Episode 312: Estrogen Dominance & Detox: What You Need to Know
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
Grab your DUTCH test and your headphones because this episode is a companion guide to your test, specifically the estrogen section. Learn the symptoms of estrogen dominance, how excessive estrogen can lead to diseases like PCOS and endometriosis, and why estrogen dominance is so common in this day and age. If you suspect you have estrogen dominance, you’ll learn about the supplement and food as medicine approaches we use in practice to help balance hormones. The biggest take-away from today? Never underestimate the importance of regular bowel movements.
In this episode:
Symptoms of estrogen dominance and why it’s so common [3:00]
How the liver, kidneys and GI tract work together for detoxification [16:32]
Food as medicine approach to support detoxification [23:46]
How things like genetics, plastics, and certain polyphenols can slow down detoxification [32:51]
If you’re struggling with estrogen dominance even after looking at your diet and supplementation, you need to look at your gut [37:00]
How constipation plays a huge role in estrogen clearance [41:29]
Resources mentioned:
Funk’tional Nutrition Collective
1:1 Funk’tional Nutrition Membership
Your Hormone Revival™ (Only available within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase!)
Ned Natural Remedies (get 15% off your order with code FUNK)
Qualia (get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
Learn more about Hormones & Functional Nutrition
Related episodes:
310: Ways to Naturally Increase Progesterone
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Erin Holt [00:00:02]:
I'm Erin Holt and this is the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions, and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience, and because of that, I've got a major bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional healthcare model. They're both failing so many of us. But functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do, and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect.
Erin Holt [00:00:39]:
So I founded the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school and mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same. This show is for you if you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate review and share because you never know whose life you might change and of course, keep coming back for more.
Erin Holt [00:01:13]:
Hello friends.
Erin Holt [00:01:14]:
Today we're going to continue on with this little mini hormone series that I'm doing. So a couple of weeks ago we talked about low progesterone, the whys behind it, and also what to do. Last week we talked more about food, diet, nutrition for overall hormone health and hormone balance. Today we're going to get into estrogen. So estrogen dominance and estrogen detoxification. A couple of weeks ago I said that low progesterone is one of the most common hormone imbalances that we see that can oftentimes go hand in hand with symptoms of estrogen dominance. Super duper common. Symptoms of estrogen dominance would include fatigue, weight gain, mood swings, PM's, heavy menstruation, headaches, migraines, anxiety, nervousness, depression, low libido, breast swelling and tenderness, fibrocystic breasts, uterine fibroids, cystic ovaries. We can see water and fluid retention, low thyroid symptoms, excess blood clotting, and if you listened to the show on low progesterone a couple of weeks ago, you might notice that there's a lot of overlap here.
Erin Holt [00:02:21]:
Now, estrogen dominance can be due to too much estrogen, but it can also be due to an imbalance of the ratio between estrogen and progesterone. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, when progesterone is low estrogen can have excessive effects. It can kind of take over and rule the show. So sometimes estrogen dominance is due to creating too much estrogen in the body. Sometimes it's because you don't have enough progesterone to match the estrogen. And then sometimes it's because your body is not clearing estrogen out of the body like it's supposed to. And that's what we're really going to focus on for today's episode. Before that, I want to talk about why this is so common, and it has everything to do with our environment, the entire world that we're living in, the toxins that we're exposed to, the high stress, go, go, go mentality, the way we live our life, the foods that we eat, the primarily processed foods that we put into our bodies every single day, this entire environment has created a perfect recipe for imbalance in the body.
Erin Holt [00:03:29]:
It is not the way that our body is really designed to thrive. And so because of this, we see a lot of health imbalances. We can see immune dysregulation. We can see autoimmunity, we can see gut issues. We can see nervous system issues, and of course, we can see hormone imbalance. Now, more specifically with estrogen, there are certain things that have even more an effect on this, environmental factors like endocrine disrupting chemicals. We talked about that a little bit a couple of weeks ago. Psychological influence of a lot of stress.
Erin Holt [00:04:01]:
Stress tends to drop progesterone and can make that imbalance. Drinking. The normalization of alcohol consumption, as little as four drinks per week can impact your estrogen. So, you know, if you know that you have high levels of estrogen or an impaired ability to clear estrogen out of your body, and you're drinking a lot, and you're just like, oh, it's just a glass of wine a night. Well, that could be part of the overall picture and the overall problem. Estrogen is a builder of a hormone, and if we can't appropriately clear it out of our body, it can overbuild. So we can see things like PCOS, like I said before, fibrocystic breasts, uterine fibroids, heavy, prolonged bleeding. If any of that is your bag, if you deal with that on the reg, today's episode is going to be extra, extra important for you. But this is really why we want to focus on clearance of estrogen, why it's so important, and why we want to get into that in today's show.
