By Carla Oates
Dealing with women’s health issues like period pain, PMS symptoms, cramps, bloating and breakouts? Well, truth be told your gut could be playing a larger role than you think.
For many women, managing their PMS symptoms involves frantically Googling “how to reduce period pain” and then riding out the general discomfort that signals the arrival of your period. But before you break out the dark chocolate and call it a day, consider this: your gut health actually has a major impact on your hormonal health—including your menstrual cycles. In fact, while technically not classified as a gut disorder, sex and stress hormones issues and imbalances can be directly linked to our gut. And there is now a building body of research to back this up with recent studies illustrating how an imbalanced gut microbiome (known as dysbiosis) can be directly linked to hormonal imbalances and conversely, how hormonal imbalances such as excess amounts of oestrogen can affect our gut, causing bloating, constipation, fluid retention and slower digestion.
So, if you’re searching for more information on how to balance your hormones, maintain a happy gut and hopefully find relief from your PMS symptoms, this one’s for you…
The Gut-Hormone Connection
While you likely already know how stress can impact our gut health—and vice versa—our digestive health can also impact our oestrogen levels. To begin with, once oestrogen is produced in our ovaries (and in lesser amounts by our fat tissue post-menopause), it circulates via the bloodstream before arriving at the liver. Here, it is inactivated and sent to our digestive tract for elimination. But just like the gut-brain axis, there is also an oestrogen-gut microbiome axis whereby your gut microbiota produce an enzyme called Beta-glucuronidase that breaks down oestrogen into its active form. Trouble is, if your gut is imbalanced (aka you have dysbiosis) or your microbial diversity is lacking, your gut bacteria are unable to produce enough of this enzyme which has a cascading effect. Firstly, it means that there is less ‘useful’ oestrogen circulating around the body and more ‘bound’ oestrogen ready for elimination. But secondly, if your elimination pathways (such as your liver and your gut) aren’t functioning efficiently, any oestrogen ready for excretion can then be re-circulated, upsetting the delicate balance of oestrogen in your body.
So, while you may not think an oestrogen imbalance is necessarily a bad thing, this hormone can impact and influence our health and wellbeing in more ways than one. Along with making us fertile, oestrogen plays a role in our metabolic health, weight and fat deposition, as well as our skin health and even our cardiovascular health.
In fact, decreased oestrogen is also the reason our risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis increases post-menopause.
The Link Between Hormone Imbalance & Common PMS Symptoms
Given how extensively hormonal imbalances can impact our health, it makes sense then that fluctuating hormones and excess oestrogen levels can also trigger symptoms commonly associated with PMS such as heavier periods, bloating, mood swings, fluid retention, adrenal fatigue, acne, headaches and breast tenderness.
Worse still, if we are already battling with too much naturally-occurring oestrogen, this problem can be made worse when we introduce xenoestrogens—hormone-mimicking compounds found in everyday items such as contraceptives, plastic, cosmetics and skincare products and non-organic fruits and vegetables. When xenoestrogens build up in our bodies, it can trigger an oestrogen dominance, which some studies have shown to increase our long-term risk of endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and breast cancer. They’re even said to worsen PMS!
Healthy Gut, Happy Hormones
The first step to reducing period pain, minimising PMS symptoms and promoting overall health is to therefore bolster our gut health and support our liver and elimination pathways. First and foremost, encourage healthy gut flora and microbial diversity by eating plenty of antioxidant-rich, high fibre vegetables, probiotic supplements (like The Beauty Chef inner beauty powders and elixirs) or lacto-fermented foods—and don’t forget our GUT PRIMER™ Inner Beauty Support. This innovative formula is designed to holistically support your health and contains ingredients which support healthy liver function (helping to optimise oestrogen elimination!) and herbs such as slippery elm and milk thistle which naturally restore and repair the gut lining.
Other ways to help support gut health and subsequently happy hormones, is to consider reducing your intake of alcohol, refined sugars, additives, MSG and burnt food as they can contribute to dysbiosis and inflammation. It also helps to avoid environmental toxins and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as those found in many cleaning and personal care products, wherever possible. And finally, given the negative impact of high cortisol on the immune system and microbiome, try to manage your stress levels—here are six easy lifestyle tweaks to get you started.
