Why Your Gut Health Matters During Menopause

Gut health, aka the microbiome, is a hot topic. The science of the connection between the gut and female hormones is relatively new. While many questions still remain unanswered on the role of microbiota during menopause, researchers have found that female sex hormone levels influence the composition of the microbiota in many sites of the body, especially the gut.

What Is the Microbiome?

The microbiome is the gut’s complex ecosystem of billions of bacteria. These bacteria are ultimately responsible for major bodily functions, from digestion to the immune response to cerebral activity.

A balanced gut, full of beneficial bacteria and usually the result of clean living, promotes sustained wellness and a better peri- and postmenopause experience. An unbalanced gut, where beneficial bacteria are overridden by other bacterial populations, can be an underlying contributor to everything from acid reflux to, in some cases, depression and anxiety.

The gut bacteria affect and often signal the beginning of most processes at the microbial level. They form a blueprint for your system’s operations. If this blueprint is out of whack, chances are you will be too.

The Gut-Hormone Connection

If the gut is the basis of hormonal response, how can you effectively boost your gut health to minimize menopausal symptoms?

The gut doesn’t lie, and neither does the science behind it.

The microbiome is a wild jungle of bacterial microbes that serve multiple biological functions, including:

• Producing short-chain fatty acids
• Metabolizing drugs
• Maintaining the body’s homeostasis
• Producing anti-inflammatory secretions and responses the body needs
• Fighting invasive pathogens
• Acting as an endocrine organ

Each of these processes deserves its own article. But, let’s hone in on this last part involving the endocrine system and how it may affect women during menopause.

What Is the Endocrine System?

The endocrine system is the body’s network of glands that produce hormones. The microbiome, while not a gland per se, operates like an organ of the endocrine system. Scientists have observed certain gut bacteria producing hormonal chemicals that are released into the bloodstream. From there, these hormonal substances travel throughout the body to multiple other organs including the brain.

Further evidence directly links the hormones associated with metabolism to higher populations of particular bacterial strains in the gut, namely Ruminococcaceae and Lachnospiraceae.

In essence, the gut’s microbiome acts as a command center, a base for creating and disseminating the proper hormones through the proper channels to the proper places. And the bacteria themselves form the blueprint.

Gut Health During Perimenopause

If you are in the stages of perimenopause, your body has begun to produce less estrogen. While you may think the ovaries are the only player in this process, science now shows that the gut plays a pivotal role.

It turns out that the microbiome regulates estrogen levels!

In fact, there’s a subset of bacteria called the estrobolome that specifically works to metabolize estrogens. In a healthy and balanced gut, the estrobolome maintains homeostasis.

Estrogen and the Microbiome

An unbalanced and distressed microbiome can cause either a deficiency or excess of free estrogen. Consequently, estrogen-related health issues like menopause symptoms are more likely to arise.

There’s also evidence that a compromised estrobolome in postmenopausal women is associated with an increased risk of osteoporosis, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. The risk spike is caused by the aggravation of the low-estrogen state by an imbalanced gut.

But the relationship between the gut and estrogen is not a one-way street.

Just as the gut regulates and affects estrogen levels, the natural decline of estrogen levels caused by menopause has a direct effect on the microbiome. Annoyances like weight gain around the belly and IBS in menopausal women are thought to occur as a result of the marked difference and subsequent imbalance of the microbial ecosystem caused by plummeting estrogen levels.

Benefits of a Healthy Estrobolome

A healthy estrobolome, the gut’s estrogen-specific microbial network, will effectively metabolize estrogen and keep estrogen levels in check. However, your gut health will be compromised, or at the very least undergo a drastic change, if you have already entered the perimenopausal state.

Boosting your microbiome health now will have a tremendous effect on your menopausal symptoms and overall health. Look at your entrance into this new stage as the perfect impetus to make some easy and positive changes. The gut is a resilient place; it just needs to be put on the right track by cultivating some simple habits.

3 Easy Ways to Boost Your Gut Health

1. Change what you eat

Unlike other endocrine organs, the microbiota has intense plasticity and can alter dramatically and rapidly in response to diet.

Cut the processed foods OUT. They’re gut-killers. Focus on superfoods that promote gut health. Incorporate fermented foods like sauerkraut, kombucha, and kefir. These have live probiotic strains that can replenish beneficial bacteria fast. Regular consumption of fermented foods is associated with longevity to boot, so don’t miss out!

2. Take a daily probiotic

Because low estrogen levels have an impact on the microbiome’s balance, a daily probiotic is helpful to continuously provide a source of beneficial flora. Look for a supplement that contains multiple types of strains. An ounce of apple cider vinegar daily is also a great gut booster.

3. Avoid antibiotics (when possible)

Antibiotics are destroyers of bacteria by nature. Many physicians tend to prescribe antibiotics at the drop of a hat, effectively disrupting the gut’s delicate ecosystem and also decreasing the body’s ability to fight off infection on its own. If the issue at hand is not serious, try to avoid taking an antibiotic. A few days of rest, fluids, probiotics, and raw juices can do wonders for immunity.

Like the immune system, the endocrine system and our hormonal network are in a relationship of mutual causality with our gut. Keeping your gut health in mind and in check will have sweeping impacts not only on menopausal symptoms but your general well-being altogether.

All good things.