Sex hormones, including estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone can have a major impact on overall health and well-being. Nowhere is this more obvious than in regards to weight loss, where sex hormone imbalances can make weight loss a frustrating and nearly impossible affair. In this 3 part series, we will explore some of the more common sex hormone imbalances that can negatively impact weight loss and greatly diminish a person’s quality of life.
Estrogen Dominance
An excess of estrogen in men and women will promote fat storage. “Estrogen dominance” is a state where the level of estrogen (mainly estradiol) is significantly higher than the level of progesterone in the body. It was first proposed by John R. Lee and Virginia Hopkins in their 1996 book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause: The Breakthrough Book on Natural Progesterone.
Estrogen dominance can start anytime in a person’s life. For women, it typically appears early in a woman’s menstrual history; for men it usually begins between the ages of forty and sixty. Young women are particularly prone to estrogen dominance and have tremendously difficult periods, with symptoms including irregular and heavy menstrual bleeding, water retention, weight gain, painful or swollen breasts, severe abdominal cramping, diarrhea or constipation, migraines, irritability and mood swings. These women are often prescribed birth control pills to help regulate the frequency and severity of their periods. However, this does nothing to correct the underlying imbalances that created the condition to begin with and may actually exacerbate the problem long-term.
Some women develop estrogen dominance much later in life; this is usually a result of dietary imbalances, liver impairment, detoxification problems and environmental factors or as a result of anovulatory cycles–menstrual cycles in which no ovulation has occurred–as menopause nears. Without ovulation, less progesterone is produced, which can lead to estrogen dominance.
Many diseases or problems are thought to be related to or affected by estrogen dominance including:
- Weight gain secondary to insulin resistance
- Fibrocystic breast disease
- Premenstrual syndrome (PMS)
- Migraines
- Menstrual disturbances–irregular and heavy bleeding
- Endometriosis
- Fibroids
- Ovarian cysts and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
- Breast Cancer
Estrogen dominance is thought to be much more prevalent than low progesterone or low estrogen, although it is possible that a woman can experience a combination of these conditions and/or experience fluctuations between these different conditions throughout her life. The rest of this series explores these other two sex hormone imbalances: low progesterone and low estrogen.
