Anti-estrogenic diet: the key to regulating hormones

Men and women have both male and female sex hormones, but the proportion and their function in tissues varies in each sex. These hormones not only ensure sex differences, but are essential to maintain health at different stages of life.

We will focus on how regulate female sex hormones in the female body: estrogens.

Your role in the body: In women, estrogens have positive effects on the brain, bones, heart, liver, vagina, and other tissues. Its levels affect mood, libido, weight, insulin and aging.In excess they are dangerous: too much estrogen can cause premenstrual syndrome, depression, polycystic ovaries, endometriosis or fibroids, and over time increase the risk of uterine and breast cancer, the most common in women.What influences your balance: not only estrogen production determines the final estrogenic effect in the body; its concentration in the tissues, the quality of its action in the cells, the efficiency in its elimination from the organism and, of course, the environmental estrogens that we absorb mark the health of women and their risk of suffering from certain dysfunctions.

How to reduce estrogen levels

A good diet will be one capable of achieving authentic hormonal modulation. I propose an anti-estrogenic diet: one that supports the balanced estrogen productionhelp eliminate toxic hormonal residues through the liver and intestine, and modulate the action of estrogens in your tissues, favoring their appropriate action in their receptors.

Aromatase enzyme, the estrogen factory

Estrogens are produced, especially after menopause, from another existing hormone in women. It’s about the androgens, known as male sex hormones. But in order for the glands to be able to make estrogen from androgen, they need a little transformer and that’s where an enzyme called aromatase comes into play.

Aromatase is concentrated in the tissues that need estrogen. In some dysfunctional tissues (endometriosis, fibroids, breast cancer) there are abnormally high levels that, by producing excessive estrogen, favor the imbalance.

through diet we can modulate production and aromatase activity. It is the master key to improving hormonal health naturally.

When to follow an anti-estrogen diet

we can do the more anti-estrogenic diet in situations of hormonal imbalance such as breast cancer, fibroids, endometriosis, migraines, premenstrual syndrome, polycystic ovaries or obesity.

This requires adding or consuming more aromatase-modulating foods. However, in states of desirable hyperestrogenism, such as pregnancy, plants or spices with this effect should not be abused.

Beneficial foods contain natural aromatase inhibitorssuch as luteoprins, resveratrol-type polyphenols, protoanthocyanins, flavonoids such as quercetin or apigenin, sterols, conjugated linoleic acid… These inhibitors do not have the side effects of drugs, since they coexist in food with compounds that improve their effects.

The regulatory effect of phytoestrogens

Estrogens act on the cells of the tissues that require them through receptors: a kind of intelligent locks that, when coupled with the estrogen hormone, transmit its specific messages to the cell and influence its functioning. There are alpha and beta receptors. Alphas promote cell growth. The betas slow it down and stimulate cell death. Both are necessary if they work in balance.

Beneficial effect: Apparently the natural estrogens present in plants and foods –phytoestrogens– act on beta receptors, providing a beneficial effect on cells. Many aromatase modulating foods also contain phytoestrogens. Thus, they are capable of influencing both estrogen production and its function.

The unnecessary accumulation of fat in the body has many consequences for health: among them, the alteration of the hormonal balance. Subcutaneous fat tissue is considered the largest producer of estrogen after menopause.

Promotes estrogens: these can be produced in fat or adipose tissue from androgens by activation of aromatase. But fat tissue makes yet another hormone, adiponectin, which also regulates estrogen production. The more fat, the less adiponectin.

Body fat also plays a role

Avoid being overweight: A diet that reduces overweight and influences the metabolism of fats is essential for hormonal balance.

Improve metabolism: tomatoes and omega-3s increase the production of adiponectin, the main hormone that regulates fat metabolism. Having high levels of this hormone protects against breast cancer and diabetes.

Soy in moderation: abundant consumption of soy reduces adiponectin, so we can suspect that soy exerts its protective role against breast cancer, especially in women with low body mass, such as Asian women. Studies on soy and breast cancer remain controversial in Western women; even its intensive consumption before the menopause is consolidated seems counterproductive.

Moderate sugars: alcohol and simple sugars (refined foods, sucrose) cause insulin spikes, one of the great promoters of fat mass accumulation. And the greater the fat mass, the more aromatase.

Green Tea: It contributes to reducing fat mass thanks to polyphenols such as epigallocatechin. In addition, it modulates aromatase in all tissues and enhances the inactivation of harmful estrogens in the liver.

The liver to the rescue

The liver converts the estrogens that circulate in the blood into a waste substance so that the kidney can eliminate it. By measuring the types of residual estrogens in the urine, we can know how our liver works and if our estrogen profile is more or less healthy.

The importance of debugging: dysfunctions of the liver can end up increasing the activity of estrogens and altering their ratio. Any diet that improves liver function will contribute to hormonal health. An antiestrogenic diet must therefore be cleansing.

Gut bacteria help you

Our intestine is inhabited by millions of bacteria, which is known as microbiota or intestinal flora. These bacteria ensure the good teamwork of the liver and the intestine, to carry out digestion and detoxification. They participate in the production and elimination of bile salts, derivatives of cholesterol and, of course, in the production and elimination of sex hormones.

Activate your allies: The intestinal microbiota is also capable of activating compounds from certain foods –such as ellagic acid from pomegranate– and converting them into aromatase inhibitors (in the case of pomegranate these would be urolithins).

Flora and body fat: an altered intestinal flora can even promote obesity, generating imbalances in the hormones that control the generation of fat cells.

Emotions and environmental estrogens

Two other big factors influence our hormone level.

Reduce stress: Although it is true that women respond better to stress thanks to estrogen and its protective action in the brain, sustained stress favors global hormonal and hepato-intestinal imbalance, and promotes obesity, all of which are counterproductive factors.

Go green: pesticides, some additives, hormones used in the animal industry and present above all in meat and dairy, plastics and some air fresheners contain xenoestrogens such as bisphenol A or phthalates, among many others. These substances act like harmful estrogens in the body. Paraben, a preservative widely used in cosmetics, is also a xenoestrogen. Apart from consuming organic food and cosmetics, remember that xenoestrogens accumulate mainly in body fat and avoid being overweight.