Estrogen Dominance Guide » Estrogen Dominance Symptoms

Estrogen Dominance and Atherosclerosis

Deb — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:59:13 +0000

According to a report published by Better Health Research, scientists at Johns Hopkins University have found a significant link between estrogen and a woman’s risk of developing coronary artery calcium (CAC).

The findings were originally presented to the American Heart Association during their November 2008 Scientific Sessions conference in New Orleans.

Older women, especially those suffering from estrogen dominance, are very likely to develop CAC. But women aren’t the only ones at risk. Men with high testosterone levels are at risk as well, although that same research study showed that testosterone may cause CAC to develop but will then slow down its progress.

Either way, women suffering from estrogen dominance are definitely at an increased risk for developing heart disease. The real question, however, is whether or not doctors and scientists will eventually decide to include hormone testing as part of a woman’s regular annual health exam. It seems as though hormone testing could become just as important as cholesterol and glucose testing.

Atherosclerosis and it’s complications, including coronary heart disease, is the #1 cause of death in the United States each year. It only makes sense to do a little extra testing if doing so means preventing one of the deadliest diseases in the country – right?

Excess Estrogen and Weight Gain

Jenn — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:27:30 +0000

Do you have an apple shaped body? Have you been gaining weight around your middle and, no matter what you try, you just can’t seem to lose that extra fat? It could be caused by excess estrogen in your system.

Why does Estrogen Dominance Cause Weight Gain?

Estrogen plays an important role both in how your body distributes fat and in the way it burns fat. Because the tissues in your middle are sensitive to estrogen, that hormone tends to accumulate in the cells in your abdomen, hips and upper thighs if you’re a woman or in the chest and abdomen if you’re a man. When the estrogen enters those fat cells, it does what is genetically designed to do: it orders those cells to reproduce and multiply and, in turn, those fat cells create even more estrogen.

Estrogen also helps control how our bodies burn up those fats and get rid of them. When there is too much estrogen in those cells around the middle of the body, it becomes almost impossible to burn that fatty tissue away. That’s why the fat accumulating in those areas is often called ’stubborn fat’. No matter how much you diet or exercise, stubborn fat just refuses to go away. It’s tenacious and clings to your body as stubbornly as barnacles on a ship.

Weight Gain Encourages Excess Estrogen

Okay, now you’re trapped in the middle of a cruel cycle. You’re overweight because you have estrogen dominance and excess estrogen causes you to gain weight. Those added fat cells produce estrogen, making the problem even worse. You know that carrying extra weight, particularly around your abdomen, causes health problems like type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance and even some cancers. So how can you break the vicious cycle before it causes you to develop serious health issues?

How to Break the Estrogen/Weight Gain Cycle

First, make sure that you really are estrogen dominant. There are simple tests available that you can take to find out if you are suffering from this condition. Learn more about these tests for estrogen dominance.

Once you have determined that you do have estrogen dominance, there are several steps you can take to help get your hormones back in balance. The first is to learn more about what causes the condition and then you can find ways to help control it. There are many helpful posts on this site that can help you educate yourself about estrogen dominance, it’s other symptoms, the importance of getting your hormones back in balance, and steps you can take to accomplish that goal.

Unfortunately, estrogen dominance can create much more serious problems than weight gain, including potentially lethal illnesses such as breast cancer. Controlling estrogen dominance could not only help you lose that stubborn fat around your middle - it could save your life.

The Link Between Estrogen Dominance and Breast Cancer

Jenn — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:47:01 +0000

Although estrogen dominance is responsible for causing many problems, none is more frightening or potentially harmful than breast cancer. In the United States alone, 150,000 women are diagnosed each year with breast cancer and 45,000 die from the disease. Researchers are working diligently to find a way to prevent breast cancer and have discovered a definite link between estrogen and breast cancer.

In a post by Dr. Steven Hotze, he explains the results of a study conducted by John Hopkins University’s School of Public Health. The study was originally set up to research infertility in a group of women who were having trouble conceiving. The group was divided in two; those whose fertility issues were caused by non-hormonal reasons and those who were deemed infertile because of progesterone deficiency and estrogen dominance. For more than 30 years, the researchers also recorded the cases of breast cancer among the women. The end result? The premenopausal women with estrogen dominance turned out to have a whopping 540% greater risk for developing breast cancer than the other women. This is just one of many studies that have linked estrogen to breast cancer.

Estrogen Receptors and Breast Cancer

So what role does estrogen play in breast cancer? Let’s take a closer look at what is known about how estrogen is involved.

Hormones like estrogen are needed in multiple areas of the body so they travel through the bloodstream looking for their matching hormone receptors. Hormone receptors are special protein molecules attached to many cells in your body. They act like an on-off switch for certain cell activities. When the matching hormone comes along, it fits into the receptor like a key into a lock and turns on a specific activity.

One of the jobs of estrogen is to stimulate cell growth in breast tissue, so there are estrogen receptors located there. When the estrogen fits into the estrogen receptor, the estrogen signals the cells to divide and multiply. The estrogen cannot tell the difference between healthy cells and cancerous cells and attaches to estrogen receptors in both types of cells. Cancer cells are already prone to multiplying very rapidly and they are stimulated even more by estrogen.

Estrogen can also direct cells to make receptors for other hormones, including progesterone, which is another hormone that instructs cells in the breast to multiply. So estrogen can actually play a double role in encouraging the growth of cancer cells.

Do all breast cancer cells have hormone receptors? No, but doctors do know that about 75% of cancerous breast tumors are estrogen-receptor positive and 65% are progesterone-receptor positive. There are tumors with receptors for both hormones and some that do not have any hormone receptors.

Can Controlling Estrogen Metabolism Prevent Breast Cancer?

