Gut Health Probiotics: What Every Woman Needs to Know to Balance Hormones Naturally

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0:48Shop now at retailers nationwide. Gatorlite hydrates faster than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist. Did you know your gut bacteria can decide how much estrogen circulates in your body or even influence whether or not you develop an autoimmune condition? Welcome back to The Dr. Brighton Show. I'm your host, Dr. Jolene Brighton, and today we're diving into one of the most overlooked but incredibly powerful relationships in your body, the connection between your gut and your hormones. If you've ever struggled with fatigue, PMS, period pain, thyroid issues, anxiety, infertility, or you've been diagnosed with PCOS, you're definitely going to want to tune into this episode because your gut is not just about digestion.

1:39It's your hormones headquarters, if you will. And today I'm going to show you how restoring gut health and supporting it daily can shift your hormones in a major way. And at the end of this, I'm going to talk to you about some exciting gut strategies that are coming through in the research that you probably haven't heard about before. Now, if you're watching this on YouTube, know that you can always use the chapters that are found in the description to jump to the part that you want to hear most. Totally fine by me. And before we jump in, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has left a review for the podcast.

2:15This helps center women's voices in women's medicine and women's health. and ensures the women who need this information can actually find it. And if you haven't yet left a review, please consider taking a moment to do that wherever you're listening to this podcast. So first things first, let's get into estrogen and the estrobilone. Now you might already know this, especially if you've read any of my books, but your liver processes up estrogen, what you don't need anymore, and it packages up to get excreted. But did you know it's your gut microbiome that is basically the last word on that? It's one of the final says in whether that gets eliminated, so the estrogen you don't need, or it gets recirculated.

3:03So there's a specific group of bacteria in your gut that make up the estrobilone. These bacteria produce an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase, which can reactivate estrogen that your liver has already packaged up and supposed to be moving out. And if you have too much beta-glucuronidase, estrogen then gets recirculated, which can contribute to symptoms of estrogen excess, what some people call estrogen dominance. That can look like heavy periods, breast tenderness, fibroids that are continuing to grow, experiencing mood swings, having cyclical headaches or even migraines. And then certainly it can contribute as well to those of us who have histamine issues feeling like we have the period flu or just feeling overall icky before our period.

3:55Now, I'm going to talk a little bit more about what the estrobolome does because all of that makes it sound really bad. But these got little critters, if you will, that are producing these enzymes, so specifically beta-glucuronidase. That's causing deconjugation of estrogen, so unpackaging it. once the estrogen is deconjugated, it can get reabsorbed. Your body can then use it instead of it getting eliminated in the stool. And this is called enterohepatic recirculation for my nerdy people out there. Now, this whole estrobilone, beta-glucuronidase, like why would your body allow this? Like why would it want to do this, right?

4:34So I want you to understand this mechanism isn't inherently bad. In fact, mild reabsorption of estrogen is really biologically useful under normal conditions. So estrogen, if you don't know, is critical for our survival and reproduction. So it's helping us solidify our bones. It's taking care of our heart. It's modulating immune health. It supports fertility. It's supporting brain health as well. And so we have to have estrogen in the right amount during our formative years and through our reproductive years so that all of these systems are at their best and that's contributing to our survival.

5:17And we love that. So this is one mechanism in which the body makes sure that you have enough estrogen. So it's not that your body is like betraying you. There are certainly problems with dysbiosis that we're going to talk about. But this whole mechanism is about balance and making sure that you have the estrogen that you need. And this becomes really beneficial when we have times of our life where we don't have enough estrogen, like postpartum, postmenopause, late stage perimenopause, primary ovarian insufficiency. So this entire estrobilone beta-glucuronidase was not designed to make your PMS hell and make your breasts hurt all the time or make you bleed like crazy.

6:00It really was a way to ensure that your body has a reserve system, if you will, to maintain balance of estrogen. And again, especially in those times when we can be low or maybe during fasting or nutrient deficiency that your body can say, well, this is all of the estrogen we have. So don't just throw it away like it's nothing. Make sure that we have enough of this. And all of this is part of a very finely tuned feedback loop happening in the body. The body doesn't want to waste estrogen. So when levels are appropriate or low, reabsorption through the estrobilone can help extend the life of the estrogen that you've made.

