Estrogen Dominant Type

This Hormone Type means an imbalance of estrogen and progesterone, two important female sex hormones. This is common when you’re high-achieving, active, and driven. 

An estrogen/progesterone imbalance is common in the perimenopause years when a woman’s hormones fluctuate naturally, but it can happen at other times, too.

If this resonates, you’re not alone!

Thankfully, there are many things you can do to improve symptoms (which don’t include expensive lab tests, supplements, or meds).

It can be simple and starts with a personalized approach that includes: balancing stress and blood sugar, optimizing sleep, reducing your exposure to common endocrine disruptors, and improving elimination pathways (think sweat and gut health).

Read on to find out more.

How it happens

It’s not always about estrogen being high, but more importantly, how it’s balanced with progesterone, another important female sex hormone. Ideally, we want progesterone to be higher than estrogen during the second half of the menstrual cycle. If you have estrogen continuously higher than progesterone in all phases of your cycle, you’ll feel it.

Estrogen dominance becomes a challenge in the perimenopause years when a woman’s hormones fluctuate naturally as ovarian production fluctuates.

Here’s how the imbalance can show up:

• High estrogen, lower progesterone
• Normal estrogen, low progesterone
• Low estrogen, even lower progesterone

Interesting side note: Estrogen dominance is not just a female thing. Men can be estrogen-dominant as well when estrogen exceeds testosterone.

Estrogen Dominance symptoms

Estrogen dominance will present itself differently in different women. You might have a few or many of the following symptoms, while someone else could have completely different ones. We’re all wonderfully unique like that.

Common symptoms include:

• PMS
• Headaches (especially around your period)
• Bloating, puffiness, or water retention
• Mood swings or irritability (especially before period)
• Crying easily
• Tender, swollen, or fibrocystic breasts
• Irregular or abnormal or heavy periods
• Spotting between cycles
• Weight or fat gain, especially around the abdomen and hips
• Feeling tired or lethargic
• Fibroids or myomas
• Ovarian cysts
• Endometriosis
• Low libido
• Hair loss
• Estrogen related cancer
• Infertility or miscarriage
• Trouble sleeping
• Allergies or histamine intolerance
• Accelerated aging
• Brain fog or memory issues
• Brown facial spots or discoloration (melasma)
• Hot flashes (even when not in menopause)
• Restless legs at night
• Feeling groggy upon waking
• An increase in colds or infections
• Feeling anxious or easily stressed
• Dizziness
• High blood sugar levels
• And more…

Ways we become estrogen-dominant

Most often, estrogen dominance is multifactorial, and women arrive at it for multiple reasons, not just one.

Some of the reasons could be:

• Xenoestrogens from the environment (man-made chemicals that act like estrogen in the body, often found in plastics, beauty products, fragrances, cleaners, and more)
• The perimenopausal years, when estrogen fluctuates
• Hormonal birth control
• Low levels of sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), can be due to PCOS, insulin resistance, hypothyroidism, alcohol use, and more…
• Constipation
• Imbalanced gut bacteria (dysbiosis)
• Stress of any kind — it comes in so many forms
• Body fat percentage greater than 28%
• Estrogen supplementation, most often without progesterone supplementation to complement
• Recreational drugs
• Cigarette smoke
• Alcohol use
• Insufficient diet or movement for your current hormone type (our hormone type varies throughout our life)
• Nutrient insufficiencies or deficiencies
• And more… 

Dearest Reader,

This information is for educational purposes only and not intended to diagnose or highlight imperfections. You've likely landed here following my quiz at YourHormoneQuiz.com.

No matter what you discover in these results, you're beautiful and perfect as you are. You're good enough and trying hard enough.

We're all unique and will experience hormonal shifts differently. This information is here to highlight that, despite what we've been told, we're not just little men — our bodies work differently — and if our hormones have us feeling less than our best, we absolutely can do something about it.

My aim is to support and empower you on your journey, where you need and want it. Take what you need, leave what you don't.

No judgement here, just good honest support.

XO, Laurie

What’s happening physiologically with estrogen dominance?

With estrogen dominance, the body, especially the liver, filters and disposes of used hormones or other estrogenic compounds and is often overburdened with eliminating toxins and moving out our metabolic waste. This could be for several reasons and is often multifactorial, ranging from our genetics to diet to sleep to constipation to toxic exposure to alcohol, cigarette, or drug use (think toxins), and more.

When our metabolic waste isn’t moving out fast enough — because the body is overburdened and can’t keep up — it stays in the body and gets recirculated. And we feel the symptoms.

How estrogen affects other hormones

Estrogen dominance can lead to blood sugar imbalance or insulin resistance. It can affect our thyroid and stress, impacting our cortisol levels. Estrogen dominance can be at the root of infertility or miscarriage as it throws other sex hormones off balance. As these hormones get thrown off balance, we’ll notice other important mood-, energy- and weight-regulating hormones get off their game.

What you can do about it

When dealing with any hormone imbalance, it’s important to get to the root of what’s causing it for sustainable, long-term improvement.

Balancing estrogen dominance is multifactorial and often requires — first and foremost — reestablishing a strong foundation of health with a supportive diet and lifestyle. That includes a supportive diet and lifestyle for your unique body and hormonal landscape.

Reducing your total stress load is key while nourishing your neuroendocrine system with stress-reducing and stress-buffering practices, such as improving sleep, optimizing nutrition and movement, shifting mindset and thought patterns, and sometimes targeted supplementation.

Check out this post for even more ways to get your hormones back in harmony.

This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, manage, or treat disease or serious conditions. Always check with your doctor before making any changes. It's important to consult a well-informed health practitioner for personal advice about your situation before relying on general information — we're all wonderfully unique.