by Libby Weaver
The role of estrogen in the female body from a reproductive perspective is to lay down the lining of the uterus, which it does between days one and 14 of a typical 28-day reproductive cycle, with day one of the cycle being the first day of menstruation. Estrogen lays the lining of the uterus down over these first 14 days to prepare the female body for conception, if it takes place. Estrogen prepares a menstruating female to fall pregnant every single month of her life, whether she wants to or not! Remember, our bodies are completely geared for survival, and perpetuation of the human species is an enormous part of that survival process.
As a result of the biological imperative to conceive each month, estrogen ensures there is adequate body fat, as most females will not know immediately that they have fallen pregnant. In the event that the woman is a stick figure without much body fat, it is possible that a brand new fetus may not survive. To prevent this, estrogen signals fat to be laid down in specific areas, broadening the hips for example, to better serve the childbirth process.
Estrogen is the hormone that makes female breasts bud at the first signs of puberty; it also broadens the hips, and gives us our curves. It lays down fat on a woman’s hips, bottom, and thighs, and is typically responsible for making the lower half of a female body broader than the top half. Estrogen also, unfortunately, promotes fluid retention when it is in excess.
Fluid retention
I am convinced that many women “feel” fat when really they are either bloated or retaining fluid. I have never once weighed a client and I don’t encourage anyone else to get on the scales either. I avoid “weigh ins” for many reasons, but one certainly is that hormone levels fluctuate over the month and can increase the amount of fluid being retained until the hormones return to balance. Besides, when you weigh yourself, remember that all you are really doing is weighing your self-esteem. I have met thousands of women who can gain 7lb (3kg) in a day, and to say that this messes with their mind is an understatement. If you get on the scales in the morning and weigh 143lb, and, by the evening, you weigh 150lb, especially if you have eaten well and done some exercise that day and even if you haven’t eaten perfectly or exercised that day, it’s easy to feel incredibly disheartened and wonder how on earth this could possibly happen.
Remember this: It is not physically possible to gain 7lb (3kg) of body fat in a single day. The only possible cause is fluid retention. Yet even though the logical part of the female mind will know this, seeing three extra kilos on the scales over the course of just a day, or even a week, will make most women, no matter how logical, feel fat, flat, and lousy. As an aside, are you more likely to make good food choices when you feel flat? Are you likely to want to be intimate with your partner when you feel fleshy and puffy? Usually not and then you (and they) feel worse.
There can be numerous factors behind fluid retention, too many to go into in detail here, but in a nutshell, fluid retention can be driven by poor lymphatic flow, mineral deficiencies and imbalances, poor thyroid function, excess stress hormone production, and poor progesterone production. From an energetic medicine perspective, think about who or what are you holding on to that no longer serves you? Perhaps it is a belief that you don’t need anymore, and your body is simply trying to wake you up to this and get you to change. So many of us fear change, whether we realize it or not.
Estrogen can be a likely culprit when it comes to fluid in excess. It can also drive headaches, including migraines, increase blood clotting, decrease libido, and interfere with thyroid hormone production… big health consequences all due to too much of one little hormone.
What role does progesterone play?
Progesterone also plays a variety of roles in the human body. From a reproductive perspective, its job is to hold in place the lining of the uterus that estrogen has laid down between days one and 14 of your cycle. If your body detects that a conception has taken place, the lining of the uterus needs to be maintained and thickened, rather than shed. As a result, progesterone levels begin to rise. If there is no conception, the lining of the uterus is not needed, and progesterone levels fall away, which initiates menstruation. When health is optimal, progesterone is the dominant sex hormone from just after mid-cycle onward until menstruation.
Biologically, progesterone plays numerous other roles, all pivotal to the Accidentally Overweight message. Progesterone is a powerful antianxiety agent, an antidepressant and a diuretic, and it is essential if you are to access fat to utilize it for energy. Without the right amounts you will predominantly utilize glucose as your major fuel—not body fat—which may also lead to breaking your muscles down for additional energy, rather than burning fat.
The relationship between sex hormones and stress hormones is fascinating and powerful, and it’s where a great proportion of the physical, biochemical approach of Accidentally Overweight is focused. And this is because the majority of women who attend my weekend events get very positive changes in their body and their health when we address this.
The relationship between stress and sex hormones
Estrogen is the dominant sex hormone between days one and 14 of the menstrual cycle. As described earlier, its job is to lay down the lining of the uterus and make sure there is enough body fat to support the early stages of conception, if this occurs. For the first half of the menstrual cycle, a relatively small amount of progesterone is made by the adrenal glands. For the sake of this description, let’s call the amount two units. Remember, the reproductive role of progesterone is to hold the lining of the uterus in place, with the additional biological functions of it being an antianxiety agent, antidepressant, diuretic, and a support to using body fat as a fuel.
