E217: 3 Ways to Find Out If Estrogen Dominance Is Causing Your Period Cramps + PMS

What if all the things you’ve been doing to balance your hormones are actually backfiring?

The supplements, the cleanses, the low-estrogen diets, the endless guessing — and still, the heavy bleeding, cramps, bloating, and mood swings just keep coming. When you’re hurting every month, it’s easy to assume too much estrogen is to blame. But treating the wrong thing can leave you feeling worse, not better.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through three clear, proven ways to figure out if estrogen dominance is really behind your symptoms — or if something else is going on — so you can finally stop guessing and start healing.

You’ll learn:

• How to tell the difference between estrogen dominance and other hormone imbalances
• Why symptoms like PMS, breast tenderness, and bloating don’t always mean high estrogen
• The exact testing, tracking, and signs I use with my clients to uncover the root cause

If you’re sitting there feeling overwhelmed, confused, and tired of fighting with your own body, tune in now. This episode will help you finally see what your body needs AND what it doesn’t.

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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

[00:00:00] Leisha: Today I'm gonna talk about the three ways that you can find out if estrogen dominance is actually the problem causing your period cramps and PMS mood swings.

 Estrogen dominance is one of the most common hormone imbalances that women come to me with who have painful period cramping, heavy periods. Estrogen based weight gain, so like weight gain around the hips and thighs and belly. It can also show up with signs like PMS, mood swings. It can be hormonal acne.

There's all of these different things that can come up when estrogen is. Dominant in the body. So today I'm gonna help you understand how you can actually find out if estrogen dominance is your problem, because surprisingly enough, it can be pretty dangerous to treat estrogen dominance if you don't actually have it, and you can have these same symptoms from other hormone imbalances.

So it's not safe to just assume it is estrogen dominance and treat it as such. And in fact, I have a client. Who messaged me the other day about some breast pain that she was having, and she put it in chat, GBT, and she was like, Hey, this is the suggestions that it gave me. Chat, GBT assumed estrogen dominance with her symptoms and gave her a list of things to do for estrogen dominance.

 Several of them were absolutely wrong for her because I had her lab testing and her history. And she doesn't have estrogen dominance. She has other imbalances in her hormones and adrenal hormones specifically that are masquerading as estrogen dominance. If she had just taken chat GT's advice, she could have actually tanked her estrogen and caused herself quite a few other problems with her.

Cycles and with her period, specifically her energy, all kinds of things. So it really is important to know if you actually have estrogen dominance before you start treating it. Let's talk about the different ways that estrogen dominance can show up in the body. Let me just define this really quick just, in case you're like, Hey, I'm new here, and I don't know a lot about estrogen dominance.

So estrogen dominance is exactly what it sounds like more estrogen in the body than you should have, but it can be broken down into a few different categories. category number one is you are just making too much estrogen. Specifically, estrogen dominance is more estrogen than progesterone in the luteal phase of the cycle, when there should not be more estrogen naturally in your menstrual cycle, you should actually be dominant in estrogen in the first half, just before ovulation, because estrogen is actually the primary hormone in that phase.

So when I'm talking about estrogen dominance, I'm actually talking about it in the luteal phase, which is after ovulation when estrogen should not be dominant and progesterone should be dominant. You can just be making way too much estrogen and have that show up as an issue in the luteal phase.

That's one way you can have estrogen dominance. Another way you can have estrogen dominance is you can have too much estrogen. In comparison to your progesterone only. So you could have an issue with either making too much estrogen or you could have an issue with detoxing estrogen that would cause you to be reabsorbing estrogen and keeping those things out of balance.

But you may not have actually high estrogen, so you could have, estrogen in the mid range where we want it to be. And your progesterone is low, and so that's still going to be. Considered estrogen dominance even if you don't have high estrogen levels. So I just wanted to clarify that. And it can be from making too much or it can be from not detoxing it well and or even reabsorbing through the gut.

