Oestrogen Dominance and your Estrobolome

Diet, gut bacteria and the health of your microbiome are totally linked to your oestrogen levels and thus, certain cancers, PCOS, endometriosis, bone health and even some cases of cardiovascular disease.

Oestrogen - dominance and deficiency

Do you have oestrogen dominance - high levels of oestrogen in your body?

Perhaps you have PCOS, or endometriosis, or Er+ve Breast, Endometrial or Ovarian cancer. You may even have cardiovascular disease, Most women and their doctors don't think past the ovaries or possibly the fat stores, but scientists are now finding that your gut bacteria play a crucial role in the level of oestrogen in your body.

The microbiome - the largest endocrine organ in your body.

The origin of high oestrogen, for women and men, could well lie in your microbiome. The gut microbiome, or as I call it ‘Your Health Control Centre’, is the biggest endocrine organ in your body. But the gut microbiome does not actually synthesize primary oestrogen, but it regulates active oestrogen levels in the body through a collection of genes and bacteria known as the Estrobolome

In fact, there is a group of bacteria, led by the families Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria that regulate your blood oestrogen levels. And it doesn’t help that what started out when you were just a couple of months old as 96 per cent of your total gut bacteria dwindles through poor diet, stress, drugs, antibiotics, food poisoning, chemicals in water, body washes, shampoos, pesticides and more to just 3-4 per cent of total by the time you are 50. Some women have none.

When this microbiome becomes imbalanced (dysbiosis), the group regulating your oestrogen can also become ‘unbalanced’ and this can lead to oestrogen dominance, a condition where excess oestrogen is reabsorbed into the bloodstream rather than being excreted (1). Or it can lead to the reverse - oestrogen deficiency, where few bacteria that cause reabsorption are present.

What’s the Estrobolome?

Welcome to the Estroblome - a collection of gut bacteria and their genes, which are responsible for regulating oestrogen levels in your body.

The body's primary oestrogen is made in the ovaries and other tissues such as your fat stores; it is then sent to the liver to be packaged and marked for waste. The action of denaturing oestrogen (conjugation) largely occurs in the liver (some also occurs in the breasts). These denatured oestrogens then pass via the bile to the gut, where the estrobolome gut bacteria, depending upon their presence, can allow them to be expelled, or renature and cause them to be reabsorbed in the bloodstream.

Of course, membership is not just confined to those two leading families mentioned before. Other members include families and strains from Clostridiaceae, Ruminococcaceae,, Clostridium, Bacteroides, and Escherichia. 

These gut bacteria and their genes are capable of metabolising oestrogen frommthe waste oestrogen, primarily through the production of enzymes such as beta-glucuronidase, beta-glucosidase, and sulfatase.

So. put simply, there’s a group of bacteria that can cause the reformation of healthy oestrogen and then its reabsorption back into the body. Thus your bacteria regulate your oestrogen levels, you don’t.

Although of course you can damage production levels in the first place through toxic chemicals, or you can increase levels through having high levels of fat stores. But even then, your gut bacteria regulate the bloodstream.

Studies of women injected with radiolabeled oestrogen showed that about 65% of oestradiol, 48% of oestrone and 23% of estriol were found in the bile, whereas only 11-15% is found in the faeces (2). So the recovery role seems far more important than people would realise.

With cardiovascular disease in women, the cause may well be the opposite of oestrogen dominance - oestrogen provides significant cardiovascular protection in premenopausal women by improving lipid profiles, promoting vasodilation, and reducing inflammation.  Specifically, oestrogen increases HDL (good cholesterol) and decreases LDL (bad cholesterol) while enhancing nitric oxide production to maintain vascular elasticity and prevent atherosclerosis. 

What about bone health and lowered oestrogen as women age?

It’s a two way process. The loss of estrogen post-menopause accelerates dysbiosis in the microbiome and reduces the estrobolome bacteria available to renature and reabsorb oestrogen (3).

The Microbiome, your diet and ER+ve cancer

All people with cancer have been found to have lowered levels of good gut bacteria, with some good bacteria strains missing completely. As a result the pathogens are less restricted and increase their numbers. These imbalance is called dysbiosis.

Of course, drugs and antibiotics (and stress, and poor diet) make this worse. 

You are what you eat (or rather, what your microbiome eats). We have previously covered a study linking the foods you consume to bacteria promoting good or bad health via inflammation or the production of anti-inflammatory molecules. (4).

In May 2019 we covered research that strains of Lactobacillus are missing in breasts with cancer - and that the Rainbow Diet alone could increase levels (5), We also know that even just taking a Lactobacillus probiotic increases their presence directly in the breasts lowering oestrogen levels, reduces BMI, body fat and waist measurement in women with breast cancer  It also lowered TNF-α which causes inflammation, reduces host immune response and drives metastases. 

Bifidobacterium strains have much the same benefits. Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains work synergistically. You should have both in your probiotic.

If you don’t have any Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium members, you are not going to be managing your oestrogen very well. 

Go to: How to fix your microbiome

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References

1. Gut microbial beta-glucuronidase: a vital regulator in female estrogen metabolism; Shiwan Hu et al; Gut Microbes. 2023 Aug 9;15(1):2236749.

2. Assay of estrogens in human feces. Adlercreutz H, Järvenpää P.J;  Steroid Biochem. 1982;17(6):639–645. 

3. Estrogen–gut microbiome axis: Physiological and clinical implications; James M. Baker et al; Maturitas, Volume 103, September 2017, Pages 45-53

4. Foods and microbiome linked to good or bad health - Rainbow Diet 

5. Mediterranean Diet lowers breast cancer risk - The Rainbow Diet