Can Gut Health Affect Your Hormones? Here’s What to Know
If you’re trying to balance your hormones while overlooking your gut health, you may be missing an important piece of the puzzle.
Many women don’t know just how important the gut-hormone connection is—not out of ignorance, but because, as women, we simply aren’t taught about these crucially interconnected body systems. Our gut microbiome is constantly sending and receiving signals to and from our brain and the organs involved in hormone production and regulation, including the hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid, adrenals and ovaries.
If you’re ready to better understand this essential part of hormone balance, keep reading.
How Do Hormones Get Out of Balance Anyway?
Hormone balance is influenced by the constant communication between our external and internal environment. One of the biggest communicators we have with both our gut and hormones is food.
Every time we eat, we’re giving our bodies information and the raw materials—or lack thereof—needed to create, build and maintain healthy hormones. Our diet can also either fuel or calm inflammation, which can have a significant impact on hormonal health.
But food isn’t the only factor. Toxins in our food, air and personal care products, along with sleep, stress, movement, mindset and other lifestyle factors, can all influence this delicate system.
How Diet Can Throw Your Gut and Hormones Out of Balance
So where does your gut health come into play?
Everything we eat and drink passes through the gastrointestinal tract, or what we commonly call the gut. What we consume can either support the health of our digestive system or contribute to imbalances within it.
Our diet also helps shape the delicate balance of microbes living in our gut—and these microbes play an important role in communicating with and influencing our hormones.
Food isn’t the only thing that impacts the gut, but it’s one of the biggest factors because most of us eat several times a day, every day.
How Your Gut and Liver Help Process Hormones
Your gut and liver work together to help process and eliminate hormones, particularly estrogen.
After the liver processes estrogen, many estrogen metabolites are sent into the bile and released into the intestines to eventually leave the body through your stool.
Your gut microbiome plays a role here, too. Certain gut bacteria produce an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase, something we’re able to test using GI-MAP, which can change how estrogen metabolites are handled in the digestive tract. Some metabolites can be reactivated and reabsorbed into circulation rather than being eliminated.
This is one reason that supporting a healthy gut microbiome and regular bowel movements can be an important part of healthy estrogen metabolism.
Constipation May Impair Hormone Clearance
If you’re constipated, your intestinal transit is slower and you aren’t eliminating stool as efficiently. While constipation doesn’t automatically mean that estrogen is “building up,” slower transit may give certain compounds more opportunity to be modified and reabsorbed.
Regular bowel movements are therefore an often-overlooked piece of supporting healthy hormone elimination.
For our clients who need additional support with regularity, alongside dietary and lifestyle changes, we often recommend magnesium to help support healthy bowel movements.
How the Gut-Hormone Connection Can Influence Inflammation
Your gut and hormones can also influence the body’s inflammatory response.
An unhealthy or imbalanced gut can contribute to inflammation within the digestive tract. But that inflammation doesn’t necessarily stay there. When inflammation becomes chronic, it can affect the body more broadly and place additional stress on systems involved in hormonal regulation.
Chronic stress and inflammation can also influence cortisol, blood sugar and insulin regulation, creating a cycle that can have downstream effects on hormones such as estrogen and progesterone.
Where Can You Make the Biggest Impact?
We always start with diet because we eat all the time!
Supporting your gut with nourishing, nutrient-dense foods, adequate fibre and protein, healthy fats and plenty of hydration can go a long way toward creating a healthier foundation for your hormones.
And if you’re struggling with bloating, constipation, fatigue or other symptoms that make you feel like your hormones are out of balance, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
If you want personalized support to calm inflammation, support your gut and better understand your hormones, book a call with us today!
Asher Kleiber
Registered Holistic Nutritionist
If you’re trying to balance your hormones while overlooking your gut health, you may be missing an important piece of the puzzle. Many women don’t know just how important the gut-hormone connection is—not out of ignorance, but because, as women, we simply aren’t taught about these crucially interconnected body systems.