6:43Again, the goal is homeostasis, not excess. So we've got to talk about when the estrobilone backfires because like everything in our bodies, Like it's designed for your survival, but things can get off balance. And then we're like, why is this the worst experience ever? So specifically, it's when the gut microbiome is imbalanced. So that's what we call dysbiosis. This can occur due to antibiotics, stress, poor diet, not eating enough fiber. That's when we can see a disproportionate amount of the enzyme beta-glucuronidase. And then that means too much estrogen gets reabsorbed. And then that's when we're like, great, like cyclically, I am just losing my mind.

7:29I'm crying all the time before my period. I have super heavy periods. I'm having breast tenderness, mood swings, migraines, and my fibroids are growing. My endometriosis seems to flare oh so bad. I have those period flu-like symptoms. So there's a lot of ways that this imbalance or this excess amount of estrogen can affect us. Now, to be clear, estrogen should always be present through your entire cycle. It is after ovulation that then you make progesterone, and that's when estrogen takes a little bit of a box C and lets progesterone shine. But just understand that estrogen is still there, but it's got to be in the right amounts, and it's got to be balanced with your progesterone.

8:12So the big bottom line to know about the estrobilone is that it has the ability to recycle estrogen as a survival mechanism, if you will. It's a good thing until we have dysbiosis and then not so much a good thing. I'm going to give you tips today on what you can do about that. And we don't want to wipe out the estrobilone. We don't want to suppress the estrobilone. We want to optimize it. So we want to optimize our gut health as a way of optimizing our hormones. And when it comes to gut health, I need you to understand this whole estrogen connection, estrogen also modulates gut health, so they work together.

8:53It's also important for conditions like endometriosis. So studies show that women with endo tend to have less beneficial bacteria like lactobacillus and more pro-inflammatory microbes. And this may be part of the drive behind the systemic inflammation, and it can also contribute to excess estrogen, which creates a perfect storm for more endosymptoms. Not to mention, endometriosis lesions sometimes make their own hormones, which further contributes to the problem. And I'm going to link to some additional episodes on endometriosis in the show notes at drbrighton.com. That way you can get in all of that.

9:34But I want to give you some action steps right now. And if you do have endometriosis, you can grab my guide to help you manage endo flares. It's drbrighton.com slash endo flare that will help you manage the pain. But if you have dysbiosis or you suspect you have dysbiosis, I think working with a clinician is one of the most important steps to make sure you're addressing your individual needs. But while you're waiting to schedule that appointment, here's what you can do right now. So actually, let me back up and just say that your provider may actually want to order a stool test. So if you're like wondering, how would I know if beta-glucuronidase is elevated, you can get a stool culture.

10:20And these functional stool labs, they can look at your beta-glucuronidase activity and that can be indicative of estrogen problems that estrogen might get reactivated reabsorbed can also show dysbiosis so imbalances of beneficial versus opportunistic and sometimes even pathogenic bacteria but most of the time with dysbiosis it's like good guys and okay guys but then not enough good guys and too many of those okay guys um i'd like to think about like like the commensal flora in there, some of it's like they're bouncers at the club, right? And so they serve a purpose. They're not bad. We don't want too many of them.

11:03So they're supposed to be like, you're pathogenic. Get out of here. You can't get into the club. This is my house. But just like you wouldn't want too many bouncers at a party, right? Because that's not a good time if you're over patrolling everybody. You also don't want too many of these commensal flora. So understand when I say opportunistic, for example, yeast vaginitis, getting a yeast infection, that's the overgrowth of opportunistic organisms. They're supposed to be there. So the idea is never to completely wipe out everything in the gut. It's about eating and structuring your life in a way that helps support balance of the microbiome.

11:46And if you do find yourself in dysbiosis, it helps you quickly correct. Now, the other cool thing that the stool test can pick up is something called short-chain fatty acids. That's a marker of how well those little critters in your gut are working for you. We're going to talk a little bit more about short-chain fatty acids today as well. And then we can also track for the presence of inflammatory markers like calprotectin, elevated secretory IgA. That tells us that there's distress in the gut. There's inflammation going on. And then, of course, checking into things like do we have candida overgrowth, H.