So there's different layers of estrogen dominance, and that's why I love the Dutch test so much. It is so helpful to be able to actually see the layers of estrogen because we can see how much you're making. We can see. How it's being processed, how it's being broken down and detoxed, and we can see if it's an issue with the liver or an issue with the gut or an issue with inflammation in the body just from that Dutch test.

And then we can more carefully treat whatever is happening in a very broad lifestyle based way so that. We're looking at the whole picture and not just assuming you're making too much estrogen and you need to take a supplement, that'll bring your estrogen down, because that can be pretty dangerous when it's not even necessarily that problem specifically, or even if it is taking a supplement, specifically DIM or calcium deg, glucarate, just to bring your estrogen down.

Again, if you're making too much, then it could help in that way. But if you're also not detoxing it well through your liver or reabsorbing through your gut, it's not still going to fix the problem. And it may not even fix symptoms, but it may just things out of balance even more because you're trying to decrease that estrogen.

That is the little nutshell version of what estrogen dominance is and why it's a little bit misunderstood now, why is that causing period cramps and PMS? When estrogen and progesterone are out of balance, that is typically when we see those type of symptoms and it can also have. Some root causes in adrenal hormone issues and detoxification issues, which again, we can see all of those things on a Dutch test, which I do for my clients in nourish your hormones.

 When we have the full picture of information to know whether or not estrogen is actually an issue for you, it's so much easier to treat. So I have mentioned several times Dutch testing, that is my number one way. To find out if estrogen dominance is an issue for you, and so what does that look like?

 The Dutch hormone test is a test. That I only do in my VIP version of nourish your hormones, so that I can personally go over every little bit of it with you and help you understand exactly what it means. You can get a Dutch test and I will tell you it looks like rocket ship dials. It looks like you're stepping into.

The cockpit of an airplane or to be honest, I have never been in the cockpit of a rocket ship, so I may be completely off track to say it looks like rocket ship cockpit, but that's what it looks like to me. That's my interpretation of it. That being said, if you get a Dutch test but you don't have support to interpret it, you are likely wasting your money.

 it really is so helpful to be able to walk through it line by line, step by step, and really see the picture for you, for your adrenals, your hormones, your detoxification, and understand what is happening beneath the surface.

 The Dutch hormone test looks at a full adrenal panel, so DHEA and cortisol, as well as how your body is using those hormones and.

How they show up during the day. So you have your cortisol for four different times during the day. That can give us a lot of information about your adrenal glands. And then, as I have hinted at the estrogen piece of this test is my very favorite and I find to be the most helpful. And what that looks like is it looks at not only your estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, how they look in relation to each other, but how the estrogen specifically is broken down.

And we can see how much you're making in the different forms of estrogen as well as how your body is breaking it down Exactly. So that we can tell where there are issues if there is an issue with the inflammatory pathway, if there's an issue with a pathway that is more likely to show up if there's reabsorption in the gut.

And we can also see some markers that tell us how your liver is working in the detoxification process and methylation so that we really have a bigger picture of where we need to focus with. Estrogen detoxification and progesterone levels. So the Dutch test is my number one way to figure out if you have estrogen dominance because it is just the most clear and concise and we can see why and all the things that I really love.

With that being said. I know that's not for everyone, and so I wanna give you some other options as well. number two is tracking. And what I mean specifically by this is tracking your basal body temperatures and tracking those throughout your cycle, as well as tracking your symptoms. But I'm gonna start with tracking your basal body temperatures.

So this is something that I. Think requires a little bit of a trained eye, and there is a book that can help you. It's called Taking Charge of Your Fertility. If I have recommended a book on this podcast more than any other book, I'm sure it is that one. And do yourself a favor and just get this book.

Okay? If you are wanting to track your cycle, if you already track your cycle, if you think you're an expert, read this book. If you haven't read it. I had it recommended to me so many times before I ever read it and I was like, oh, that sounds boring. I don't want to. Such a good book. It will really help you understand what these temperatures mean, so you're not just like taking temperatures and being like, I don't know what this means.