Erin Holt [00:04:53]:
So part of today's show is actually going to be a module, a lecture from Your Hormone Revival. And it. It is pretty in depth. I just wanna give you a heads up. This is not like the light and fluffy overview type of show. My intention when I created Your Hormone Revival, was to essentially give you a user's manual for your own body. I really love to teach women to have a basic understanding of their own physiology, because without that, we're constantly, and will always be, outsourcing our health to external authority. And I think that there's a time and there's a place for that.
Erin Holt [00:05:33]:
But ultimately, so much of my work is bringing people back to themselves, teaching them to reestablish their own inner authority, their own inner knowing. And if we're disconnected from our bodies, if we totally don't understand our bodies, it's really challenging to do that. And I think for years, women have been taught and even shown that we can't possibly handle information about our bodies. You know, it's just, it's not for us. And that's really agitated me, and I don't believe it to be true. And so that's why so much of my content and my programs are education heavy. It's by design. It's getting you to understand all of the different systems that you're working with, how they interact with each other.
Erin Holt [00:06:11]:
And this way, you understand why you're doing what you're doing. If I just told you to go for a walk every single day, chances of you actually doing that are pretty low. But I've explained the whys behind it. If I explain what's happening with your body when you do that, you're going to be more likely to do that, you're going to be more likely to stick to that. You're going to be more likely to build that in as a habit. And so I'm a big why person, and I'm always trying to connect you deeper to the whys, why we're doing these things, why we're making the recommendations that we're making. And I do think that that's part of the secret sauce of Your Hormone Revival. Hundreds of women have gone through that program with tremendous success, and it will be available, just a heads up, it will be available through the Collective.
Erin Holt [00:06:53]:
The Collective is opening May 20. And so if you want to learn more about your bodies, build out those habits. We create the space for you to do that with us. And you get access to all of my programs, which are game changers for a lot of people. So, anyway, this particular episode is going to be a companion guide to your DUTCH test, specifically the estrogen section of the test. We had a lot of cues. That's where this hormone series came from because we got so many questions on instagram, and a lot of those questions were pretty lab specific. DUTCH test specific.
Erin Holt [00:07:28]:
This is what I see on my DUTCH test. What does it mean and what should I do? So we spent some time the last two weeks getting into some of the non negotiable basics because I don't like to have these more in depth, like, nitty gritty conversations without talking to you about the fundamentals and the basics. When you skip the fundamentals and the basics and try to dial in the specific supplement based on the lab test, that usually fails. That approach usually fails. But if you're doing the things that I'm talking about today on top of a strong foundation, well, now we're cooking with gas. And that doesn't usually fail. That usually wins. So make sure you go back and listen to last two episodes because everything I'm going to talk about today will build on that.
Erin Holt [00:08:10]:
But what I'm trying to do is help you understand the estrogen section of your DUTCH test. If you don't have one, you will still learn some ways to support estrogen clearance. So don't worry. But I wanted to give you this lecture because I thought it could help a lot of people understand what they're looking at with their own DUTCH test. And a lot of the questions that came to me about labs and about their DUTCH test kind of made me wonder, like, why aren't your practitioners going over these labs in depth with you? Who ordered this test and if it was a practitioner, that practitioner really should be able to answer these questions that you have. You're always more than welcome to ask me questions, and if I have the availability and the time, I'll answer them. But your practitioner should be doing that. My belief is that that should be happening.
Erin Holt [00:08:57]:
If you spend $400 on a hormone test, you should walk away with all of your questions answered. That is my belief. And so I bake that belief into how we practice in our own one to one care. What we do for our clients so that we can prevent this confusion is to a schedule appointment so we actually have time to go over labs. Something that Rachel is really, really good about is not going over more than two labs and one appointment. She won't do it because she wants to have plenty of time and space for you to understand everything that you're seeing, all the data points and have, answer all, get all of your questions answered. The other thing that we do is allow you to record those because, you know, sometimes it's hard to take in all the information at once.
