and overwhelmed and to start feeling clear on what your estrogen is telling you, hit play, and let’s make sure you and your estrogen are speaking the same language.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
E6: Is Estrogen Dominance Causing Your Hormone Symptoms?
E7: Struggling with bad periods and PMS? Simple steps to boost progesterone naturally
E29: Sync Your Fitness with Your Menstrual Cycle for Better Results and Less Stress with Courtney Babilya

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Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Transcript

Leisha: Estrogen dominance is one of the most common hormone imbalances and can cause some of the nastiest symptoms like raging, PMS, really painful periods and even energy and weight changes that you just can't seem to get away from. Today I'm talking about three really sneaky things that cause estrogen dominance that you are probably doing without even realizing it.

Leisha: Estrogen dominance is one of my favorite topics because it's so incredibly common. I cannot tell you how many of my clients come to me with this issue, but it's also so misunderstood. I see so many women trying to fix their estrogen dominance and honestly doing it wrong. So today I am going to help you make sure that you're not doing it wrong by number one, showing you exactly how and when estrogen is talking to you in your cycle.

I'm going to help you understand what estrogen needs to work well, and then we're gonna talk about those three things that you're doing that don't even allow estrogen to do its job that you don't even know you're doing. We're gonna go into those and then as a bonus, I always have more to talk about with estrogen, and I'm gonna tell you why some of the common supplements for estrogen dominance can sometimes just make the problems worse.

 This episode is going to be packed. Make sure you stay all the way to the end because. There is so much here that you are probably missing even if you consider yourself a hormone expert, because I see so many smart women come to me and they're missing things because it's a complex topic.

So let's get into it. With estrogen, you need to understand how estrogen works in which parts of your cycle so that you know if it is talking to you and when it's talking to you. And what I mean by that is estrogen is going to be talking to us typically by us either feeling really good or feeling really bad at certain parts of our cycle.

 If you have been here for a minute or two, you're like, okay, I've heard this spiel before, so try to say it with me. Try to tell me what estrogen is actually doing in your cycle. I promise you this took me a lot of times to really understand it. Estrogen needs to be dominant in the first half of your cycle.

That means after you have your period. Once you're about done bleeding, estrogen is going to be rising to its peak to trigger your luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone for ovulation. Estrogen has to do that. We want it to be dominant in the first half of your cycle. However, we don't want it to be dominant in the second half of your cycle where progesterone needs to take over, and this is where estrogen can really do you dirty so much of the time.

If you're making. Estrogen wrong. You're not making enough, you're making too much. Or if you are not detoxing it well, so these are my. Really foundational steps that I work on with all of my clients. Every single time in group coaching and one-on-one coaching. We always are going to work on these foundations of making estrogen or hormones well and detoxing hormones well.

So if you understand first half of your cycle, you are supposed to have more estrogen and second half of your cycle, the estrogen is supposed to be moving out and it's not supposed to be giving you issues at that point, then you will understand that estrogen. Should be talking to you essentially in a good way in the first half of your cycle and should be quiet and just like demure in the second half of your cycle, right?

 In that first half of your cycle, estrogen should be talking to you by telling you that you are making plenty of cervical mucus. And it should be telling you that it is rising by that cervical mucus showing up pretty soon after your period ends. If you have. Cervical mucus that is increasing in quantity and in watery consistency up until right about ovulation.

And you are noticing an increase in your creativity, you're feeling more social. You're feeling like you have more social energy, then this is estrogen working and talking to you. If you notice that your libido is higher, if you notice that you are more outgoing, if you notice that you're just like top of your game, this is estrogen talking to you in a good way.

All of those signs are signs that your body is. Moving towards ovulation, that you are fertile, that you are like at your peak. And we even notice sometimes some really good changes like in skin, there's changes that can happen prior to ovulation in your fertile window where you can really be at your best.

This is estrogen talking to you in a good way. Now, if you are. Not feeling great in this part of your cycle. Estrogen is maybe also talking to you if you notice that you're more moody, more tired. You're feeling crampy, you're feeling histamine symptoms. I have episodes on histamines and estrogen specifically, if that sounds like something that you wanna learn about, we will link that in the show notes.

But what I mean by histamine symptoms is sometimes we see more fatigue. Sometimes we see actual allergy symptoms, but sometimes we just see more skin symptoms, irritability, things like that when estrogen is rising and maybe it is too high, or histamine in your body is high because estrogen is rising.