Scientists are working diligently to see if they can help prevent breast cancer by controlling estrogen metabolism in the body.

Here’s what many scientists think might be happening. They believe that it’s not just about how much estrogen is in your system, but how that estrogen is broken down, or metabolized, that may be an important factor. Estrogen creates a ‘good’ metabolite called 2-hydroxyestrone that is correlated with a decreased risk of breast cancer and a ‘bad’ metabolite called 16-hydroxyestrone that is associated with a high risk.

There is now a test available to help predict your breast cancer risk. The 2/16 estrogen metabolism test is a urine test that measures the ratio of those two important estrogen metabolites. An estrogen metabolism ratio of 2.0 or higher seems to mean that you are less likely to get breast cancer.

Why not talk to your doctor about an estrogen metabolism 2/16 test? The estrogen metabolism ratio can and does change throughout your life. If you do find that your risk for breast cancer is high, there are simple steps you can take to improve your estrogen metabolism ratio and as as result, defend yourself against this deadly disease. Take a look at the post “Your Breast Cancer Defense” to learn about some of the ways to improve your estrogen metabolism ratio and decrease your risk of breast cancer.

Breast Tenderness and Estrogen Dominance

Jenn — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:38:54 +0000

Are you one of the millions of women who experience cyclical breast tenderness before or during your period? Breast tenderness, known in the medical world as mastalgia, can range from mild to severe. Your breasts may feel full and heavy, with a dull pain or sometimes your breasts are so sore and irritated that even the slightest touch makes them ache. It may be severe enough that you have trouble sleeping. So what causes this problem and is there anything you can do to help relieve it?

Breast Tenderness Causes

First, to ease your fears, understand that breast tenderness is not one of the normal signs of breast cancer. The usual cause for cyclical breast tenderness is a hormonal imbalance. During the second half of your cycle, the hormones estrogen and progesterone stimulate your breasts and they become swollen, more lumpy, and tender. Then you have your period, the uterine sloughs off its lining and the breasts return to normal. If, however, your hormones are unbalanced, your body gets confused and doesn’t always follow the original plan. The discomfort in your breasts is more intense and lasts longer.

How do your hormones get unbalanced, you ask? There are a variety of ways, including stress, poor diet, birth control pills or other medications and an array of other instigating factors.

No matter what caused the imbalance in the first place, however, the end result is usually estrogen dominance, a condition where there is much more estrogen in the system than there is progesterone. Ideally, the two hormones should be proportionate, but when the body overproduces estrogen and produces little or no progesterone, the scales are tipped.

Breast Tenderness Treatment

So what can you do to find relief from breast tenderness? Well, there are some steps you can take in the short term. One of them is to make sure your breasts have strong support. Wear a bra that fits right and is supportive, but is constructed so that it does not cause further irritation. Choose a seamless bra or one that has a soft lining in the cups covering up seams. Many women prefer a sports bra to a traditional bra when they are experiencing breast discomfort.

Avoid caffeine. Caffeine causes blood vessels to dilate and can exacerbate the pain.

Some women find it helpful to use a heating pad or warm compresses on sore breasts while others think it helps to cool down tender tissue with cold packs.

The most effective and lasting way to resolve the breast tenderness problem, however, is to learn how to control estrogen dominance. There are several healthy, natural steps you can take, including using progesterone creams, eating a diet designed to promote hormonal balance, regular exercise and other simple measures. If you take at least some of these steps, you will probably see that you have improved several aspects of your physical and mental health, not just reduced your bouts of breast tenderness.

Symptoms of Estrogen Dominance in Women

Jenn — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:15:35 +0000

Estrogen dominance is a disorder that the medical community is still learning about today. For many years, it was thought that low estrogen was the cause of many problems women dealt with, especially those concerning menopause. In 1983, however, Dr. John Lee published his

discoveries about estrogen dominance. He said estrogen dominance was having too much estrogen in the system compared to the amount of progesterone you have. When this imbalance occurs, there are a large number of symptoms you can experience. Although estrogen dominance can also appear in men and children, there are some symptoms that naturally only women will experience. Here are some of the many symptoms you might experience:

Infertility
Miscarriage
Breast tenderness
Cold hands and feet
Breast cancer
Hair loss
Irregular menstrual periods
PMS
Bloating, water retention
Acceleration of the aging process
Depression
Mood swings
Decreased sex drive
Headaches
Weight gain, especially around the abdomen, hips and thighs
Anxiety
Irritability
Dry eyes
Allergy symptoms
Ovarian cancer
Fatigue
Slow metabolism rate
Unstable blood sugar
Increased risk of stroke
Insomnia
Foggy thinking, memory loss
Early puberty

There are even more symptoms that can be caused by estrogen dominance. It seems as if nearly every factor of your life can be touched by this condition. Because of that, estrogen dominance can be a prevailing factor in how you feel, how you look and what you do. It even can control whether you have children or not.

Do you suffer from the symptoms of estrogen dominance? If so, you are not alone. More and more women are being affected by this life changing condition. Part of the reason is that we are being bombarded by what is known as xenoestrogens, or man made chemicals that mimic estrogen’s effects. Xeno means foreign, so literally, it is foreign estrogen. These estrogen imitators are found in many commercially produced meats and other foods, plastics, Styrofoam, cosmetics, artificial scents, pesticides, herbicides, paints, lacquers, and solvents.

Are their steps we can take to control estrogen dominance? Absolutely. Consult a naturopathic physician to confirm that you have the condition and ask for advice. You can also find helpful information at site’s like this on the internet or in your library. This problem can be corrected and doing so can make a big improvement in your life. Sometimes the solution is as simple as using a progesterone cream or spray, but there are also diets, herbs and other natural ways to fight back against estrogen dominance.