The common symptoms of PMS such as mood swings, depression and bloating are all signs of estrogen dominance.
Estrogen and progesterone are two of the primary female sex hormones. During a normal menstrual cycle, they take turns driving the process of maturing and releasing an egg and preparing the uterus for possible pregnancy: estrogen rises in the first half of the cycle, peaks at ovulation, then falls in the second half as progesterone rises.
When estrogen levels are high in relation to our progesterone we experience many severe symptoms, among them anxiety, breat tenderness, cyclical headaches or migraines, irregular bleeding, water retention, weight gain and more. (Note that a number of these symptoms are also indicative of the exact opposite condition — a deficiency of estrogen — another example of why the concept of estrogen dominance is too simplistic.)
If estrogen levels stay unopposed, women may develop infertility, endometriosis, amenorrhea (skipped periods), hypermenorrhea (heavy bleeding), fibroids, uterine cancer and decreased cognitive ability, among other conditions.
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