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Digestion and Hormones

by | Last updated: Apr 7, 2022 | Gut Health | 1 comment

If you want to know how your gut affects your hormones, then this is the article, for you! Today I’m going to teach you how your digestion, your gut, your gastrointestinal tract affect your hormones. Also how your hormones affect your gastrointestinal tract.

Hormone Healing Tip #1: Your Hormones Affect Your GI Tract

Now, this is really important because most of my patients who come to me and want their hormones in balance, end up having to start with their gut. Why? Because your gut, your gastrointestinal tract, affects how you metabolize your hormones. It affects the nutrients that you get in to actually create new hormones. It has such a dire effect on hormones. If I don’t start with the gut, I would give these patients so many hormones that they would actually have too much on board. Starting with the gut helps to actually establish a much better hormonal base. I am going to go through your intestines and your gut so you can understand what I am talking about here.

First of all, you need to know that your hypothalamus, that little part in your brain, the master controller that controls everything, also controls your digestion.

It produces hormones, including ghrelin, that helps to control your hunger and your appetite. It is very responsive to the neuroendocrine system or the hormone and nervous system that is within the gut. Constantly responding back to the hypothalamus. What happens is when you eat food, it goes through your mouth down your esophagus and it into your stomach. Now, the pH of your stomach, because of hydrochloric acid, is a very, very acidic pH called a pH of one. Luckily, your stomach has a nice, strong lining that is filled with mucus. Almost like a sea anemone has that mucus on it that actually protects it from its own hydrochloric acid. That is great. Otherwise, you would digest yourself. Your stomach acid would literally eat up your stomach.

Once that food is actually released into the digestive tract, your liver produces bile with a pH of nine which is super alkaline, super basic. It neutralizes that very acid stomach climate so that the pancreas, the enzymes from the pancreas can actually work at their perfect pH of 6.8 to 7.2. Stomach acid plus bile actually equates to a neutralized pH. Now the pancreatic enzymes can do their job in the small intestine. You have got 24 feet of that. That 24 feet of the small intestine is where digestion and absorption occur. Digestion in the top half. Absorption in the bottom half.

Whatever is absorbed actually then has to pass through and back through the liver before it goes into the rest of the body. It is really important that you’re absorbing all of your nutrients. Then, once all of the nutrients are pulled out of the food as much as possible, the waste products are dumped into the colon through this ileocecal valve. They then travel up the colon all the way across, down and out through your anus in a bowel movement.

Hormone Healing Tip #2: Your Gut Affects Your Hormone Metabolism

Now, it is really, very important that you keep your colon healthy. Why? Because the bacteria in your gut, the friendly bacteria, the probiotics, the beneficial bacteria help your body to metabolize hormones appropriately. If you are out of balance, your hormone metabolism will be out of balance. For instance, you have certain hormones that affect your gut. Number one, hormones affect your gut. Which hormones are there? Well, a pregnant woman often notices within the first trimester, usually within the first few weeks, she gets a little nauseated. She gets morning sickness. That is the high level of progesterone that is stabilizing her uterus to keep her from miscarrying. That high level of progesterone actually slows down the digestive process. Food just kind of sits there and that makes her feel nauseous.

Cortisol, on the other hand, produced by your adrenal glands. It is a stress hormone and speeds everything up. It is very inflammatory.

Cortisol speeds up your digestion, causing cramps and maybe even some diarrhea, and it is very inflammatory, actually eating away at the lining of the digestive tract. Too much stress can cause stress-related ulcers, stress-related irritable bowel syndrome, stress-related autoimmune conditions like irritable bowel disease like Crohn’s. It can really cause a lot of irritation with too much cortisol production. Hormones do affect your digestion and your gut, which in turn tells the hypothalamus to slow everything down. It feels like you’re being attacked.

Now, number two, your gut also affects your hormones.

The way your gut affects your hormones is that it affects the metabolism of your hormones. Let us take estrogen, for example. Your ovaries produce estrogen and once estrogen is done, you are all done with it. You do not need it anymore. It goes all the way to the liver to get broken down. It gets conjugated or handcuffed to something called glucuronidase. Glucuronidase floats around with that estrogen trying to get it out so that it eventually will go out with your bowel movement.But if your gut bacteria’s out of balance, the pathogenic and the imbalanced gut bacteria will actually create an enzyme and break the bond, break the handcuff.

Now, estrogen gets reabsorbed back into the system. It gets recycled. That can create an estrogen-dominant effect. What can you do about that? Well, there’s a supplement called Cal D-Glucarate that actually helps to keep that bond, protects the bond between the hormones and the glucuronidase so that you do not recycle your estrogen back again. That can be taken twice daily or even one with every meal to actually help to keep your estrogen metabolized and gotten out of the body in a safer manner.

calcium d glucarate
Calcium D Glucarate

Hormone Healing Tip #3 Support Your Hypothalamus

Now, the last thing that you can do, the third thing that you can do to actually keep your hormones and your gut healthy is to support your hypothalamus. Your hypothalamus is controlling all this. If it is not getting the support it needs, then the gut often times will be kind of like that kid in the classroom that is causing all the problems. It kind of gets out of control and the rest of the classroom gets out of control. The hypothalamus needs you to support it. The way you can support it is with Genesis Gold®.

I created Genesis Gold® in order for you to have the plant-based nutrients you need to support your hypothalamus and balance your hormone, but also to support healthy digestion and absorption and assimilation of your nutrients. Now that you know what you need to do in order to have healthy digestion, thus having healthy hormones, it is kind of hard if the rest of your hormonal and neuroendocrine system, as well as your immune system, is out of balance.

Genesis Gold®

About the Author - Deborah Maragopoulos FNP

Known as the Hormone Queen®️, I’ve made it my mission to help everyone – no matter their age – balance their hormones, and live the energy and joy their DNA and true destiny desires. See more about me my story here…

     

1 Comment

  1. Jerry Allen

    My wife is having a lot of stomach problems. most foods make her stomach hurt holds her hand just under her breast bone and says I am sick. goes to bed. we have tried a lot of DR and Meds nothing seems to work . think they look at indigestion but I think we need to look at digestion problems. We have been to Mayo Clinic they told her she is carrying to much poop. she takes fiber but doesn’t help bowel movements. I think her stomach is not working properly so nothing is working the way it should. of course when this happens she worries and brain doesn’t function. she can’t figure out how cook or feels she is to sick to cook.

    Reply

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