I’m not sure what it is about this time of year . . . maybe the post-holiday weight gain, or the fear of pulling out a swimming suit in a few months. But I have had a number of people, both men and women, in the office with excessive estrogen levels.

Estrogen excess and estrogen dominance are two hormone abnormalities I find commonly in both men and women in my practice. These two issues are frequently complicating factors that make feeling good and weight loss difficult. They are, also, often the main reasons people don’t see dramatic improvement in a person’s symptoms of energy, fatigue and mental clarity when they’ve already changed their diet and lifestyle.

IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE WE GO ON: This information applies to patient who already have normal thyroid function and corrected insulin resistance. If your thyroid is off or if you are still significantly insulin resistant, it will affect estrogen and other male and female hormones, so follow a ketogenic diet and get your thyroid balanced FIRST!

What is Estrogen Dominance?

I’ve addressed estrogen dominance in a previous blog post. You can find it here. Estrogen dominance is a condition where there is an abnormal estrogen/progesterone ratio. The estrogen/progesterone ratio MUST be balanced. Normal estrogen levels with low progesterone (this can commonly occur with the use of a synthetic progestin (HRT) in female patients) is a common scenario that falls into the estrogen dominance pattern.

What is Estrogen Excess?

Estrogen excess is a situation where progesterone levels may be normal but estrogen is elevated (an abnormal ratio can also be present in this condition).

The symptoms of excess estrogen can be:

Depression
Fatigue
Poor Concentration
Irregular menstrual bleeding in women
Breast tenderness
Fibrocystic Breast Changes
PMS
Decreased Libido
Uterine Fibroids
Endometriosis
Water Retention/Bloating
Fat Gain around the hips and thighs
Breast and Uterine Cancers

Why is too much estrogen a problem?

Estrogen naturally stimulates cells to grow and multiply. Natural estrogens are essential. But, too much estrogen increases thyroid binding globulin, inactivating the thyroid function causing abdominal weight gain. Too much estrogen changes the body’s ability to remodel bone.

Estrogen is essential to stabilize the inner lining of arteries, however, excessive estrogen doubles one’s risk for stroke and increases the risk of coronary atherosclerosis and heart attack. Too much estrogen increases the size of the prostate, increases risk of prostate cancer and increases the risk of rheumatoid arthritis.

Estrogen excess is an elusive condition. Measuring estrogen levels is not frequently done, and most doctors were never trained to look at the three separate forms of estrogen in men and women. I had no idea this was an issue until about five years ago.

What causes excess estrogen?

The eleven most common causes of estrogen excess are:

Commercially raised meat & dairy products from animals dosed with high levels of bovine growth hormone.
Insecticide or pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables.
Tap water with petroleum derivatives
Paraben containing shampoo, lotion, soap, toothpaste, & cosmetics. Paraben is absorbed through the skin. There is a 100% absorption that misses first pass liver detoxification
Pthalates – soft plastic containing material or plastic wrapped food heated in the microwave releasing xenostrogens into the food.
Artificial sweeteners including MSG (propyl-gallate and 4-hexylresorcinol are the two most common). Canned foods that have been lined with a plastic coating called BPA (bisphenol-A). Most processed foods have some additive that you will want to avoid.
Foods containing soy or soy protein isolate contain unnaturally high amounts of plant estrogens (phytoestrogens).
Red dye #3 (erythrosine and phenosulfothiasize) found in food
Dryer Sheets containing high levels of xenoestrogens. Chronic skin exposure leads to permeation of the xenoestrogens into the skin.
Birth control pills (conventional synthetic estrogen containing hormone replacement)
Tampons and sanitary napkins containing dioxins, chlorine, fragrance, wax, surfactant, and rayon play a role in significant xenoestrogen absorption.

Other diseases can cause estrogen ratio’s to be elevated. These include liver disease, zinc deficiency, excessive alcohol intake, obesity, calcium deficiency, insulin resistance, diabetes, and excessive testosterone therapy.

How does a person naturally decrease excess estrogen if it is present?

Decrease xenoestrogen exposures:

1. 1. Reduce use of plastics where possible
  2. Do not microwave food in plastic containers
  3. Avoid the use of plastic wrap to cover or microwave the food
  4. Use glass or ceramic containers where possible
  5. Do not leave plastic water containers, especially drinking water, in the sun
  6. If a plastic water container was heated up significantly (like a water bottle being left in the car in the Arizona sun), throw it away.
  7. Don’t refill plastic water bottles
  8. Avoid freezing water in plastic bottles for drinking later
  9. Avoid butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) as a food preservative
  10. Limit skin care products containing xenoestrogenic substances

Use cruciferous vegetables like broccoli that contain indole-3carbiol (I3c).
Increase Omega-3 fat intake
Exercise
Use rosemary and turmeric (berberine)
Reduce weight
Use Vitamin D
Stop drinking alcohol
Stop smoking

These hormones, like estrogens, progesterone and testosterone can be easily checked by your doctor through blood or salivary testing. The key is a balance in the ratio between progesterone and estrogens.

The two estrogens that are essential to test are:

Estrone (E1)
Estradiol (E2)

These can be ordered through your doctor. Estrogens can take 2-3 months to balance out. It may take some time after making changes to see your levels normalize. Don’t fret.

What if natural methods don’t fix the problem?

When natural methods of lowering estrogen levels are ineffective, then your doctor will recommend treatment. A number of other effective medicinal approaches including:

Zinc Citrate
Quercetin
Grapeseed extract
DIM
Berberine
Resveratrol
Chrysin
Progesterone/Pregnenolone
Myomin
Vitamin K
Anastrazole

In my clinical experience, a ketogenic lifestyle is foundational to balancing these hormones consistently and naturally. Carbohydrate restriction by itself corrects many of the diseases of civilization. I addressed this in my book The Keto Cure. For many, there are few more steps necessary to living a long, happy and healthy life.