Erin Holt [00:09:43]:
So we want you to have a resource to go back to in case you need to. Now, before we get into the meat and potatoes of this episode, I do want to say this. I want to read you a recent negative review that I got for the podcast. Here we go. This podcast is one of the most up to date and evidence based nutrition podcasts I've found. So that's obviously not the negative part. What I don't like is Erin's rudeness to fellow practitioners. Practitioners should support each other and lift each other up, not reply with snarky comments and put others down.
Erin Holt [00:10:17]:
So I do want to speak into this because I think what she's referring to, or they're referring to as rudeness, is my willingness to push our industry to be better. When I look around at the colleagues who I respect, who I love, who I adore, who I think are doing really, really good work, the thing that we all have in common is we are pushing ourselves to be better. We are willing to look at our blind spots. We're willing to look at the blind spots in our industry. We're always poking holes at the way we practice and asking, how can we do better? How can we do better? We recognize that conventional medicine is failing a lot of people. So if we're in the functional industry trying to do something different, we better be doing something different. So how can we do better? How can we push ourselves? And the truth is, whether you like it or not, functional nutrition and functional medicine don't have an awesome reputation right now. And I have insight into why, because so many of our clients come to us after working with other functional practitioners.
Erin Holt [00:11:17]:
So the things that I speak into on this show are things that are actually happening out there. And I recognize it might be uncomfortable to hear, but it is necessary. It's necessary to be uncomfortable. And if you are a practitioner who's not willing to be uncomfortable, it sort of begs the question, are you in the right job? Are you in the right industry? And yes, this can be perceived as rude, but I also think it's a really important and necessary conversation. And of course I'm going to speak into the things that I'm seeing. That's the purpose in the intention of this whole show. It's why I created it six and a half years ago. This podcast is here to advocate for patient care.
Erin Holt [00:11:56]:
It's not just to sit back and blindly tell all practitioners, you're doing a great job. Good job. Good job, you. Listen, that guidance and that mentorship does exist. I created it four years ago with the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy. It's there. And from time to time, I will sprinkle that into the show.
Erin Holt [00:12:13]:
So if you're using my show as a free resource for your continuing education and for, I quote, the most up to date and evidence based nutrition, that's great. I love that. I love that for you. I welcome that. You're welcome here, but you're not welcome to dictate what I say, who I speak to, and how. I love that practitioners listen to the show, and often I'll sneak in episodes just for you. That's how much I love you. But please understand, this podcast was created for the people.
Erin Holt [00:12:40]:
And I'm always going to advocate for the people, and I'm always willing to have the hard, uncomfortable conversations and say, this is what's not working. How can we change? How can we do better? How can we move this industry forward? That's why I'm here. If you don't like it, that's okay. You don't have to be here. But that's why I'm here. That's why I show up every single week. That's why I keep coming back. It's for that reason.
Erin Holt [00:13:04]:
So podcasts for the people and people. If you walk away from a functional practitioner with a DUTCH test or any test, and you have no idea what that data means, that is on your practitioner, that shouldn't be the case. If you spend hundreds of dollars on a test, you should understand what that test is telling you. That is your practitioner's job. So there. I did it. The rudeness. Anyway, I hope this episode helps you.
Erin Holt [00:13:30]:
Whether you're a practitioner who helps people interpret DUTCH tests, or you're somebody with hormone imbalance that is interested in a DUTCH test, or you have a DUTCH test sitting right in front of you, this episode will hopefully help you make some sense of that. I love you guys, and I will see you next week.
Erin Holt [00:15:31]:
All right, you might want to grab a cup of tea for this one because we're going to get into the nitty gritty of estrogen metabolism. The reason that I'm getting into such detail in this module is because I want you to understand your DUTCH test a little bit better. It is not as simple with hormone testing as saying, hey, your hormones are high or your hormones are low. We want to know why. And we also want to know which pathways hormones are pushing down. How are we clearing and metabolizing our hormones? Because this is really going to dictate what the treatment is and how successful the treatment is. Okay, so there are three different phases of estrogen metabolism. Estrogen detox.
Erin Holt [00:16:29]:
I'll use those two words interchangeably. Um, they essentially mean the same thing, how we're moving estrogen through and out of the body. So let's dive into it. The whole goal here is we want to use hormones and then we want to lose them. We want to use them, make them, and lose them. Okay, so all three parts of that have to be working appropriately. In the liver, we have phase one, phase two, and phase three.