So sometimes we can see that, and that means estrogen is also talking to you, but maybe it's not talking so nicely to you. Another way that estrogen can talk to us in the first half of our cycle is if you are ovulating early or ovulating late. If you're ovulating early in your cycle, sometimes that is estrogen dominance.

The estrogen you have, like your baseline of estrogen is higher than it should be, and so you reach that peak of estrogen that triggers ovulation faster. That would be estrogen talking to you. Or if you are more of like an irregular cycle girly, and you are noticing that you have, later ovulation, if you have later ovulation that can be estrogen saying, Hey, I'm not actually making enough estrogen here.

Or if you're noticing you don't have that cervical fluid. A lot of times that could be signs that your estrogen maybe isn't working as well as it could be. You're maybe not being making enough or not making it quickly enough or something like that to have ovulation happen somewhere around day 14 ish. 

 Now, estrogen can also talk to us in the second half of our cycle if it's being good, if it's being demure, like I said, estrogen is gonna be quiet in that second half. Progesterone is gonna take over. You're gonna have more of that kind of like calm energy, increased metabolism be really stable and just moving toward your next period without really a lot of symptoms.

Leisha: Now. If estrogen is behaving herself and staying under that threshold of progesterone and detoxing, then it's gonna be pretty quiet the second half of your cycle. , if estrogen is not behaving herself and is causing you issues, which is what this episode is about, estrogen dominance in the second half of your cycle, then that is where we need to do some work and we need to find out what's going on.

So what she would be telling you is she would be saying, Hey, you're. Really irritable. You're moody, you're angry, you're crying about all the things. You've got PMS symptoms. You have swollen, painful boobs. You have really, a lot of cramping coming up before your period or during your period. You have a heavy clotty period.

All of those things. Typically are going to be signs of estrogen dominance, and even things like fibroids and endometriosis, a lot of times can come from issues with estrogen and even issues with estrogen and iron and histamines. All of those things can work together to cause some of those really more severe estrogen symptoms.

So that is how estrogen is talking to you throughout your cycle. I would love for you to take a minute and just think about that. I know you've been thinking about it as I've been talking here, but think about that. And then I also want you to take a minute and just share that with someone that you know does not know about her estrogen, because truly my passion is for women to understand their bodies better.

So share this with someone because this is a very tangible episode, and we all need to know these things. We need to know what's happening in our cycles with our hormones so that we have just some empowerment when we're looking for answers that we actually know. What to look for and what's normal and what we're talking about when we're going to a provider or when we're looking for answers ourselves.

Okay, so that's the first part. How is estrogen talking to you? Second part is what does estrogen need to work well? Estrogen needs a specific environment to work well, and it needs a body that has the right nutrients to be able to make enough the right amount at the right times. It really needs to be able to detox.

That is huge for estrogen. It needs to be able to detox well through your liver, through your kidneys, through your gut. It's really primarily liver and gut, and it needs to be able to move out at the right times of your cycle so it doesn't build up essentially, and get reabsorbed in your gut and cause those nasty, estrogen dominant symptoms.

So that's what it really needs. It needs to be able to have good nutrients, have good balance in your life, essentially, to be able to make enough and then really focus on being able to detox it well. So that is what estrogen needs to be able to work really well. And then let's talk about the three things that you're doing.

I. Or many of my clients, many of the women who come to me are doing that don't allow estrogen to do its job. They don't allow estrogen to make that nice, beautiful rise in the first half of your cycle, give you those happy symptoms that you want to have, and then just chill out and take a little break for the second half of your cycle.

That is what we want estrogen to do, but our busy lives these days are really typically not allowing estrogen to do its job well. The number one thing. That I see when we are not having happy estrogen symptoms is that you are under nourishing. That does not mean that you are not eating healthy. It does not mean that you are not getting good foods in your body, but what it means is you are not getting typically enough food for an actual grown woman.

You are not getting the right foods in the right combinations. Or you are not getting the right foods at the right times of day for your body to be able to stay stable. When I go back to what estrogen needs to work well, it needs whole foods. It needs to be able to be in a balance where your blood sugar can stay stable.

I cannot overstress blood sugar balance when it comes to estrogen dominance because your body needs to be getting those signals of safety throughout the day that tell your brain that it is okay to focus energy on making hormones well, because if you have. Heard me say this before. I'm sorry if it sounds like a broken record, but it is so important to understand.

