How High Prolactin Affects Your Health and Hormones

Did you know high prolactin affects your health and hormones? Let’s talk about it.

Prolactin is one of the most underappreciated hormones. I rarely see clinicians checking prolactin levels unless they suspect a patient has a pituitary tumor. It’s a shame because high daytime prolactin can be at the root of so many issues. 

Prolactin is produced by the hypothalamus and stored in the pituitary gland.

Prolactin is a nocturnal hormone – meaning that it’s produced at the highest levels at night and lowest levels during the day. To determine the proper circadian rhythm, I check prolactin around 9:00 AM in the morning. 

Elevated morning prolactin indicates poor sleep. Moreover, not getting up with the sun, nipple stimulation within 24 hours of drawing prolactin, autoimmunity, obesity, hypothalamic dopamine deficiency, and sometimes prolactin-secreting tumors. 

At night, prolactin is released to help your immune system do its job better. It tells your thymus to program WBCs properly and then release them as T cells. T cells attack invading microbes and cancer cells. 

If prolactin is high during the day, your immune system does not function properly.

T cells attack normal tissue – which is known as autoimmunity. You may not have classic autoimmunity, like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, or thyroiditis, but you have autoimmune tendencies. You get rashes easily, you may have leaky gut syndrome, or you will have trouble losing weight. The majority of my morbidly obese patients have discircadian prolactin levels. 

Women with serum prolactin greater than 100 ng/dl will have overt hypogonadism which looks like menopausal symptoms – amenorrhea, hot flashes, and vaginal dryness. Serum prolactin between 50 to 100 ng/dl may cause infrequent periods. Serum prolactin between 20 to 50 ng/dl may shorten the luteal phase contributing to infertility and early miscarriage.

In men, serum prolactin greater than 50 ng/dl causes hypogonadotropic hypogonadism leading to low testosterone production. As well as low libido, impotence, infertility, gynecomastia, erectile dysfunction, loss of muscle mass, increase body fat, and low bone mass.

Optimizing your hypothalamus with Genesis Gold® helps to return prolactin to healthy circadian levels. 

If you want to learn more about prolactin and how it affects your health and hormones, please join our free Hormone Reboot Training.

Excerpt from Hypothalamus Handbook

The role of prolactin in central nervous system inflammation; Edgar Ramos-Martinez, Ivan Ramos-Martínez , Gladys Molina-Salinas , Wendy A. Zepeda-Ruiz and Marco Cerbon; Reviews in the Neurosciences; 2021