Hello this is dr. david ill strim from the international autoimmune institute at biga memorial hospital our next installment will be about estrogen dominance now as you’ve heard in previous videos when i was in med school one in 400 people had an autoimmune disease now it’s 1 in 12 americans and one in 9 women now why do women get autoimmune disease so much more
Than men one of the reasons that researchers believe women get autoimmune disease much more than men is estrogen dominance too much estrogen and progesterone and this can be because estrogen goes too high compared to the progesterone it can happen if progesterone goes too low compared to the estrogen now each one of these individually is profoundly important on the
Body the balance seems to have a particular impact on the immune system right now more women are diagnosed every year with autoimmune disease in the united states then with breast cancer or cardiovascular disease combined so it’s a huge problem now women on average start to develop estrogen dominance or progesterone deficiency estrogen being too high progesterone
Being too low around age 35 now this can happen at age 15 or younger that’s can happen age 55 or older but on average that occurs in the mid-30s often times when estrogen dominance may begin in the mid 30s how a woman might experience this is insomnia anxiety you can think of estrogen and progesterone kind of like you think about your gas pail and your brake pedal
Now in your car you need two pedals you don’t get very far without both of them you have to have the right amount of each the same thing without yujin and progesterone estrogen is like your gas pedal kind of revs up the system progesterone like the brake pedal calms and slows the system too much estrogen and progesterone here comes insomnia here comes anxiety now
The estrogen dominance can also show itself as bad flows bad cramps bad pms ovarian cysts breast cysts endometriosis fibroids all kinds of different symptoms now just like autoimmune disease that’s what jen dominus tends to run in families also and so different women though and the same family may show different symptoms but they all have the underlying problem of
Estrogen dominance that might be driving them all towards autoimmunity so one woman in a family could have bad flows one could had bad cramps one could have ovarian cysts one could have endometriosis somebody else can’t sleep and somebody else is anxious but they all have the estrogen dominance you may remember in a previous installment we talked about the beautiful
Setpoint in the middle of the immune system that when it gets lost people move away from that both up and down with the up regulated immune system issues being your allergies your asthma you autoimmune disease and the downregulated immune systems being things like colds flus infections recurrent infections and cancer so you lose that setpoint you live away from it
When we talk about the estrogen dominance being a big driver of the autoimmune disease but also the estrogen dominance can be a big driver of cancer risk as well back in 1981 at johns hopkins they published an article in the american journal of epidemiology and what they saw was that women who had estrogen dominance pre menopausal ii and they were looking at these
Women because they had a hard time conceiving hard time having children and what they found when they followed them over the next few years is that the women pre menopausal ii that had estrogen dominance had over a five times greater chance to developing breast cancer pre menopausal ii and over a ten times greater chance of developing any malignant neoplasm the
Rest of their life if they had estrogen dominance so here’s a great example of this estrogen dominance that not only drives autoimmune disease but also drives cancer risk which goes along with our knowledge of the immune system that when you lose that setpoint you move away from it remember the body is always ready to heal you just have to give it a chance you
Transcribed from video
Episode 11: Dr. David Bilstrom, "Estrogen Dominance" By Bingham Healthcare