Making hormones is a metabolically expensive process for your body, and it's also something that is optional because if you are in fight or flight mode, if you're not getting what you need in your nutrients specifically or just in your life in general, where you are stressed the heck out all the time, your brain will say, this is not a safe time to have a baby.

I don't need to put the energy into making these hormones. That's just how our bodies work as women, as much as it would be nice if it could just do its job, no matter how stressed we were. I talked about this in the progesterone episode that I did a couple weeks ago, and progesterone, it's even more important.

 You can't typically make enough progesterone with a crazy stress response going on. Estrogen is a little more resilient in my opinion. A lot of times you will still make plenty of estrogen, but a lot of times you're making too much estrogen if you are in a high stress mode. And so under nourishing, I'm talking about food and I'm talking about being able to.

Really understand the foundations of nourishing well, which is what I teach, and what I work with you on and walk with you on and hold your hand and check with you and make sure you're doing it and make sure you're doing it in a busy week and make sure you're doing it in a chill week. And this is why I.

I love to be able to look at that with you, but this is what I teach all the time and nourish your hormones. And when you are under nourishing food wise, it shows up in symptoms. But when you're undernourished in just your regular life too, if that means too much stress and not enough sleep, not enough sunshine, like those basic human nutrients that we need, if those things are constantly depleted, then it's going to be really hard for your body to have those signals of safety.

But I wanna talk about blood sugar balance again for just a second because blood sugar balance. It is so important, especially for women because when we have imbalanced blood sugar and we're having these blood sugar crashes, it is a true emergency in the body and it stresses your hormones out all the time.

What I see. A lot of the time, or I'll just give like a recent client example, is you're eating healthy, right? So you're eating whole foods for the most part. You're trying to avoid seed oils. You are, eating some organic, you're really trying to clean up your diet and do the right thing.

But what I see missing a lot of times is our macros are not balanced. For example, a really common one that I see is that a breakfast is something like a smoothie or like oatmeal or yogurt, but the macros are not balanced. Maybe you have good whole foods, but you don't have a good ratio of protein to carbs and you're not getting enough of one or the other.

I really see both a lot of the time, , if you're protein girly and you're focused on protein, a lot of times it's oh, carbs. I didn't think I needed those because X, Y, Z. And. A lot of times I don't see that someone is balanced with having enough of both to keep your blood sugar stable throughout the morning.

Breakfast is truly the most important meal of the day. I know that's a cliche, I probably wouldn't have believed it growing up, but here I am telling you breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I cannot tell you how many times I've had someone come back to me and be like, I really didn't think that my life would change if I just started eating a really balanced breakfast, but it totally changed my life and I'm like.

Yep. I told you I did. I told you. I told you I'm sure if you've listened to more than one episode. So that's really important for estrogen. And then to just go along with nourishment, blood sugar balance. The other thing that I see a lot is women who are, like I said, eating healthy. Focused on, getting their nutrients.

Sometimes they're missing carbs at lunch. A lot of times they're missing carbs at lunch because you're doing something like a salad or some meat and some veggies or something like that. That is inherently good for you. It's helpful, it's healthy, and if you are missing, especially those long-lasting carbs and you're not getting those in a ratio that is right for your body where you are right now.

And then a lot of times. You are going to have the afternoon crash, and when you're having the afternoon crash and your energy's low and you're hangry and moody and tired and all the things. Your body is in an emergency response. And if you have that emergency response every single day, or five days a week or three days a week, and maybe you also sometimes have one in the morning because your breakfast wasn't quite right, your body is setting off literal alarm bells telling you will die if you don't get any glucose to your brain.

So your body goes through this whole process that is beautiful and saves your life every single time and. It gives you what you need. You get that glucose to your brain, but it's stressful. It's stressful on the body. If we don't have to do that, if we don't have to cause that stress on the body, and we can start to slow down those stress responses, that is one of the easiest ways to be able to start sending those signals to your brain that estrogen can do its job, that it's okay to make the right amount of estrogen, that you have the energy to do that, and that it's safe enough to focus on your hormones and fertility.

