The more we understand about the body the more scientists understand that many health problems have a foundation in the gut. Inflammation is the main contributing factor in all chronic diseases. This is because 75% of our lymphatic immune system lives in the gut and this controls inflammation.
Hormonal problems are no different and are affected by inflammation. As women while in our fertile years we manufacture oestrogen in our ovaries and fat cells. This then has its effect and then we need to remove this oestrogen from our bodies.
The process of this is via a chemical pathway through the liver called conjugation where we attach a water soluble protein to the fat soluble oestrogen (and other hormones) and transport it into the bile to be excreted into the intestines for elimination.
If we have an imbalance in our gut organisms where we do not have enough healthy bacteria we then reabsorb a lot of this oestrogen rather than eliminating it. This is called the enterohepatic circulation. The then means that our oestrogens are hanging around in our body for much greater lengths of time than they should be and cause what we call “oestrogen excess” symptoms such as premenstrual tension, sore breasts, sugar cravings, water retention etc.
The way to correct this imbalance and to improve our hormonal symptoms are to strengthen our digestion and the immune system function within the gut. The most effective way is to use a fermented probiotic. I find the fermented papaya and lemon fermented probiotics the most effective. This has the benefit of not only providing powerful probiotics for immune support but also live enzymes that support the digestion of our food. This means we absorb our food rather than have it available to feed the pathogenic bacteria in our gut. The benefit of this is that we can then excrete our hormones more efficiently lessening pre menstrual hormonal symptoms.
Lifestyle factors are also important. A low GI diet, exercise and good stress management also directly strengthen the immune and digestive systems. So not surprisingly balance in life is crucial to keeping the body healthy including our hormones.
