Video summarized in article below.
So, let’s talk about the reproductive system next. This includes the ovaries in females and the testes in males. An imbalance is more obvious in females, but again, it can always happen in males as well. In women, you can be experiencing PMS, estrogen dominance, and other hormone-related conditions as well.
In women, the primary hormones that we usually deal with are estrogen and progesterone. These hormones balance each other out. When they are balanced, your female, typical 28-day cycle continues working as it should. Estrogen levels usually rise in the beginning of the cycle. Peaks are on day 14. If there’s fertilization at this time, the estrogen levels will then drop until day 28.
At the same time, progesterone levels also begin rising around the middle—day 14 of your cycle—and continue rising until day 28. If there’s no fertilization, the progesterone is not needed to support the fetus to grow, so then the level of progesterone also starts to decline as menses begins.
It’s very important to understand that this fine balance between estrogen and progesterone is needed in order for your cycle to work well. If at any point in time this balance gets upset, you might have symptoms of estrogen or progesterone dominance or deficiency and feel a lot of these symptoms get worse. This is true not only for the absolute levels of each of the hormones, but actually as a relative comparison, the estrogen and progesterone ratio in your body.
That’s very important because oftentimes you can go have labs that are perfect. They look okay, but it doesn’t make sense from a clinical perspective. Or you can have symptoms that arise, then you cannot explain them just by the laboratory results alone, even though they may look great. So, go ahead and tell us more about these systems.
Again, they kind of counterbalance each other. It’s like a seesaw when they’re balancing each other’s actions.
Now, the estrogen causes the endometrium to proliferate. While progesterone maintains your endometrium, estrogen again causes breast stimulation. Sometimes it can lead to breast cancer while progesterone actually protects against fibrocystic breast, and it sometimes prevents breast cancer as well.
Estrogen increases body fat, while progesterone helps use fat for energy. Estrogen can also increase endometrial cancer risk, while progesterone prevents endometrial cancer. Estrogen again restrains osteoclast function. So, it restrains your bone from breaking down. Progesterone promotes your osteoblast function leading to more bone growth. Then lastly, estrogen can increase your blood clot risk while progesterone can normalize your blood clots.
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