Erin Holt [00:16:56]:
Phase one is detox. Via hydroxylation to 2, 4, and 16OH. You'll see exactly what that means. Don't worry about that too much. A lot of scary words, numbers. Phase two is the methylation and COMT. Phase three is the transporters to either the kidneys or the bile. And then we also have to look at what the heck is happening in the GI tract with glucuronidation, an enzyme called beta glucuronidase.
Erin Holt [00:17:21]:
And poop. Are we pooping? Phase one is all about. We're going to use another bathtub analogy. Is water filling up the tub? Do we have enough water coming in? Do we have too much water coming in? Is it the right type of water that's coming in? Right. This is looking at our hormones, what's coming into the tub? And then phase two is really about the drain, how we're draining those hormones out of the tub. Do we have a blocked drain? Is our drain nice and open? Are things getting out efficiently? That's what we have to look at. That's what the DUTCH test shows us. So 2OH, this is this crazy thing that most of you have seen on your DUTCH test.
Erin Holt [00:18:02]:
These are our estrogens. So obviously, this person is high in all three estrogens. We have estrone, estradiol, and estriol. We can push down different pathways. The 2OH is the one that we're going to be talking about right here. So this is the 2OH. It's also the green on the pie chart. This is considered safer because it binds to estrogen receptors with less affinity, not as tightly, and that's a good thing.
Erin Holt [00:18:35]:
One word of note is that higher levels of this can inhibit tyrosine. Tyrosine is the precursor for our neurotransmitters, dopamine and also norepinephrine and epinephrine or catecholamines.
Erin Holt [00:18:49]:
So we want to just make sure that we're clearing estrogens all the way out of the body so they don't impact our neurotransmitters. But for the most part, this is the one that we want to be pushing down. Right. And this person absolutely is. Most of their pie chart is green. So that's the 2OH. From 2OH, we push over to 2-Methoxy-E1 this has been methylated. We use COMT enzyme to methylate it. It's considered antiproliferative, which is a good thing because it's not cancer causing estrogen.
Erin Holt [00:19:28]:
It has anti aromatase activity. We can take testosterone and aromatize it to estrogen, which isn't a good thing to happen for the most part because it increases our overall estrogen and decreases our testosterone. So it blocks that and it doesn't bind much to the estrogen receptor, which is a good thing. So we want to see this, we want to see this pathway really being supported. Then we have the 4OH, which is right here. It's this red pathway. It's the red part on the pie chart. This is the most carcinogenic because it forms unstable intermediates.
Erin Holt [00:20:08]:
Remember phase one? Phase one detox spits out intermediates that are a little bit wild, a little bit crazy. And this one's the most wild and the most crazy. It also binds to the estrogen receptor with high and tight affinity. And then we have 16OH, which is fine in some, you know, this is the blue part of the pie chart, the blue arrow, but it is proliferative. It makes things grow, which isn't always great in the presence of cancer. So the green pathway is the least carcinogenic. The red pathway is the most phase one. So you see here CYP, CYP. CYP are liver enzymes and they're heme dependent.
Erin Holt [00:20:54]:
So what are some things that can jack up phase one? If this system isn't working like it should, and again, this person's is, despite the high estrogen, they're pushing down the appropriate pathways. Iron deficiency or iron overload can both impact detoxification because this enzyme means heme. So if you have, if you know you have one or the other of these based on your iron test, that's something to consider. What else can impair phase one? Any type of environmental toxicants. We're going to get into all of these in an upcoming module. It can certainly impair phase one. Smoking, eating charred meats. So barbecue, barbecuing your meat so they, they blacken, can impair phase one.
Erin Holt [00:21:40]:
Grapefruit juice can affect those CYP enzymes. That's why in a lot of bottles of medication, they tell you that you don't want to eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice because it impacts the metabolism of the medication. And alcohol uses the same CYP pathways. So if you have alcohol in the system, the liver is going to deal with this first and it's going to put estrogen on the back burner. So this is another reason to reduce your alcohol consumption, especially if you have issues with high estrogen or phase one metabolism. Some interventions to support phase one. So if yours is wacky, here's what we can do. Dim also, or indole-3-carbinol.