12:24pylori is another one. Sometimes parasites are present, but most of the time we're seeing things like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, H. pylori, candida, and elevations in those commensal flora that are really opportunistic. And anytime we're doing this testing, we also want to partner it with what your symptoms are. It's not enough just to do testing on its own. Now, back to the supportive strategies that I thought I was going to give you before I took that little detour. So first thing is polyphenols. Polyphenols promote microbial diversity. They support beneficial bacteria, and they may help those bacteria do its job, and your whole body do its job in secreting the estrogen you no longer need.

13:12We get polyphenols in things like blueberries, raspberries. So berries overall, green tea, excellent source. Pomegranates, as soon as the season hits, get your pomegranates. Dark chocolate can be a source. Coffee is another source. So including polyphenols in your diet. And if you can stack that as polyphenols that also come with fiber, even better. So we want to increase our fiber. If we're not already eating 25 to 30 grams a day, we want to start moving towards that, which might be something that you're only eating like five grams a day right now of fiber. You're not going to jump to 25 tomorrow.

13:55So you're going to need to move slow and you're going to need to gauge it on how it best works with your gut. Other things that are helpful to bring in are cruciferous vegetables. These are going to provide things like DIM, sulforaphane. And that helps with the liver. The cruciferous vegetables are also going to help the gut. So overall, estrogen support there. Now, I always invite my patients to take an inventory of their day and of their week and ask themselves, how many probiotic-rich foods are they taking in? Things like sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, ginger bug, these kinds of foods that are fermented, fermented pickles.

14:33We want to be making sure that we are eating those several times a week, if not daily, so that we're really supplying our gut with what it needs to function at its best. Something else that can be really helpful, especially if you have elevated beta-glucuronidase or symptoms that suggest you might, is calcium deglucorate. So this supports the body's natural glucuronidation pathway, which is phase 2 liver detox, and it may help reduce beta-glucuronidase activity, that enzyme that we've been talking about that's going to reactivate your estrogen. Now, most of the time when we are working with beta-glucuronidase, we are going to do that in a supplement form.

15:17I actually have that in my Balance Women's Hormone Support Formula to support phase one, phase two, liver detox, and then phase three, which is like gut health as well and getting that estrogen out. But you can also get it in food like oranges, apples, grapefruit, back to those cruciferous vegetables again. So including those in your diet can be helpful. I want you to understand that you also need to be drinking water for estrogen elimination because you're not just excreting it through the bowels, but you're also excreting it through the kidneys as well. So we need to make sure that we're hydrated so that we can secrete that estrogen through our kidneys, but also so that we can have bowel movements daily.

16:03If your ADHD feels different across your cycle, postpartum, or in perimenopause, ADHD in Women explains why hormones can change your brain and what you can do about it. Pre-order now and for a limited time, get the first chapter audio read by me, Dr. Jolene Brighton, for free, plus a bunch of other bonuses like a free recipe guide and a PMDD workshop. Claim your bonuses at drbrighton.com slash ADHD and women. That's D-R-B-R-I-G-H-T-E-N dot com slash ADHD and women. So I do really like calcium deglucarate because it helps the liver and it helps the gut component. I like to couple that with sulferaphane, DIMM supplements.

16:52Having selenium involved can be really helpful. You can find all of this in my Balance Women's Hormone Support Supplement, which is at drbrightnessentials.com if you want to check that out. Otherwise, you can couple several supplements together if that's what works best for you. The other thing I would recommend is limiting alcohol. That can lead to dysbiosis and it can really be problematic in terms of estrogen metabolism and making sure that you get your estrogen out. Now, I want to shift gears from that, and I want to talk about a tool that can be really helpful for supporting gut health and your gut microbiome, which is probiotics.

17:34Actually, let me do it this way. Let's talk about prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics. If you haven't heard of prebiotics before, this is the food for your gut microbes. So prebiotics are types of non-digestible fibers and plant compounds that feed the beneficial bacteria in your gut. It's how we start to shift and keep things healthy and optimized in our gut. So the prebiotics, they kind of act like fertilizer. They help you grow bacteria that are good for your gut and they help them thrive so that they can do their job in supporting your digestion, your immune balance, your hormone metabolism.

