# 3 Top 10 root causes for female hormone imbalance: Imbalanced Gut & Digestion
Is your body retaining too much water? Not absorbing the nutrients your body needs? Are you sick all the time? If your body is not functioning at its optimal rate, you have a compromised immune system, and you may very likely be dealing with gut issues. We can equate a lot of our health issues and system fails to an imbalanced or toxic gut. Bacteria, yeast overgrowth, gut permeability, food sensitivities, stress to name a few, all have an impact our digestive system, and in turn, affect our overall immune system. Immunity stems from the gut. And when things like bacteria or yeast permeate for too long, it causes inflammation and that’s when our immune system goes into overdrive and becomes compromised. You may find that you have difficulty absorbing vitamins and minerals, or are dealing with neurotransmitter issues, hormonal issues or metabolic issues. If so, it may be worthwhile evaluating your diet and testing your gut health.
Everything you put in your body either gives you energy or does the opposite and takes it away. A lot of times our (takes it away) symptoms go unnoticed or get played off as normal: bloating, gas, tired after meals, constipation, brain fog, fatigue. Yes these may happen occasionally, but these symptoms experienced on an ongoing, daily basis, suggest an underlying root cause. Many being attributed to a digestive issue. We are constantly disrupting our gut health with things like antibiotics, birth control, heavy metals, and the same goes for our hormones. Hormonal dysregulation primarily occurs due to inflammation in the body. Its our gut bacterial imbalances that contribute to inflammation, causing higher levels of stress hormones and affecting overall mood, energy, brain function and the like. Any kind of stressors we are putting on our body will in turn affect our hormone production. Our body is one complete system, and it all works together so perfectly. Or not!? When one system is out of whack, you can see how it is a snowball effect. So, a dysregulated gut, a compromised immune system, go hand in hand, and both are an underlying root cause for the nasty list of female hormonal imbalances.
One area I wanted to bring to attention because I have seen it personally now in my practice a few times as of late, is histamine. Many people are dealing with histamine issues and don’t realize it. Histamine is a chemical compound that acts as a hormone and neurotransmitter in the body and it plays a crucial role in your body’s immune response. But at higher than optimal levels, your body can produce a negative response. And many people don’t know that estrogen dominance and histamine are connected. So, if you are experiencing headaches, fatigue, brain fog, hives, bloating or skin rashes, it may very well be a histamine reaction.
Higher amounts of estrogen may lead to more histamine issues because estrogen can bind to mast cells and stimulate the release of histamines. Histamine can also bind to the ovaries and stimulate more estrogen. It can also aid in the overproduction of luteinizing hormones (the reproductive hormone that plays a crucial role in the menstrual cycle and fertility in women and testosterone production in men).
Histamine issues can come from a digestive issue or stem from a hormonal imbalance, but either way, one affects the other and can be difficult to pinpoint without proper testing or an integrative health analysis. Ways you can begin to assess for yourself are to cut out alcohol, fermented foods, address digestive system issues, increase progesterone, and add more cruciferous vegetables to your diet. If you are interested in testing your hormones through functional medicine that looks at the entire hormonal system including adrenal function and cortisol levels or would like an assessment on your overall gut and metabolic health, I am happy to tailor a program just for you.
In good health, Trine