Erin Holt [00:22:27]:
So we're get indole-3-carbinol in cruciferous veggies and we convert it into dim. This pushes down healthier pathways, the 2OH pathways, and it pushes away from the more carcinogenic 4OH pathway. The issue here with supplementation is that indole-3-carbinol needs stomach acid to convert into dim. So if you have poor stomach acid, if you have a history of PPI use, you're on acid blocking medications, you're taking Tums regularly, you definitely want to go for dim. Dim is going to be the better option for supplementation. Dim, however, will pull estrogen one and estrogen two out of circulation. This is a good thing if you have high estrogen, right? Great thing. But if you have low estrogen, then this might make your symptoms worse.
Erin Holt [00:23:18]:
So it's good to know what your total estrogen, total estrogen counts are and also how you're metabolizing them. So if you have high estrogen or if your phase one is not working appropriately, you could supplement with dim. A good dose is 100 to 300 milligrams a day. Dim does clear out of the body in 24 hours. So it's a supplement that you do have to take every single day. Food as medicine. So as I said, indole-3-carbinol comes from the brassica family, from our cruciferous veggies, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, all those good things that support the liver health indim increases slightly in food when it's chopped up, like these broccoli, broccoli florets or slightly heated. But here's the deal. We would need to eat 600 grams of cruciferous veggies a day for several years to get the same benefit of taking a dim supplement.
Erin Holt [00:24:21]:
So while I always encourage people to really push those, those cruciferous veggies, they're so important, it's not enough of the heavy lifting to switch up your estrogen metabolism. So doing a combination of dim supplement and eating the foods is really, really good. The Apiaceae family never know if I'm saying that word right. When I see that many vowels in one word, I always freak out. But carrots, cumin, dill, fennel, anise, celery, caraway, coriander, parsley, these are all really great ways to support phase one. So the more you can work these into your dietary rotation, the better. I threw this out here for my coffee lovers because I feel like it's been doom and gloom about coffee up into this point. And of course, if you've got your adrenal issues, if you've got the high cortisol, if you've got the low cortisol, you want to be mindful of your coffee consumption.
Erin Holt [00:25:26]:
But coffee with caffeine, so it has to be caffeinated. Coffee helps to improve phase one pathway for estrogen. So there you go. That is your gift from me to you today. And then we have N-Acetyl Cysteine, which we've talked about a bunch before. This reroutes estrogen, so it pushes away from the bad pathways and towards the good pathways. It's very good for estrogen dominance. This is especially true if you're concerned with cancer risk.
Erin Holt [00:25:57]:
Excuse me, glutathione. Remember that N-Acetyl Cysteine is a glutathione precursor. If you have a history of cancer. I learned this. I actually don't understand the mechanism of the why's, but I learned this in a lecture, so I always want to pass this on. Glutathione is not a good supplement for those with cancer, but otherwise, the N-Acetyl Cysteine precursor to glutathione can be really helpful for estrogen dominance. And glutathione itself helps to recycle other antioxidants. So this is an antioxidant, and we have plenty.
Erin Holt [00:26:30]:
When we have plenty of glutathione, it helps to recycle our other antioxidants. So it kind of, like, supercharges them. And then we have sulforaphane, which is, I mean, just a shining star in the world of nutrition. Sulforaphane, once it's absorbed, affects glutathione. So that's a good thing, right? It activates Nrf2, which induces phase two enzymes. So it supports phase two detoxification. It also combats oxidative stress. In other words, it's a good thing.
Erin Holt [00:27:03]:
It also reroutes the bad pathways and pushes towards the more protective pathways. We find this in cruciferous veggies, but really high in broccoli sprouts. So you just need a little bit of broccoli sprouts. You would have to eat, like, a ton of broccoli to get this. I highly recommend working broccoli sprouts into your rotation. You can make them at home really inexpensively, but you could also grab them at the health food stores. Other food options would be cauliflower sprouts and mustard sprouts. I really just don't see these as much as the broccoli sprouts.
Erin Holt [00:27:40]:
Which is why I tend to promote broccoli sprouts. And then resveratrol. We know, and we love resveratrol because we get it in red wine, also in grapes. This supports phase one, phase two, phase three. It helps to lower 4OH, that red part on the pie chart. So if your red part is high, resveratrol is good for you. The problem with resveratrol is that it's not very bioavailable to the body. It's hard to absorb, so you'd have to take a lot of it in order to get it.
Erin Holt [00:28:14]:
Apex Energetics makes a good resveratrol supplement, but for the most part, pretty darn hard. With sulforaphane, it does similar stuff, and you just get more bang for your buck.
