Ep. 69 What Your Gut Is Trying to Tell Your Hormones

Hey friend,

Ever feel like your hormones are running the show—no matter what you eat, how well you sleep, or how many supplements you try?

What if the real problem isn’t your hormones at all…

but your gut trying to get your attention?

In this week’s episode of The Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast, I’m breaking down the science behind the gut–hormone connection — and how everything from bloating to burnout often starts in your digestion.

Inside this episode, you’ll learn 👇

• Why gut health is the foundation of hormone balance
• How your microbiome controls cortisol, estrogen, and thyroid hormones
• The science of the estrobolome (and why estrogen dominance often starts in the gut)
• How poor digestion slows thyroid hormone conversion (T4 → T3)
• What happens when your liver and gut can’t “take out the hormonal trash”
• The simple, daily habits that keep your hormones and digestion in sync

This one’s packed with science, but easy to follow — because when you understand the why, healing finally makes sense.

🎧 Listen to What Your Gut Is Trying to Tell Your Hormones wherever you get your podcasts.

Because your symptoms aren’t random.

They’re signals.

Let’s learn how to listen.

Transcript

0:03

Today we're talking about the gut hormone connection that could completely change how you approach healing.

Speaker: 0:19

Welcome to the Balance Hormone Solution Podcast. If you're a woman 35 plus feeling exhausted, struggling to lose weight, and wondering where your libido went, this is for you. I am Tracy Aaron, a functional medicine practitioner who helps women balance their hormones naturally. Without prescriptions, guesswork, or trending Nonsense.'cause here's the truth, your symptoms aren't random. They're signals. And if you know how to listen, you can fix the root cause and start feeling like yourself again. If you're ready for real solutions, let's get to it.