However, as you now understand from the previous chapter, your adrenal glands are also where you make your stress hormones, namely adrenalin and cortisol. Adrenalin communicates to every cell of your body that your life is being threatened, even though all you may have done is shown up at work and had an unexpected deadline thrown at you, or perhaps you had an argument with your beloved and he spoke to you inappropriately because he was feeling like a failure at the time. Men usually don’t behave well when they subconsciously access failure as an emotion, while women typically behave in a way they (or those around them) don’t like when they feel rejected. This does not excuse poor behavior, but rather offers an explanation to promote understanding.
When you are internally rattled, cortisol communicates to every cell of your body that there is no food left in the world and, as a result, it wants your body to break muscle down and store fat. Even though food is, in fact, abundant for you, and your cortisol production is likely to be coming from the areas of your life about which you feel uncertain, such as relationships, finances, or even what others might think of you, your body thinks there must be a flood, famine, or a war, as this was the only long-term stress humans historically experienced.
Since your body links progesterone to fertility, if your body’s perception is that your life is in danger and that there is no food left in the world, the last thing it wants is for a woman is to conceive, so it shuts down adrenal progesterone production. Estrogen and cortisol, both signaling fat storage, remain, while you’ve lost the counterbalancing hormone that helps use fat as a fuel and also helps gets rid of excess fluid!
I believe this situation alone is a modern-day, monumental shift in female chemistry, and it can wreak havoc on a woman’s emotional and physical wellbeing. A female can go from feeling happy, healthy, balanced, and energized, with great clarity of mind and an even mood, to having a foggy brain and feeling utterly exhausted. Physically she may feel puffy, heavy, bloated and full of fluid, with a sense that her clothes are getting tighter by the minute. And that is just the first half of the cycle!
A menstruating female ovulates around day 14 of her cycle, and there are numerous hormonal changes that occur to drive ovulation. Once the egg has been released from the ovary, a crater remains on the surface of the ovary where the egg popped out. This crater is called the corpu
s luteum, and it’s where the bulk of a woman’s progesterone is made. Progesterone is designed to peak on day 21 of a 28-day cycle at around 25 to 40 units. If conception takes place, then progesterone levels need to climb to continue to hold the lining of the uterus in place. Once the placenta has formed by week 12 of gestation, progesterone levels climb to around 300 to 400 units. Pregnancy is the time when a woman has the highest level of circulating progesterone in her lifetime. Once a woman has birthed, and passed the placenta, however, her progesterone level plunges from 350 to zero! It is fortunate that birth brings on some other feel-good hormones, although they tend to be more short-lived, and are impacted on by many environmental and emotional factors.
Historically, babies were welcomed into extended families and communities. Today, a more common scenario (not the only scenario) is a hospital birth followed by a new mother at home alone with her newborn during the day while her partner must continue to work to pay the bills. If there are challenges in their relationship or challenges caused by the demands of other children, financial stress, an ill newborn or simply one who won’t sleep, the new home environment with baby can be highly stressful. Another stressful scenario I’ve heard described thousands of times is one where a new mum has made what she thought would be a welcome transition (temporarily or permanently) from a corporate career to staying at home with her baby, but is now second-guessing her decision. The guilt and confusion around this scenario can be overwhelming and do not promote the restoration of adrenal progesterone levels, as the body is so busy making stress hormones that it is not “safe” for the new mum to make the fertility-linked progesterone. Remember, progesterone is one of the most powerful antianxiety and antidepressant substances the body makes.
On the other hand, if mum and baby do have support, and the new mum doesn’t feel she is alone with her precious new bundle, whether this is simply due to the mother’s beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions, or her actual physical support from other people, then adrenal progesterone levels are far more likely to be restored, and her chemistry all the better for it.
If, on the other hand, conception does not take place during a menstrual cycle, then maintaining the lining of the uterus is no longer necessary, and progesterone levels fall, allowing a female to bleed. However, something that is so common today is what is known as “luteal phase insufficiency,” where ovarian progesterone production is poor and a peak of 25 units in the second half of the cycle is not reached. Progesterone may be the dominant hormone from day 16 to day 18 of the cycle, but it falls away too soon (it is supposed to be dominant from around day 14/15 until around day 27), and estrogen becomes dominant leading into the menstrual bleed.
This estrogen dominance is the main biochemical basis of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), which causes grief for the woman as well as those around her! When PMS occurs it can be because estrogen is dominant for all but two or three days of a 28-day cycle, meaning that progesterone gets no time to rule the roost, and a woman misses out on all of its delicious stress-busting and fat-burning qualities.
What happens when estrogen is dominant?
The typical symptoms of low progesterone include:
Premenstrual migraine
PMS-like symptoms
Irregular or excessively heavy periods
Anxiety and nervousness
A feeling like you can’t get your breath past your heart
The typical symptoms of estrogen dominance (which usually also involves low progesterone—but not always) include:
Irregular periods or excessive vaginal bleeding
Bloating/fluid retention
Breast swelling and/or tenderness
Decreased libido
Mood swings, most often irritability and depression
Weight gain, especially around the abdomen and hips
Cold hands and feet
Headaches, particularly premenstrual
Tendency to yellow-tinged skin.