Erin Holt [00:30:40]:
Here is a product called Dim Detox that I really like. So it has the dim that we're talking about. It also has calcium d-glucarate. We'll talk about that in a bit. It has the broccoli sprout concentrate, ha N-Acetyl Cysteinee. It has milk thistle, which is great for the liver. It has a lot of the stuff that we are talking about. And it's a really good supplement to support the phase one detox pathway.
Erin Holt [00:31:10]:
Again, that probably wouldn't be appropriate for anybody with low estrogen because it can pull estrogen out of circulation. Let's talk about phase two. We talked about phase one. Let's talk about phase two and some interventions to support. This is phase two. We're taking the hydroxyl, the OH, we're turning it into methoxy. Phase two takes those phase one metabolites, right? Those crazy metabolites, those harmful, reactive oxygen species, ROS species.
Erin Holt [00:31:41]:
And makes them water soluble to be excreted. That's what phase two is all about. Phase two requires the comt enzyme and also methyl donors. Um, magnesium is a methyl donor. And one thing I didn't point out, but I've talked to you guys about this on your own.
Erin Holt [00:32:01]:
DUTCH test.
Erin Holt [00:32:02]:
When you're looking at the gauge, if you're low COMTed, if your gauge is on the left side, pointing to low, it makes sense to support your body with these. The first line of defense for me is already magnesium and methylated B's. That's the first place we start. Now, if somebody's already taking magnesium or b vitamins and their gauge is set to low, that tells me we have to bring in some bigger guns and we go for some heftier methyl donors. Okay. Epsom salt baths are great to get magnesium into the body, but methyl donors would be SAM-e trimethylglycine, methionine, and choline is another one.
Erin Holt [00:32:42]:
These two products are great for methylation support. They have the methyl donors. So what slows down COMT if your gauge is on the left side? What's up with that? Why is it slow? Certain genetic mutations. So if you've got a plus plus, if you've done a genetic testing and your COMT enzyme, the gene, if you have a plus plus there, it's going to slow down your COMT. You're going to have a harder time. Estrogen dominance. So that's kind of an unfair thing, that the more estrogen you have, the more it's going to slow down COMT, right, which then in turn impaired your clearance. Gut infections, certain phenols from food. So green tea and quercetin can actually slow down COMT.
Erin Holt [00:33:33]:
Don't worry too much. This is dose dependent. If you drink a ton of green tea and your COMT is slow, I would tell you to reduce your consumption. If you take a bunch of quercetin supplements because you've got histamine issues, I would tell you to maybe ease up on those if your COMT is slow, but you have to take a lot of these in order for it to impact. Plastic exposure and high serotonin can all impact and slow down COMT. Let's dive into phase three. Remember that, back to our detox module, estrogen metabolites are not water soluble.
Erin Holt [00:34:16]:
We have to take fat soluble toxins and turn them into water soluble so we can get them out of the body. We can pee them out, sweat them out, poop them out. Our body handles hormones the same exact way that it handles toxins. So we have to get. We have to take something that is fat soluble and then turn it into a water soluble thing. But then once we do that, they have to get out of the cell. Right? So all of this stuff, all this detox stuff that we've been talking about is happening inside the cell. Now we have to get it out of the cell.
Erin Holt [00:34:54]:
And this is what the outer part of our cell looks like. It's a phospholipid bilayer. It's made up of fat. And we know water and fat don't mix, right? It's like, why salad dressings separate. We have something called transporters to move things out and across the cell. So it moves it out of the cell into the interstitial fluid, and then from there, it goes to the kidneys, so we can pee it out, and it goes to the bile so we can poop it out. Unfortunately, these transmitters can get slowed down. And when that happens, obviously our clearance of estrogen is lower.
Erin Holt [00:35:36]:
Certain things that can slow it down include inflammation, oxidative stress. If we're overburdened with toxicity, medications like PPIS, azithromycin, and clarithromycin and then quercetin can also slow down the transporters as well. So how do we support our transporters? We need to reduce inflammation, reduce oxidative stress and reduce toxicity. We can activate Nrf with sulforaphane, curcumin, turmeric, berberine. I wouldn't just go willy nilly with berberine as it can kill off bacteria in the gut. And we don't always want to do that. Resveratrol, catechins in dark chocolate and green tea, and then dim the supplement. Right.
Erin Holt [00:36:24]:
So when we take that dim detox, we're kind of hitting a bunch of different things. But a lot of these things are what we already talked about last month in the overall diet to support liver and detoxification.
