Causes and Symptoms of Estrogen Dominance

What we are seeing in the clinic now is younger and younger women that are starting their menses at a very early age and the development of the breasts is very prominent at a very early age. They start the menses early and the menses is very irregular, so the mother does what she thinks is best, she brings them to the doctor, and they get put on a birth control pill to regulate the period. What's happening here in the United States is more and more of our food-- estrogen and growth hormones and different hormones are being added to our food. Our milk--some milk and some dairy products have estrogen, some cosmetics have estrogen, so we're seeing more of an estrogen dominance in women--and in men, also. But we see this starting the menses early, and then large breasts, and then they get put on the birth control pill which has yet more estrogen in it, okay? And then later on in life--they may stay on the birth control pill 5 or 10 years-- and then later on in life they may have trouble getting pregnant. We have some infertility problems later on. If they do get pregnant, when the woman does deliver the baby her progesterone plummets and her estrogen stays elevated, so we have, again, an estrogen dominance after birth.

It's called "postpartum blues" or "postpartum depression." That's when the progesterone is very low. When the woman goes into her forties--perimenopause--the years before menopause takes place-- what happens is her estrogen is--if you look at a graph, it's going up and down, up and down. She's having mood swings, irritability, weight gain, and the PMS symptoms are unbelievable. She's having insomnia, as well. So her estrogen is spiking and coming down low, spiking and coming down low. In the meantime, her progesterone is very low.

So she's having like an estrogen dominant stage there, as well.