0:59

So welcome back to the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast. If you are a woman 35 plus and you feel exhausted, inflamed, or disconnected from your body like so many of my clients, then this show is for you. I am your host, Tracy Aaron, a registered nurse and functional medicine practitioner, and I help women balance their hormones naturally without prescriptions, guesswork, or trendy. Nonsense. All right. Your hormones are signals, and when you learn to read them, you can finally heal at the root. So for years, people are chasing symptoms of hormone imbalance. They're trying to fix estrogen, progesterone, low thyroid levels, right? But nothing actually clicks until. We look a little bit beyond those surface level symptoms. So for me, in my practice, once I started running gut and liver tests on my clients, everything begins to change. And this is how your gut is not just where food gets digested, it's literally the communication hub. For your entire endocrine system. And today I want to unpack the science of how your gut literally dictates all of your hormone expression. It's not just the endocrine system. We've got to look a little bit deeper. So four things today, number one. The gut brain hormone axis. Have you ever heard of this? Well, this is how stress is actually gonna show up in your digestion. We talk a lot about cortisol. We talk a lot about managing cortisol, how to lower cortisol, how to raise cortisol, what cortisol does over the long haul, what burnout looks like on a Dutch test, right? But what is it actually doing inside the gut? So this is the gut brain hormone axis that I wanna tell you about, and that's because your gut, think of it like it has its own nervous system, right? It's called the enteric nervous system, and this is the production of about 90% of your serotonin and nearly half of your body's dopamine. If you'll remember, these are neurotransmitters that are going to regulate things like mood and sleep. Even reproductive hormone signaling through the HPA axis, right? We talk a lot about the HPA axis when it comes to the adrenals, and it comes through our cortisol levels. But the gut's nervous system called the enteric nervous system is producing a lot of these transmitters that are going to then signal to the HPA axis. So when that gut becomes inflamed. Easily, right? Easily from things like poor diet infections, chronic high stress, cortisol, it's going to increase something called lipopolysaccharide. Okay? Li increased high levels of lipopolysaccharides can be, actually, is always problematic, and here's what those are. Lipos. Polysaccharides, LPS. Those are a specific type of endotoxin, okay? That lives inside the microbiome and it triggers systemic inflammation and raises cortisol. Okay, so let's take a step back. I really want you to understand this. When the gut becomes inflamed from things like poor diet, infections, stress, it's going to increase this endotoxin LPS. Or lipopolysaccharide. That increase is what's going to trigger systemic inflammation. Raise cortisol. Okay, so chronically elevated cortisol it, we've talked about this before, but I want to, I wanna talk about this in terms of gut digestion. What happens here? There is something called the pregnenolone steel. Pregnant alone, we call the mother hormone. Well, when cortisol is elevated, we are stealing away from progesterone production. Our focus in our body will always be survival over making a baby. So in the presence of elevated cortisol, we are going to make less progesterone overall. Less progesterone is going to suppress ovulation, right? Give us irregular cycles. Oh, and forget about making a baby, because our progesterone levels need to remain high in order to create the right environment for our bodies to ovulate and carry a baby if that entire hormonal pathway is shunted. Because we need the reserves over here for our sympathetic nervous system to support our high cortisol levels. We are not going to focus on progesterone, okay? So that elevated cortisol not only is going to shunt our progesterone production, which again is going to suppress ovulation, give us irregular cycles, make us moody anxious. Hello, PMS, right? But that elevated cortisol inside the gut is also going to break down the gut lining over time. And when that gut lining gets broken down, we are going to have an increase in leaky gut. So what I'm saying is a stressed out gut is going to create a stressed out brain and a stressed out brain literally shuts down fertility and repair. Okay, this is, this is step one that I wanna communicate. This is the gut brain hormone access and how stress is going to show up in your digestion. Here's something else to know. Number two, we have something called the Estrobolome. Okay? And this is how gut bacteria control estrogen. Did you even know that this exists? Inside your microbiome is a collection of bacteria, and that's called the estrobolome, right? You've heard of the microbiome before. And we also have an estro, a collection of bacteria. They. Are responsible for producing a certain enzyme called beta glucuronidase, and that enzyme, it's going to determine whether estrogen gets properly detoxified or resorbed back into circulation. This one little enzyme, and we find out the level of this on a stool test, something like the GI map or the gut zoomer. So a balanced estro means that that enzyme beta glucuronidase levels are normal and estrogen is then going to be metabolized into the liver. Bound to bile excreted through the stool. That's the process. When we have an imbalanced estro bolo or dysbiosis, beta glucuronidase is going to be high, which means estrogen is going to become de conjugated or unhooked, and it will be recycled throughout the system. Again, creating a picture of estrogen dominance, right. So those symptoms, if we remember estrogen dominance, those are gonna contribute to things like bloating, breast tenderness, heavy bleeding, extra tissue, things like fibroids or migraines, uh, stubborn weight around the hips and the thighs. This is all a result of estrogen dominance. Now, constipation is gonna make this worse because that slow transit time is going to give reactivated estrogen. More time to be resorbed. So we want to be moving our stools completely and quickly throughout the day. Remember, the clinical definition of constipation is fewer than one bowel movements a day. Many of my clients are not even having one bowel movement a day, and what we're looking for is two. Optimal would be three. We want to keep our stool moving and the pathway of elimination open so that recycled estrogen, which might be caught up in our stool, does not have a longer chance to be resorbed and move throughout the body again. So the clinical pearl here for you is that healthy bowel movements equal healthy estrogen balance. I can tell you right off the bat, if you are not pooping, at least once a day, you are struggling with some form of estrogen dominance. Okay. But the enzyme I want you to be familiar with is something called beta glucuronidase, and we can only know what that is through a stool test. And it's a very, very valuable marker to run if you are having continued symptoms of estrogen dominance.'cause we could have estrogen dominance and not have elevated beta glucuronidase. But we are talking