You’ve probably read a post or heard someone describing symptoms of excess estrogen and resonated with it. I know I have. However, high estrogen isn’t the main problem. Can reducing estrogen in your environment, beauty products, menstrual products, and home help your symptoms? Yes, and I think it’s a piece of the hormone imbalance puzzle, but it’s not the whole picture.⁣ Essentially, estrogen dominance is having too much estrogen. But your “excess” estrogen may be due to your lack of progesterone. Low progesterone is the bigger issue, and one that we’re going to talk about today.

What role does progesterone play in estrogen dominance?

Progesterone acts like the complete opposite of estrogen in the body. It’s very pro-metabolic. Progesterone supports a healthy metabolism and thyroid function, while estrogen can slow down thyroid function when too high, leading to fat storage, acne, mood changes, headaches, migraines, and everything we want to avoid.⁣ As estrogen levels rise, progesterone levels are lowered. We only make progesterone when we ovulate, but it is dictated by thyroid function and is suppressed if we have excess estrogen.

For all of these reasons, it can be easy to think of estrogen as the “bad” hormone, but just like every other hormone in the body, it has its appropriate place and necessary functions. It’s the lack of progesterone to counteract the estrogen that leads to the symptoms that many of us are familiar with like decreased sex drive, fatigue, weight gain, PMS, gallbladder problems, or fibrocystic breasts. Not to mention, a lack of progesterone leads to a sluggish thyroid/metabolism. It also contributes to abnormal menstrual cycles and impaired fertility.

The key to healthy hormones and better periods is to focus more on raising progesterone levels and nourishing your body rather than trying to lower estrogen by restricting things. A good place to start is by making sure you’re ovulating consistently. Without ovulation, we won’t be making any progesterone.

What happens when we ovulate?

The first step of naturally boosting progesterone is to make sure you’re ovulating every cycle. Here’s how it works:

• Ovulation occurs when estrogen surges, and the dominant follicle releases an egg.
• The emptied egg sac then becomes a gland called the corpus luteum.
• The corpus luteum develops quickly over the next 24 hours and then produces progesterone throughout the duration of the luteal phase.
• This is the main event of the menstrual cycle and allows our bodies to balance estrogen and progesterone.

How do I track ovulation?

To confirm that ovulation has occurred during your cycle, you need to track your basal body temperature. All you need for this is any basal body thermometer. This means it needs to go to the 100th degree (98.67 vs. 98.6). You can find these at places like CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and Amazon.

We want to see a temperature increase in the second half of the cycle. Once ovulation occurs, the body makes progesterone, and this increases our basal body temperature. It’s not a huge temperature increase that you’re looking for. It’s only about .5F, but when you chart in an app, you can see the difference. You need three high temperatures in a row that are higher than the previous 5 to confirm that ovulation has occurred.

TIP: If you are taking your temperature and feel like your temps are all over the place, hold the thermometer in your mouth for at least a minute prior to taking the temp. This warms up the thermometer and helps you get more consistent temps.

Further Learning Resources:

• The Fifth Vital Sign by Lisa Hendrickson-Jack
• Taking Charge of Your Fertility byToni Weschler
• LUNA fertility awareness course from Nourished with Nina

What helps us to ovulate and therefore make more progesterone?

There are three main areas we want to look at when supporting ovulation and progesterone levels naturally that we want to focus on:

1. Metabolism: This is how your body makes energy—in order to make enough progesterone, we need to have enough energy. That corpus luteum needs energy and FAST so it can develop over a 24-hour period and start pumping out progesterone. The slower this process, the slower and lower that progesterone production is likely to be.
2. Nourishment: Food is what fuels our metabolism, so it would make sense that both macronutrients (protein, fat, & carb) and micronutrients (vitamins & minerals) are important to producing enough progesterone. See below for more information.
3. Stress: This is a blanket term meant to cover many areas such as mental, emotional, and physical stressors. The more stressed you become, the more cortisol is produced. This increase in cortisol causes the depletion of progesterone. Stress also depletes specific vitamins and minerals that are needed for hormone production (magnesium, vitamin C, sodium, and potassium to name a few). Remember, we need all of these plus more to help build up a healthy corpus luteum that will make adequate levels of progesterone.

How does nutrition impact progesterone?

I often hear from clients that they’ve been on restricting diets trying to lose weight. These diets usually involve not eating enough, or not eating well-balanced meals, or eliminating carbs—all of which takes a toll on progesterone levels. Although there’s no such thing as progesterone-rich foods, there are habits that we can apply to support thyroid and progesterone production.

Eating enough food is the only way to give your body the energy it needs to perform the functions required for optimal hormone health. We’ve talked about compensation in previous newsletters and how under-eating leads to stress, which causes the body to compensate. This stressed state is no different from big mental/emotional stressors. That’s why eating and balancing blood sugar is the number one way to reduce your stress.

What changes can I make to increase progesterone production?

Before you make a plan to increase your progesterone, you should first ask yourself a few questions. What is inhibiting me from making progesterone? Am I eating enough? Do I have a dysfunctional thyroid or metabolism? Am I missing essential amino acids? Here are several things you can try to support your metabolism, reduce your stress, encourage ovulation, and increase your progesterone:

• Eating enough food in general, as well as protein/carbs/fat
• Prioritizing nutrient-dense foods from both plants and animals:
  • grass-fed beef
  • wild caught seafood
  • eggs (especially the yolk)
  • organ meats
  • bone broth and gelatin
  • raw carrots
  • starchy veggies
  • cooked greens
  • coconut in all forms
  • grass-fed butter
  • grass-fed dairy (raw is most optimal)
• Eating regularly throughout the day (every 3-5 hours) to support blood sugar balance
• Always pairing protein with carbs and vice versa
• Sleeping 7-9 hours nightly
• Being mindful of light exposure (getting outside, blocking blue light after dark)
• Moving your body in a way that feels good, and not overdoing the exercise
• Partaking in activities you enjoy and allowing for ample rest

If you’re struggling with weight gain, mood swings, and low libido, then you could be experiencing estrogen dominance/low progesterone. You can try to detox your estrogen levels as much as you want, but without adequate progesterone, you will still have period problems. To correct this hormone imbalance your goal should be to boost your progesterone.

​Dive deeper into how to balance progesterone and estrogen with this podcast episode from the are You Menstrual? podcast.

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