A deep dive into: Estrobolome
If you caught my post last week on Instagram, you saw I touched on the surface of the estrobolome.
You’re probably still wondering what the heck is the estrobolome because that short little graphic didn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Coming hot from the heels of the last blog post, this falls straight in line with the conversation we’ve been having about estrogen dominance & xenoestrogens.
The estrobolome is super important because it gives us an insight into how poor gut health impacts our hormones. You know I always preach the importance of looking at the whole picture and not just a snapshot of what’s happening with only one organ of the body and this is a clear representation of that.
You cannot balance your hormones naturally if you have gut issues.
Aside from the estrobolome, two fundamental aspects that can impact our hormonal health as well include not having daily bowel movements (or having too many) and chronic inflammation! These topics we’ll save for a different day, but for now let’s get down into what the estrobolome is and how it affects our gut and our hormones.
The first thing we need to understand is how estrogen is metabolized and excreted from our bodies.
Estrogen is synthesized in our bodies through our ovaries, adrenal gland, and fat tissue. There are three forms of estrogen that circulate in our bodies: estrone (E1), estradiol (E2), and estriol (E3).
Estrone helps with female sexual development & function and is often stored in the body as a supply of estrogen that can be transformed into estradiol as needed. Estrone is a weak estrogen and found abundantly in post-menopausal women and women experiencing their first period.
Estradiol is the strongest of the three estrogens. It’s main function is to mature & maintain our reproductive system and it’s the estrogen we commonly think of when we consider the hormonal fluctuations during our cycles.
Estriol is produced in larger quantities by the placenta during pregnancy and is also considered to be a weak estrogen.
A large portion of our estrogen is metabolized by our liver which is why it’s so important to look at liver health when working with hormonal imbalances. The liver metabolizes estrogen in two phases - Phase 1 and Phase 2.
In Phase 1, some are directly metabolized will others are turned into intermediate forms.
In Phase 2, estrogens are conjugated with amino acids to turn them water soluble and get them ready to go through out gut.
The 4 main mechanisms of conjugation include:
Methylation (B vitamins are essential for this)
Sulfation (sulfur foods like garlic, onions, cruciferous veggies are important)
Glucuronidation (remember this one because that’s where the estrobolome comes into play),
Glutathione conjugation (foods such as avocado, walnuts, etc. are important sources for this!)
So now we we have these conjugated estrogens and we finally get to the gut and we see where the estrobolome plays a role.
The estrobolome is a group of bacteria that produce beta glucuronidase.
Remember when we talked about how estrogen can be conjugated via glucuronidation? Well that can be undone by this enzyme!
What happens next is instead of the estrogens being excreted, they get reabsorbed back into our system and this can lead to estrogen dominance!
Gut dysbiosis leading to a rise in these bacterias can perpetually fuel the fire of hormonal imbalance and estrogen dominance regardless of what else you are doing to balance hormones.
Whew!
That was a lot of information to digest but I hope it sheds light on WHY we need to be looking at the whole picture and not just one snapshot!
With love,
Dr. Paria