Erin Holt [00:36:39]:
Cell membrane support.
Erin Holt [00:36:40]:
How do we keep that phospholipid biolayer healthy? It's by eating healthy fats. Choline, which is notoriously found in egg yolks, supporting bile synthesis. We talked about that a lot. Phosphatidylcholine is really helpful. Taking sunflower lecithin can be helpful for that as well. All right, now let's dive into estrogen in the gut microbiome. Okay? So once things, once we've gone through phase one and phase two in the liver, once we've gotten things from out, from inside of the cell to outside of the cell, then it has to go through the bile into the intestines, and it ends up in your microbiome, your gut, your colon. In the colon, we have something called the astrobulome.
Erin Holt [00:37:24]:
These are all the gut bacteria whose products can metabolize estrogen. So we have bacteria working for us in our colon to help us further clear out estrogen. It's not just all the liver. We have to look at the gut, too. This is highly affected by antibiotics, drugs, diet, anything that's going to affect your gut, your microbiome, your gut bugs, is also going to affect the clearance of estrogen. It helps to modulate the enterohepatic circulation of estrogen. So this means entero is your gut, hepatic is your liver. So the gut, liver, circulation of estrogen, and they also affect the excretion and circulation of ease.
Erin Holt [00:38:04]:
So are we pooping estrogens out or are they going back into circulation? These bacteria help that.
Erin Holt [00:38:14]:
Okay.
Erin Holt [00:38:14]:
Beta glucuronidase is an enzyme in your colon. It's made by the cells in your colon. And we have over 50 cells, species of bacteria that can make this enzyme, bacteriotis, bifido, citrobacter, clostridium, lactobacillus. So good bacteria produce this enzyme. Beta glucuronidase is not all bad. I want to preface this by saying it. We do need some of it. That's why our bacteria make it.
Erin Holt [00:38:43]:
It helps us to reabsorb flavonoids. So it has a lot of, or has a few different functions in the body. If we make too much, it becomes a problem. You're starting to notice a trend here. We talked about the same deal with histamine. Some is good, but too much of a good thing becomes problematic. What beta glucuronidase does is it de conjugates things. Our body puts estrogen in a box with a bow.
Erin Holt [00:39:10]:
And this analogy is straight from doctor Carrie Jones, who heads up Precision Analytical. She's one of the educators for the company that makes the DUTCH test. And she's brilliant. And this is such a good way to explain it. Our body puts estrogen in a box and then ties it up with a bow. That is the glucuronidation process. What this enzyme beta glucuronidase does is it unties the bow and it opens the lid. So then this allows estrogen to be reabsorbed.
Erin Holt [00:39:43]:
It can go back into circulation, leading to estrogen excess and estrogen dominance. There was a study done on a group of women and they measured all the estrogen in their body and only ten to 15% of the estrogens came out in this conjugated form in the poop. Only ten to 15%. The rest of their estrogen was reabsorbed in circulation due to this beta glucuronidase action activity. So this is a really big deal. It's like the final push to get estrogen out of the body. If you have high beta glucuronidase, the only way you would know this is via a stool test. So it's something that I look for in a GI map. If you have high beta glucuronidase, this supplement, calcium D glucarate is very, very helpful.
Erin Holt [00:40:39]:
It inhibits the action of the enzyme. It keeps the bow on the box. Dosing is pretty darn high. You need 1500 to 3000 milligrams a day at minimum. To be clear, this doesn't lower beta glucuronidase levels. You still have to do the microbiome restoration work, you still have to clean up the bacteria, you still have to get into the nitty gritty. That dim detox supplement that I showed you earlier does have some small amounts of calcium d-glucarate. Um, but if you're struggling with estrogen dominance and you've done everything we've talked about, and it keeps coming back high, the final frontier to check out would be your gut. And are you making, um, do you have too much of this enzyme in your gut? And then finally constipation? Are you dealing with constipation? It is so common that I dedicated an entire module just to constipation.
Erin Holt [00:41:38]:
So that is coming up next. Stay tuned. But the whole deal is that we have to get toxins all the way to the toilet, and this includes hormones, too. So if we're not pooping regularly, we're not effectively clearing toxins and hormones out of our body. So let's get you pooping. Stay tuned.
Erin Holt [00:42:03]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more.
Erin Holt [00:42:14]:
Take care of you.