18:13So when we think about prebiotics, there's a lot of them out there like garlic and onions, but things like chicory root can also be a nice one to bring in and have in the mix. Leeks are another source. So when leeks are in season, start making your leek soup. When asparagus come into season, let's pool those in. Jerusalem artichokes, if you can get your hands on those, that's another great source of prebiotics. If you're somebody who can hang with green bananas, I know not everybody can, but green bananas can be a really great source. They also have resistant starch, which can help your bacteria in making butyrate.

18:54We're going to talk about that short chain fatty acid a little bit later on. But I want you to understand that we have to be eating prebiotics. We have to be eating fibers if we want to have a healthy gut. Because I was like, let's talk about probiotics. I'm like, wait a minute. Let's back it up. We should definitely talk about prebiotics. One prebiotic that we have in our women's probiotic, the Dr. Brighton Essentials one, is guar gum. And that one, I really love that because prebiotics can actually aggravate people who have SIBO and guar gum doesn't tend to do that. Now, what are probiotics?

19:33You may already know this, but in case you don't, or you haven't heard it from me before, probiotics, those are the live microorganisms that are mostly beneficial bacteria. There's also yeast as well. Like So Saccharomyces boulardii is one that we sometimes supplement with and they can be taken to support your gut health. But we also just want to be nurturing your gut health as well. So I really want to emphasize you have to eat in a way and live in a way that supports your gut health because these microbes, they're helping, they produce certain nutrients. They help improve your digestion. So when they're in the right balance, we're not having gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea.

20:16We know that gut health is paramount to immune functions where the majority of your immune system lives. We're going to talk about this more as we talk about thyroid today. And as I said before, they assist in hormone clearance. So super, super important. Now, common sources. So you can take a probiotic or you can also eat foods that have probiotics in them as well. Little seeding of the gut, but we got to make sure we're feeding the gut. Don't forget that. yogurt, but specifically yogurt with live cultures because not all of them have that. Kefir we talked about, sauerkraut, kimchi we talked about, miso we didn't talk about.

20:56You can pick up miso paste. Typically what you want to do is put that in, if you're making a soup, you're not going to boil it. Like if you're making a chicken soup and you want to do this after the chicken has gone in at the very end, mixing it up so that we are not just boiling the heck out of them. And listen, sometimes these microbes are dead and they come in and they still participate in signaling that's really important for gut health. So I don't want you to be like, it's all or nothing with the me cell. And then if you're thinking about probiotics, you want to be looking at high quality probiotic supplements, making sure that they have enough in them, they have the right kind of strains in them to actually support what you're trying to do, and that those beneficial bacteria are doing what we're going to talk about next, producing postbiotics.

21:51So postbiotics are what your gut bacteria create. They are bioactive compounds that the bacteria produce after they digest the prebiotic fibers. So these can include the short-chain fatty acids like butyrate that I mentioned before, acetate, propionate. So those short-chain fatty acids, they also can produce enzymes, peptides. So these postbiotics are really a new area where the research is starting to explore how beneficial these postbiotics are. What we're starting to understand, postbiotics can help. They can help with brain function in some situations, reduce inflammation. They can actually help with repairing our gut linings.

22:41So let's say you take ibuprofen. We know that can cause some damage to the gut lining. It can lead to leaky gut. These postbiotics, what your bacteria are making, these can help you with repairing that. There is research starting to explore the role in regulating estrogen and cortisol and insulin sensitivity. So it's a really cool area that I think we're going to see a lot more research coming out in the future that tells us that, man, these gut bacteria do so much more than we even thought. I remember over 20 years ago when I was in nutrition school and they told us like, oh, these gut bacteria, they're just a bunch of freeloaders.

23:23Like, yeah, they make a little vitamin K, maybe a little B12, but like they're not really doing much for you. And I just laugh at where we are now that we've got so many bacteria and they're doing so much for us. And it's not just bacteria. It's all kinds of microbes in there. So just, I want to reiterate like how prebiotics, postbiotics, how it all works together. So you eat the prebiotics, they feed the probiotics in your gut, and then the probiotics make postbiotics. Postbiotics heal, regulate, and balance your gut and support your hormones as well. I just said a whole lot of information. Right now you might be like, okay, just like what is one thing that I could do right now to positively influence my gut microbiome and my estrogen levels.