This is the most common hormonal imbalance I see in menstruating women.
The impact of excess estrogen is not only having significant physical and emotional effects on too many adults, but children are now also being impacted at alarming rates. A growing percentage of girls are starting to menstruate as young as eight years of age, which is of enormous concern. The scope of this book, however, can’t seek to “solve” this challenge but, for now, I merely want to highlight this “estrogen crisis” we currently face. The enormous excess of estrogen being made within the female body at earlier and earlier ages, often due to excess body fat (remember fat cells in girls, boys, women and men produce estrogen), combined with increased estrogen in our environment—predominantly from pesticides, herbicides and plastics (please never heat plastic of any kind; this means don’t put it in the dishwasher)—appear to be affecting our endocrine (hormonal) systems in literally life-changing ways.
It is essential to discern whether a woman is suffering from symptoms of estrogen dominance due to excess estrogen or by significantly low progesterone levels, or both. Low progesterone typically signals that adrenal and/or ovarian production of progesterone is poor. This person may have optimal estrogen levels, yet they are challenged with their periods and/or their body fat due to low progesterone levels.
Another extremely common scenario is one of estrogen excess. This can come about through environmental exposures, such as those listed above, as well as those we may ingest through food or medications. Another significant basis for estrogen excess is estrogen recycling as a result of poor estrogen detoxification by the liver. I will explore this in detail later; however, in a nutshell, the liver decides whether to excrete or recycle estrogen.
The liver prioritizes what it needs to detoxify, and because the body makes estrogen itself, it is not a high priority to clear it from the body. The best way to imagine it is that a woman can have this month’s estrogen circulating as well as last month’s and even from numerous previous months. Even the best progesterone producer cannot keep up with so much estrogen. Regardless of where the estrogen comes from—internal or external sources—it is vital that it is detoxified and excreted efficiently, once it has done its job in the body.
An additional estrogen-dominant hormonal picture is a combination of both the descriptions above of poor progesterone production and recycled estrogen. If we took better care of our liver, this would be far less common in the Western world. As I love to say, these things have become common, but they are not normal. Women are not supposed to get PMS. Your period is supposed to just turn up. No fluid retention, no bloating, no food cravings, no mood swings… and if it doesn’t just turn up, see it as your body asking you to do something differently: eat, drink, move, think, breathe, believe, or perceive in a new way.
I wrote the following article for breast cancer awareness month. The brief I was given was to write about what makes breasts healthy. Some of it repeats information I have included earlier, but I have shared it here to remind you how important these factors are.
* * *
Healthy breasts
When it comes to breast health, there is so much we now understand that contributes to the creation and maintenance of healthy breast tissue. Empowering women to take charge of this incredibly important aspect of their health is vital to the future of all women, and education must begin at a young age. Part of the challenge is distinguishing fact from fiction or fad, so let’s explore what we know creates healthy breasts.
Hormones, stress, and the liver
Although the hormone estrogen does some wonderful things for our health, too much of it or too much of a particular type of estrogen has been linked to some breast cancers. What is important to explore, when it comes to our hormones, is, why is estrogen so much more of a problem now as opposed to a time in the not so distant past? Part of the explanation lies in the production of stress hormones, and part of the explanation lies with the excretion of estrogen following liver detoxification of this substance.
When we are stress
ed, we make either, or both, of our two major stress hormones, namely adrenalin and cortisol. Adrenalin communicates to every cell of your body that your life is in danger, and cortisol tells your body that food is scarce. As a result, levels of another sex hormone called progesterone, which has been shown to be protective against breast cancer (except those that are progesterone receptor positive), fall through the floor as the body links progesterone to fertility. If the body believes that your life is in danger and that there is no more food left in the world, the last thing it wants for you is a pregnancy.
And so begins part of the problem with estrogen because it is dominant in comparison to progesterone. This situation may also arise from synthetic forms of estrogen, such as from the oral contraceptive pill (OCP) or hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
The second scenario to consider involves the excretion pathway of estrogen out of the body. Once a unit of estrogen has done its job for a specific time, it is transported to the liver where it has to be transformed so that it can be excreted. There are two phases to this detoxification process. Over the years, the workload of the liver in its second stage of this cleaning process can get clogged, just like traffic on a motorway. Where once substances flew through the liver at 100 mph, they now crawl through at 20 mph. When this process becomes terribly overloaded from years of too much alcohol, caffeine, refined sugars, trans fats, synthetic substances, or the byproducts of bowel congestion (a tendency to constipation), the estrogen will undergo its first stage of change, but there is no room on the second stage highway. So the estrogen is released by the liver back into the blood stream and recycled. Your body is then faced with the new estrogen it continues to make from your ovaries (if you are still menstruating) and your fat cells, as well as the recycled form. It is this recycled form of estrogen that has been found to be up to 400 times higher in women with estrogen-sensitive breast cancer.