So Undern nourishing or. Just not getting the right nutrients at the right time throughout the day. I cannot stress enough how much, this is the first thing, almost all the time with my clients. Number two, over exercising or under exercising, either one of those is also stressful in the body because exercise is good for you, but it doesn't look the same for everyone.

 Actually learning to listen to your body and find out. What is too much? What is enough? What is not enough? What makes you feel good? What makes you feel good in a way that isn't just adrenaline, running through your veins and telling you that you're okay when you're not? This is something that I think is truly has to be personalized.

I don't think there's a right answer. I know that it's really common in this like wellness hormone world to say strength training is the only way, or yoga, or just walking is the only way. I don't think that's true necessarily. I think that being able to exercise with your cycle to some extent is really helpful, but what I find is that just being able to listen to your body and understand it in different phases is absolutely key, and that can be less overwhelming than it sounds when it's just like a slow and steady process and it's not something that you feel like you have to learn overnight.

So even just understanding what your estrogen is doing and why. Estrogen is so important and what it needs to be doing, I think is a huge step forward in being able to understand maybe when in your cycle you can exercise in a different way than other times in your cycle. Just a quick little overview.

We do have an episode or three or four on this as well that we can also link in the show notes, but if we're just looking at over or under exercising. In relation to your cycle, typically during those first couple days of your period and then the last few days of luteal phase of the cycle before that is the time where it really is important to chill a little bit.

It doesn't mean you can't work out, but maybe you're just really more mindful about what you're doing. And giving yourself more rest. What I typically see in myself, because sometimes I'm still guilty of this, is that if I go too hard and luteal, then I have more symptoms during my period or just I have less energy during my period or even the next couple weeks of my cycle.

So I know that is the time where I don't go as hard. Whatever that looks like for me. And then I know that in the middle of my cycle when I'm ovulating and estrogen is high and testosterone is high, then that's the time where it's really fun to go harder and it's fun to try to lift more or try to go faster or something like that.

 Just knowing those kind of basics for yourself can help you with that. Feeling so wishy-washy about, do I need to do more? Do I need to do less? I think the answer is sometimes both, right? Sometimes it's both. Sometimes you need to do more in certain phases, less in certain phases, and the same with seasons of your life.

If you're in a really stressful season, maybe you don't need to work out hard, or maybe you do, maybe that is a stress relief that your body needs, and I still don't mean anything like running yourself in the ground or super prolonged hit or anything like that, but just not just saying oh, I'm stressed, so that means I can only walk.

Sometimes our bodies in that stress need somewhere to let it out, so I just really can only tell you that you need to be able to listen to your body, and that is something, again, I help you learn in coaching. If you're like, I don't know how to listen to my body, I've never listened to it before, we will help you learn that is something that we can do.

Okay, number three. Last thing that you're doing that you don't even know that doesn't allow estrogen to do its job is you have gut health issues and you don't know it. You don't know that it's abnormal to have bloating, gas, acid reflux, constipation, a kind of like a mix of constipation, diarrhea. I know a lot of women have gut issues.

I know it's really common to be constipated or bloated. That is not good. It's not normal. It's not good for your hormones, and the reason for that. Is if your gut is stopped up, if it's not working optimally, if you're not absorbing your nutrients you are not going to be able to detox your hormones well.

And if you are talking about estrogen and you are not moving things out of your gut effectively and regularly, estrogen is notorious for being detoxed through your liver and then it goes into your gut and while it's sitting there waiting to get out of your gut. It can get reabsorbed, and that can be a form of estrogen called E three estrogen.

That is a really strong form of estrogen. So if that is being constantly reabsorbed through your gut because your gut lining is leaky because your gut is inflamed, because things are not moving out, because your digestion is not optimal, then that is going to cause issues with estrogen, and that can look like hormonal acne.

It can look like PMS, it can look like those heavy clotty periods. I talked about the breast tenderness, all of those things can be. Only because your gut is a mess. So if all of these other things, you're checking the boxes and you're like, no, I'm really balancing my blood sugar. My exercise is on point, but your gut is not on point.

You're gonna be in trouble with your estrogen. I just want you to know that those things are not normal and that there are things we can do about it. There are answers we can look for. But even if you just start to know that it's not normal and some of the time you can figure that out on your own, but you need to be having at least one healthy bowel movement a day and you need to be able to.