In my office, in addition to the ketogenic or carnivorous diet, I add on Berberine Plus 500mg twice daily with meals. This has been shown to notably improve the insulin resistance, lower estrogen and improve progesterone naturally.

Years ago, this was hard to find, so I created my own supplement line and these can be found at Ketoliving.com. Go to Ketoliving. com and order your bottle of Berberine Plus right now, before it is too late. I designed my own pharmaceutical grade berberine so that my patients could make sure they are getting real berberine in the doses I want you to have.

The treatment of this issue isn’t difficult. There is much more to come on this subject. I will address each of the progesterone, testosterone, DHEA and sex hormone binding globulin abnormalities in my future blogs. So, keep an eye on my web page DocMuscles.com/blog/.

So, get your hormones checked by someone who understand this problem and knows how to treat it. Second, limit estrogen stimulating sources in your diet and environment. Third, control you diet and order a bottle of Berberine Plus right away.

Over the last 18 years of my practice, I’ve seen tremendous success in helping people improve their health when low-carbohydrate dietary changes are anchored as the foundation of treatment. However, there is still a group of people that struggle with seeing success. Even with the most effective ketogenic dietary control, there are those that see abnormal weight gain, inability to lose weight, poor libido, fatigue, foggy thinking, mood swings, persisting depression, headaches, bloating, breast tenderness, fibro-cystic breast changes, hair loss, and hot flashes. They may not experience all these symptoms, however, many are often present. If you have been following a ketogenic lifestyle and are still experiencing any of these symptoms, you are probably suffering from estrogen dominance.

Estrogen dominance is a condition that elusively effects thousands of women (and men) and your doctor probably doesn’t even know about it. I didn’t know about it. I, like all of my physician colleagues, were trained in school that the symptoms above are related to fluctuations of estrogen as a woman ages (or dropping of testosterone as a man ages). We were, and still are, taught that they are fixed by giving more powerful doses of estrogen or testosterone.

Over the years of my clinical experience, giving more estrogen frequently didn’t work. And, giving men more testosterone didn’t work either. What I found very effective, for many, was changing the diet. And, for about 85% of people, the symptoms list above resolved. However, the cause of the symptoms above in that last 15% of patients I see was still elusive. Examinations, blood tests, and even psychological evaluations never revealed the answer. Giving synthetic estrogen, progestin or testosterone when the blood work showed abnormality partially alleviated some of the symptoms for a few months, but then the patients would end up back in my office with the symptoms having returned.

I’ve found a number of problems following the “standard” medical approach to using synthetic sex hormones.

The first problem is that estrogen, progesterone and testosterone are heavily bound to proteins in the blood. It is only the free component of the three forms of estrogen and progesterone in the body and the free testosterone that acts upon the delicate cells located throughout the body. Blood testing does not account for the levels of free estrogen forms and progesterone effectively. These can only be tested through salivary testing.

The second obstacle is that the synthetic forms of progesterone (progestin), cannot effectively enter the brain. When synthetic forms are used, a person only gets half the benefits of progesterone found in the human body. This is why so many women have depression, anxiety and foggy brain feelings when using the synthetic versions.

The third challenge is that pharmaceutical companies cannot patent a drug that is identical to your human hormones. The chemical structure of the synthetic estrogen, progestin or testosterone must be slightly different. Hormones effectively work on certain aspects of various cells throughout the body, however, progesterone and progestin (the synthetic version found in medroxyProgesterone) DO NOT have the same hormonal effect on each cell. Natural progesterone is broken down by the stomach when ingested. That’s why progestin was invented, however, it doesn’t act the same in the body and only does half the job.

The fourth dilema is that much of our food in the standard American Diet stimulates increased estrogen production or inhibits clearance of estrogen excess through the gut and digestive tract. This happens in men and women. We can get excess estrogen from animals treated with hormones in meats, milk and dairy products. Hydrogenated oils in processed foods change the way estrogen and progesterone are handled in the body. These unstable fats increase the effects of estrogen on the body and amplify the risk for cancers. Excessive omega-6 fatty acids in the diet magnify estrogen receptor response to estrogen.

Estrogen metabolism in the liver and removal in the gut are dependent on vitamins B & E, magnesium and idol-3-carbinol (IC3). Diets without adequate IC3 from glucobrassicin found in leafy green and crucirferous vegetables allow re-uptake of estrogen in the gut leading to high estrogen levels and estrogen dominance. This is where gut health is even more important, and where I see failure in the “carnivore” approach to a ketogenic lifestyle.

The fifth problem is that the more estrogen I give a person, the more estrogen receptors are unregulated to the surfaces of the cells in the body. When that happens, more estrogen is required. Excess estrogen can actually cause many of the same symptoms present in progesterone deficiency including:

Irregular or heavy bleeding
Breast tenderness
Depression
Fatigue
Poor concentration
Fibrocystic breast changes
Decreased libido
Fibroid growth on the uterus
Endometriosis
Water retention and bloating
Fat gain around hips and thighs
Bone mineral loss (osteoporosis)
Hair loss
Skin thinning
Disturbed sleep
Breast and uterine cancer

More estrogen isn’t needed. Balancing natural progesterone with the current estrogen the body is already making is the solution in most cases. This can only be effectively assessed through a salivary hormone test.

The treatment to this issue isn’t difficult. For that reason, much more is to come on this subject. I will address each of the points above in future blogs. However, the first step is get your hormones checked by someone who understand this problem. And, then knows how to interpret it and treat it.