24:13So the number one thing I would say is start with cooked cruciferous vegetables, like a half a cup, maybe even up to a cup if you're already eating those, like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts. So those cooked cruciferous vegetables will be easier on your digestive tract. They'll feed those good guys in your gut. They'll support estrogen detox through the liver and supporting the gut bacteria that are helping aid you in getting the estrogen you no longer need out. And if you're like, I cannot do cruciferous vegetables at all, then you try two tablespoons of broccoli sprouts, which is a lot of bang for a little tiny bit of cruciferous.

24:54Now I want to switch gears and start talking about thyroid hormones and gut health because your gut is going to activate like 20 % of your thyroid hormone. So T4 is converted to T3, the active form in the gut. So when your microbiome is out of balance, you might not convert this as well. And if you don't, you're going to have hypothyroid symptoms, which is like fatigue, cold intolerance, constipation, dry skin, brain fog, irregular periods, heavy periods. You may have lots of gas and bloating happening in the digestive tract. You may have heartburn. You may be experiencing joint pain, hair loss, loss of the lateral third of your eyebrows.

25:44And I don't know if I said this already, but infertility can be associated with low thyroid hormone. So when you produce thyroid hormone from the thyroid gland at the front of your neck here, you are producing mostly T4. It is out in the peripheral tissue where you have to convert it to T3. That's your active thyroid hormone, your mood, your metabolism, your menses, your gut motility. And so the gut is one of these places where this conversion takes place. But there's like an even deeper layer to what is happening in the gut as well. And that's because the number one cause of thyroid disease is autoimmunity.

26:23Hashimoto's and Graves' disease are both autoimmune in origin. And what's one thing that can trigger autoimmunity in many people? Gut infections. So certain pathogens like Yersinia, H. pylori, even SIBO imbalance has been linked to thyroid antibodies. Plus, leaky gut or intestinal hyperpermeability allows immune cells to be exposed to things they were never meant to see, which can kick start an autoimmune reaction. Now, before I get into strategies, I just want to remind you, I do have a full episode exploring the root cause of thyroid disease with Dr. Isabella Wentz, and I will link that in the show notes for you because if you're like, I just want to go super deep on thyroid, I want you to know that I've got you covered on that.

27:11Now, Graves' disease is hyperthyroidism. That is when you have antibodies that attach to the thyroid receptor and stimulate the thyroid to produce hormones. Hashimoto's is what causes hypothyroidism. Those antibodies flag the thyroid for destruction, then the immune system comes in and destroys the gland. Then you don't make enough hormones because you don't have enough of a gland left, and then you have hypothyroid symptoms. In both cases, we have to work on gut health. So if you have gut infections, we have to treat those. SIBO, parasites in some cases, H. pylori, super common. We have to treat it, especially those who are hypothyroid.

27:53We need to look at stomach acid and consider using things like betters or betaine HCL because you need thyroid hormone to stimulate the cells that produce acid in your stomach. So if you're having heartburn, you probably don't have enough stomach acid. We also want to be eating selenium-rich foods, so Brazil nuts, sardines, eggs, fish all together, and also eating fermented veggies, prebiotic fibers like we talked about. I'll link in the show notes to drbrighton.com article that lists out some of the best prebiotic fibers. So if you're really visual, I'll give that to you as well. Now, selenium that I just mentioned, I just want to say that is helpful because that's been shown to help with reducing thyroid antibodies as can myo-inositol as well.

28:39And then we may also want to bring in glutamine, bone broth. Bone broth can be really healing for some people. For others, it can cause a histamine issue. So it's just about what's true for you. And lastly, move your body. Even if it hurts, even if you're so tired, even if it's just a little light walk, we activate our thyroid hormone also through movement. So while you're working on your gut, make sure you're still moving your body. And that's also going to support your gut health as well. Now, you may have heard me say before that there's three ingredients to creating the autoimmune cake, if you will.