Okay, taking a heart drive your fertility is a great book, but specifically what you can see for estrogen detoxification and estrogen dominance with temperatures, there's a few different things that you can see, so we have multiple episodes on tracking your basal body temperature that you can understand the whole rhythm and routine and how to do it, and all the things that really is not that hard.

But what I want to talk about specifically with estrogen dominance is we can see several things that would help us know if estrogen dominance is likely the case for you with the basal body temperature. So the first one is it we see when you ovulate, if you are ovulating early consistently. I would say before day 13, 14 I could be okay with day 12 here and there, but definitely any earlier than that.

What I would consider early, that can often be a sign of too much estrogen or estrogen dominance because your estrogen is rising too early in the cycle and triggering ovulation too early. So that is one thing that we can see if we see early ovulation with the basal body temperatures. Another thing is we can see patterns of estrogen detoxification.

In the second half of your cycle. So sometimes we'll see these dips in temperatures a couple days after ovulation, or we'll see a really big dip in temperatures before it rises. There are certain signs that we can see in these dips in temperatures in certain parts of your cycle where we can tell if you are having trouble moving estrogen out, or if your estrogen is rising really high before you ovulate.

 So that can be a really helpful picture to see . If you don't have estrogen dominance or if it's not affecting your temperatures, it would be more like, just like a really clear pattern of lower temperatures to a clear pattern of higher temperatures, about one degree higher after ovulation.

That would be ideal. And what we wanna see, and we would see that those. Temperatures after they rise, indicating that progesterone has risen, that they stay nice and high until essentially the end of your cycle. But if we see these like dips a couple days after, it often means that estrogen is still pushing those temperatures down a little bit and progesterone is not as solid as we'd like to see it. And that can be a sign that we need more detoxification support for estrogen. The other, the third way to find out if estrogen dominance is causing your period cramps. And PMS, this is the least.

Accurate, but also can still be really helpful is just tracking your symptoms. Specifically looking at where your symptoms are showing up in your cycle, and understanding where estrogen is high in your cycle. So estrogen is high just before ovulation, and then it's high again just before your period.

Oftentimes, those are times where you will see symptoms if you are having issues with estrogen detoxification or estrogen dominance. You can also see symptoms in that last week of your cycle if you have estrogen dominance that may be accompanied by some low progesterone. if you have estrogen and progesterone out of balance, this is where we typically will see symptoms like heavy periods, fibroids, endometriosis, PMS, mood swings, breast tenderness.

Heavy bleeding, heavy cramping, all of those things, clotting, clotty periods, those often are a sign of estrogen dominance. With that being said, I told a story earlier in this episode that someone thought they had estrogen dominance based on symptoms and they really didn't. can be a little bit misleading, but.

I would say a good percentage of the time, those symptoms do tend to be caused by estrogen dominance. So that is one way you can track as well. And just being really good about tracking your symptoms during your cycle so that you can see what those patterns are, can be so helpful in figuring it out yourself, but also in coming to someone and saying, Hey, I know exactly what's happening and so here is what's happening so that we can figure this out faster, essentially.

 If you. Feel like estrogen dominance is you, then that is something that is really important to work on because it is not only life changing when you don't have these period symptoms anymore, but also estrogen dominance and estrogen imbalances can lead to inflammatory conditions later in your life, which is not.

Ideal for anyone. I just wanna make sure that you understand that this is not only annoying for now, but it actually does have effects on your long-term health as well. If this resonated with you and it makes sense, not only do share it with your friends for sure, but feel free to reach out and book a call with us and see if we can help you manage these symptoms because spoiler alert, probably we can, this is what we do and we would love to and we'd love to see you feeling better.

ASAP. So that link is always in the show notes and I will see you ladies next time.