02 Aug Hormonal Balance & Your Health

Oestrogen dominance with its wide range of symptoms, is a modern age condition that is effecting women, men, children and even the unborn foetus. Only since the advent of man-made chemicals about 50 years ago have we been exposed to many hundreds of thousands of chemicals that are toxic to our bodies. A portion of these, especially the petro-chemicals, mimic the female hormone oestrogen. These chemicals are disrupting a delicate balance that should always exists between oestrogen and it’s antagonist, progesterone. If there is imbalance here we end up with a state of “unopposed oestrogen” or oestrogen dominance.

We now live in a polluted world full of xeno-oestrogens (oestrogen mimics that occupy the oestrogen receptors on the cell walls). We breathe them in petrol fumes and other household products like paints and glues. We eat them on our foods which contain pesticides, herbicides and hormone drugs. We drink them in the water from plastic water bottles and leached farm toxins. We put them on our skins via creams and lotions which are made with mineral oils and many of the other skin care added chemicals. Worst of all, big pharmaceutical companies are major contributors with many of the prescription drugs for fertility, contraception (The pill) and menopause (HRT), treatments for skin and prostate conditions being xeno-oestrogens. All of these sources can cause us to live in an oestrogen dominant state.

Symptoms of this oestrogen dominant state include:

• Depression, anxiety and panic attacks
• Infertility with endometriosis, fibroids PCOD (polycystic ovarian disease) and low sperm counts being the prime factor
• Increased risk of all the cancers, especially the oestrogen cancers, breast, ovarian, cervical, prostate, testicular
• PMS with all it’s associate bloating, headaches, mood swings, weigh gain etc
• Inability to cope with the bad effects of stress
• Poor brain function and memory, lack of concentration
• Heart and circulatory problems
• Dry skin problems
• Problem experienced in pre-menopausal and menopausal years

Where in nature there is always balance between oestrogen and progesterone, this is no longer the case. In the group of oestrogens, one Oestradial, responsible for giving the female their secondary sexual characteristics, comes into play at puberty and stops its action at menopause. This fertile female oestrogen, switches on a gene in the body called the BCL2 gene. This gene causes cellular proliferation, the cells multiply, do not differentiate and do not die. Progesterone on the other hand switches off this gene in favour of the protective gene, the P53, which reverses those instructions, the cell then matures, differentiate and dies. If the cells do not get this message, then their proliferation can become a problem such as with cancer cell growth, endometriosis and fibroids.

The only way to restore this delicate balance is to apply natural progesterone preferably in cream form, which restores the balance between oestrogen and progesterone immediately and in a short time the symptoms of oestrogen dominance disappear.

Unopposed oestrogen is highly dangerous but it is so easy to balance with a natural bio-identical progesterone cream.

There are a few options out there, but consider the following to avoid xeno-oestrogens:

• Use only a very natural vegetable-oil based cream with a high percentage of progesterone (4% is good).
• Avoid those creams with chemicals in their formulas including “mineral oils” and preservatives.
• Avoid creams packaged in soft plastic tubes.