What high estrogen in a woman over 60 actually means
The word dominance is doing the work here. It is not a reading. It is a relationship between two hormones, and after 60 it is the relationship that goes off, not always the estrogen.
Dr. Martin, defining it:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1819In a woman, the estrogen is higher than progesterone and that messes up this pyramid.
The pyramid is a chart he says he drew for thousands of patients over the years, with estrogen and progesterone sitting at the bottom of it. His complaint on this episode is that hormones get separated. The thyroid gets looked at on its own. Estrogen gets looked at on its own. He says they work together, and that reading one of them alone is where the confusion starts.
He has had the argument with doctors directly. Their answer is that a woman past menopause has almost no estrogen left, so dominance is impossible. His answer is that they are not measuring it against progesterone, and that the two have to be balanced for a woman to feel good.
"Big problem in our society is estrogen dominance."
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1819Nothing here is a reason to start or stop anything a doctor has prescribed. Talk to your doctor first.
The two hormones that have to balance
Think of it as a see-saw rather than a tank. Progesterone drops off steeply through perimenopause and after it. Estrogen drops too, but not always by as much, and not always as fast. The gap between them is what he is reading.
So the number on your report can be genuinely low and the balance can still be wrong. He says it the other way round as well, in the men he saw, where testosterone falls and estrogen ends up on top of it. Same pyramid, same problem, different pair.
Cortisol sits in this too. He says the stress hormone, left out of control, will rob progesterone. Progesterone goes down again, so estrogen sits higher against it again, without estrogen itself moving at all.
Why it happens when estrogen is supposed to be falling
This is the part most women have never been told. He does not think the estrogen is all coming from you.
Dr. Martin on where it comes from:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1819The world is dominated by estrogen because most of the chemicals that are found in your home that are found in the soil, that are found in the air, that are found in the water mimic estrogen.
He calls them xenoestrogens. His description of what happens is plain enough: your body thinks it is estrogen, so it treats it like estrogen. That is his explanation for why the balance tips in a generation of women whose own estrogen production has been winding down for years.
What estrogen dominance does to the thyroid
Here is the chain he drew on the chart, and it is the reason a hormone article keeps ending up at the thyroid. The liver clears your excess estrogen. The liver is also where most of your T4 gets converted into T3, which is the thyroid hormone your body actually runs on.
Dr. Martin on the sequence:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1819You get estrogen dominance, it disrupts the clearance of estrogen that disrupts the conversion of T4 to T3, your thyroid slows to a crawl.
He calls the thyroid your gas pedal. A gas pedal that slows to a crawl is the whole of your metabolism slowing to a crawl. If you have read the thyroid never acts on its own, this is the same argument coming at you from the hormone end.
The silent inflammation part
The second consequence he names does not hurt, which is exactly his point about it.
Dr. Martin on inflammation:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1819When estrogen is dominant, it increases inflammation in the body, silent.
Silent is the word he uses for the kind that does not announce itself. No swelling you can see, no pain you can point at. He talks about the same quiet damage elsewhere, and it is the reason he goes after the cause rather than the ache.
What a woman over 60 actually notices
He listed what he saw, in his words, a gazillion times. None of it sounds like a hormone problem when you say it out loud.
- Weight gain, and weight that will not come off
- Fatigue
- Poor recovery, from an infection or from an injury
- Low motivation
That is the list, and it is why women get sent away with a normal result. The line he says patients used to give him was that their metabolism was not slow, it was in a coma. He is describing what he saw in an office, not diagnosing you, and plenty of these have other causes worth ruling out.
Where he would start
Not with more estrogen. His target is the gap between the two.
Dr. Martin on the fix:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 1819So you have to get the estrogen progesterone balance.
His first move is food, because insulin is a hormone too and it sits in the middle of the same chart. Get the carbs and the sugars cleaned up, he says, and you empty the liver. A liver that is not busy can clear the extra estrogen, T4 converts to T3 properly again, and the thyroid starts working the way it should. He is walking backwards down the same chain that broke.
On testing, he is blunt about the limit of it. You can measure estrogen and progesterone. But if whoever reads it looks at estrogen alone and calls it within normal limits, the one thing that matters, how it sits against progesterone, never gets looked at.
Common questions
What does high estrogen mean in a woman over 60?
It means estrogen is higher than progesterone. He measures the two against each other, not estrogen on its own, so the pair is what decides it.
Can you have high estrogen after menopause?
Yes, on his reading. He has argued this with doctors who say estrogen is nonexistent after menopause. His answer is that they are not measuring it compared to progesterone.
What are the signs of estrogen dominance?
The ones he named were weight gain, fatigue, poor recovery and low motivation, plus a thyroid that slows down, which he ties back through the liver.
What causes too much estrogen?
He points at chemicals in the home, the soil, the air and the water that the body reads as estrogen. He calls them xenoestrogens.
Does estrogen affect the thyroid?
He says it does. Excess estrogen the liver cannot clear disrupts the conversion of T4 to T3, and in his words the thyroid slows to a crawl.
Read next: Which Hormones Should A Woman Over 60 Get Tested? and Should A Woman Over 60 Take Testosterone?.
Work on the balance
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