Notice that you're not having a lot of digestive discomfort or there's not lots of food sensitivities, foods that you can't really tolerate well, or a lot of bloating. Like all of those things are red flags for your gut, even if you're not constipated. If you have gut issues that will cause detox issues for your estrogen and it a lot of times will cause estrogen nominate.

So that is something to just know. The last thing that I wanna talk about is why common supplements for estrogen dominance sometimes can just make the problems worse. The one that I really wanna talk about today is dim, which is something that I think a lot of women will take when they have estrogen dominance.

It's just a go-to. I'm pretty sure I don't use chat GPT because I'm scared of it. I don't know I'm just not sure about it yet. I don't know that I'm scared of it. I haven't gotten to it yet. So if you're using Chap GBT, or if you're old fashioned like me and just use Google and you look up estrogen dominance, treatment, natural treatment.

I'm pretty sure that somewhere high on the list is going to be dim, and that is something you can buy yourself. You don't have to have someone prescribed for you or anything like that. And what DIM does is it does help with certain aspects of the detox process. A lot of times it actually is combined with things like some sort of broccoli extract or something like that.

There's some other things that it can be combined with like calcium b glucarate or there's actually a lot of different things that are a lot of times combined in these DIM supplements, but something to know about DIM is that it is a non-specific estrogen. Detoxer. For example, if you really are only high in E three estrogen because you are reabsorbing it in the gut and that's the only thing really causing your symptoms, but you take dim you could also be decreasing your E one and E two estrogen that you need to have enough of to be able to ovulate here's really my beef with dim.

You are not addressing the root cause of the issue. Even if DIM makes you feel better. It is not addressing why your body can't make in detox estrogen well on its own. If you take DIM and it helps you with your symptoms, great. But a lot of times it can lead to other symptoms in the future, like lower estrogen or you can have imbalances of the types of estrogen or in the context of.

Your gut being stopped up or not working well, then that dim is just like pushing the liver pathway for hormone detox, for estrogen detox, but then it's still getting stuck in the gut and then you're still reabsorbing it. And so it's not necessarily a one size fits all helper for estrogen detox.

The only time that I will use dim is typically if we have a sky high estrogen. That is off the charts and we need to prevent some estrogen symptoms. I sometimes will use it as a bridge while we're figuring things out, but outside of that context, I'm not using dim because it can be almost too effective in some ways, but you have to know.

What's actually going on to know if it's right for you? I just wanted to mention that because when I talked about progesterone in the couple of episodes ago, I talked about how it's so common to just go to progesterone supplementation. It's oh, I just need more progesterone. But again, we're not looking at the root cause.

We don't know why your body can't make it and in enough quantities. And the same thing with dim. I'm just gonna go ahead and extend my opinion to basically all of what I would call the happy flow supplements that are just going to have a combination of multiple different things that can help your hormones.  

 It sometimes can help with symptoms, but even if it does help with symptoms. Typically those symptoms aren't going to stay away if you stop taking the supplement because it is still like a bandaid solution. Even if it has cheesery in it and it has black koosh and it has, milk thistle and it has these different things for liver detox, it's like some of these things are definitely good.

I use some of those things on their own if we know we need them. But if we're just using this kind of bandaid solution, we're still not figuring out what your body actually needed to be able to. Make and detox your hormones well, so that is why I really like to know what's going on by looking at basal body temperature charts, by looking at food logs, by talking to you, by looking at your lifestyle, by figuring out what you're doing with exercise and sleep and sunshine and stress and all the things.

Because if some of those things or all of those things are a hot mess. DIM is never gonna fix your problems. That's why I find it to be so helpful to just get a big picture approach. And then let's change that with basic, really targeted lifestyle action. I am always about the smallest, effective dose of lifestyle change.

 I will never tell you change everything at once, because that's. Ridiculous and you won't be able to do it. And it's just not helpful, to be honest. We're just gonna focus in on the first things first. And that's I think, what needs to be such a shift in social media and in all the places where we are overwhelming with information instead of just focusing on what is your body telling you.

Do you even know how to listen to it? And then let's look at the things that are the most common to cause you an issue, and let's see if that matches up for you. And then let's see what small changes we can make going forward. That is my dissertation on estrogen dominance. I think that there is a lot there.

I think that there's always a lot that we can go into to understand that better, but I hope that this was helpful and just eye-opening for you, and I hope that you feel a little more friendly with your estrogen now that you know her a little bit better and you can start listening to what she's telling you.