about the gut today. We're talking about how the gut and its microbiome. Will contribute to hormonal symptoms and elevated glucuronidase is one of the most common ways that we can get estrogen dominance in our bodies. So number three, let's bring in that thyroid. The thyroid is a mystery to many, many, many people, and there actually is also a gut thyroid connection. Right. We have an access between our gut hormone and brain. We call this the neuroendocrine system. We also have a gut thyroid connection, and that's where we convert T four to T three. So your thyroid gland is mainly producing thyroxine, which is a T four, but it's an inactive hormone. So how do we. Utilize an inactive hormone. We don't. We have to convert it. We have to activate it. So about 20 to 25% of that T four is going to be converted into something called T three, the active metabolism driven form by gut bacteria and intestinal enzymes. Okay, so we need a healthy microbiome to convert T four to T three. And if your microbiome is disrupted by things like antibiotic use. Extra stress, high cortisol, right, or even low stomach acid. Then this conversion is gonna slow down. If we added nutrient deficiencies, things like selenium, zinc, iron, your cells simply are not going to receive the thyroid signal efficiently. Okay, so how do we know that this is a problem without testing? Think about these symptoms that will signify low T three, the active hormone fatigue. Or cold intolerance. Do you always have cold hands and cold feet? Do you have a hard time warming up? Sluggish metabolism, weight gain, no matter what you do, no matter what you eat. Constipation, dry skin, right? Or hair thinning, brain fog. These are the ways that we know we are not getting enough of the active form of T three. Your gut is likely responsible for some form of dysbiosis that is prevention, preventing this conversion. So if you ever go to a doctor and they try to talk to you about your thyroid issues, but never address the gut, it's time to find a new provider. Even if your thyroid labs look normal, this gut dysfunction can leave you feeling clinically hypothyroid. What does that look like? You can have normal levels, but you can still have these symptoms when this gut dysbiosis is present. Okay, the last one, number four is what about the gut and the liver connection? So think of it like a highway. Okay. Your liver's job is to package up old hormones, toxins, metabolites into the bile so they can leave through the intestines. This is a very close communication pathway. We have something in the liver called phase one and phase two liver detox processes, and they rely on amino acids. Hello, animal protein. Why are you so important? Oh, yeah. Now I remember. We need loads of glycine and cystine, particularly B vitamins. Antioxidants like glutathione. And if we're not pooping daily or if that bile flow is sluggish, then those metabolites can get resorbed through the intestinal wall. Okay. This is a scientific process called inter hepatic recirculation. We don't need to get into the weeds here. What I want you to know is that this process reposes your body to toxins and hormones that were meant to be excreted through your body. Right? So a lot of people say, we don't need to detox. Our liver does the job for us. Yeah. If it's healthy, if it's working optimally, it absolutely can. But when it's becoming sluggish and we are resorbing things like toxins and hormones. We will get skin breakouts. We'll get headaches, we'll get irritability around the cycle, right? Or persistent bloating, especially after fatty meals. Pay attention to that symptom. We know for sure we've got gallbladder and liver issues. If you're getting bloating after you eat a meal with high fat. So you don't need another harsh cleanse. You don't need like extended fasting. We just need to improve bile flow. We need to utilize minerals for cellular hydration. We need to increase our fiber intake in our diet and achieve some form of microbial balance so that this highway can do its job. Okay, so things like, um, estrogen, progesterone, cortisol, thyroid, all these hormones, they need raw materials. And those raw materials would look like things like zinc, magnesium, selenium, B vitamins, amino acids, right? So if we have low stomach acid. Some form of dysbiosis or chronic inflammation in the gut. We're not going to absorb these nutrients properly. So this is why, yes, diet is so critical and so important, but it's not the only thing. And if you have been working on your diet for a long period of time and you're still dealing with symptoms, it's time to look further into your. Because even a perfect diet can't build, build healthy hormones. If your digestion is impaired, you're not going to absorb the nutrients you need to make these hormones. So remember this, you cannot out supplement a broken gut. We have to make sure that the absorption pieces are in place. So there's lots of factors here, but as long as you get your mind wrapped around that, your gut is the gatekeeper for hormone expression, it's not just your hypothalamus, your pituitary, your adrenal glands, your ovaries, your thyroid, right? We're we need to look deeper into the gut as well, because when that is healthy. Our cortisol can calm estrogen can detox properly. Thyroid metabolism hums along and your mood begins to stabilize. But when it's compromised, every system compensates, and that's when our symptoms begin to scream the loudest. So a balanced microbiome is balanced hormones, and it really is that simple and that profound. So here's your action step for this week. I want you to start observing your gut, just like you would your cycle. Track things like bloating, bowel habits, mood, energy. Notice how stress or poor sleep can make your digestion shift. Do you feel better after, um, after a solid night's sleep? Do you feel worse? If you've been waking up in the middle of the night? I want you to aim for one to two easy bowel movements a day. And increase your fiber at least 25 grams a day and half of your body weight in ounces of mineral rich water. I personally drink and recommend distilled water, but we're always adding minerals back. That's so important. So if you're curious what's really happening inside your gut, you wanna take a step further to look at testing, please reach out to me. Happy to order a functional stool test for you because data beats guessing. Every single time. Alright, so stay tuned,'cause next week we're gonna get even more practical and I'm gonna sit down with my friend from Microbiome Labs and we're gonna go deeper into things like spore based pri, probiotics, gut repair, and how to actually rebuild from the inside out. Just remember, your symptoms aren't random, they're signals, and when you learn to listen, healing can begin. I'll see you next time.

Speaker 3: 18:01

That's it for today's episode of the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast. If this resonated, don't just listen. Do something about it. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you know another woman who's tired of feeling like a stranger in her own body. Send her this way for more support. Check out the show notes. I've got resources to help you get started. Just remember, your body isn't broken, you just need the right tools. See you next time.