Overcome PCOS & Estrogen Dominance Naturally [Podcast]

“I will tell you that amongst all the different hormonal imbalances that I’ve had, estrogen dominance is the easiest one to reverse.” – Magdalena Wszelaki

If you have PCOS and are estrogen dominant, you struggle with symptoms like acne, hair loss, hair growth, irregular cycles, irritability, storing fat around your hips and your thighs, thyroid nodules, estrogenic cancers, fibrocystic breasts, very sore or lumpy breasts, bloating, PMS, anovulation, mood swings, fibroids- the list goes on. Sound familiar?

Magdalena Wszelaki can help. She brings to life the idea of food as medicine and offers simple, real-world/real-food solutions to estrogen dominance and other hormonal imbalance issues. Estrogen imbalance plays a major role in PCOS, so this is a podcast episode not to be missed. Listen (or read the transcript below) as we discuss:

• The reason estrogen dominance is common in women with PCOS
• Symptoms and tests for measuring levels of estrogen (including DUTCH, estrogen metabolite, and saliva tests)
• Impact of alcohol on estrogen
• 3 simple things to do to clean up your gut microbiome & balance estrogen
• The rock star food for reducing estrogen and more

All PCOS Diva podcasts are available on     

Mentioned in this podcast:

• Hormonesbalance.com
• Cooking for Hormone Balance
• Magdalena’s new Estrogen Reset Program
• The Unexpected Ways Diet Impacts Your Health [Podcast]
• Herbs for PCOS [Podcast]
• PCOS Lab Testing: Beyond the Basics [Podcast] (Dr. Carrie Jones & DUTCH test)
• Take Control of Your PCOS Labs [Podcast] Ordering independent labs

Full Transcript:

Amy:                     Much of the hormone information that we find in the PCOS community I think is focused on androgens, especially considering that high androgens is one of the diagnostic criteria for PCOS. If you have high androgens, you have symptoms like acne, hair loss, hair growth, irregular cycles, irritability.

Then the other hormone I think we hear a lot about is progesterone. Women with PCOS tend to have low progesterone. Things like headaches, cycle issues, especially break through bleeding, anxiety is kind of caused by low progesterone. The hormone estrogen is one that I don’t think that we talk enough about and the role that estrogen imbalance plays in PCOS.

I want to talk about that and I asked one of my favorite women’s hormone experts, Magdalena Wszelaki, to come back on the PCOS podcast. She is the founder of hormonesbalance.com and the author of Cooking for Hormone Balance, which is a fabulous book that came out last year. Magdalena, welcome back to the PCOS Diva podcast.

Magdalena:        Amy, so good to be back.

Amy:                     Well, I want to just draw attention to our other two episodes that we did together which were fantastic. Episode 83, we talked about the unexpected way food affects your health. We talked a lot about foods to choose for gut health and hormone balance, coffee consumption and how that relates to hormone imbalance, so check that podcast out.

Also, we did one, and this is one of your specialties, is herbs and how to use herbs for healing. We especially talked about herbs for healing for PCOS in episode 68 and you shared some of your favorite herbs and spices with us and explained how they can help us heal PCOS and balance hormones. Definitely check those out because Magdalena is, really, I consider one of the best experts of using whole food, herbs, spices, food to balance your hormones and that’s exactly what you did in your fantastic book, Cooking for Hormone Balance.

Just wanted to give you a shout out for those great resources.

Magdalena:        Thank you.

Amy:                     Magdalena, tell us about estrogen and why we need to not be worried about, but why estrogen sort of needs to be on our radar in terms of managing our PCOS.

Magdalena:        Yeah, first of all, you know, let’s not demonize estrogen because we are going to be talking about a condition here that’s called estrogen dominance that often times women with, like you said, with high androgens will produce higher levels of estrogen. I’m going to cover this in just a second.

The first thing I want to say is let’s not demonize estrogen because as women we’ve got to have certain levels of estrogen, healthy levels of estrogens and break down those estrogens properly in order to stay a woman. You know, for us to, our hips and butts, our breasts, our periods, a lot of our emotions are connected to the fact that we have healthy levels estrogen.

When your estrogen starts dropping, this is when we start going into peri-menopause and menopause and it presents its own set of symptoms, right? I know your audience is a little bit on the younger side, more in the reproductive years, so let’s talk about why is estrogen dominance such a frequent occurrence when it comes to women with PCOS. As you eluded to it, androgens are high with PCOS, one of the diagnostic tools.

Guess what? One of the things that happens with testosterone is testosterone gets converted into estrogens. Specifically, the first estrogen gets converted to is called estradiol. That tends to be the estrogen that’s a little bit more aggressive. Again, we need certain amounts of it, but it’s just the amount of having too much of it, that’s where a lot of the symptoms begin.

When I say symptoms, how do you know your levels of estrogen are bordering the, are going in the unhealthy spectrum, right? This is not the level of estrogen to have, or you’re not breaking it down properly. How do you know that happens? There’s some blood tests or urine tests that can be done. We can talk about that later, but you know, I think it all starts with symptoms and just knowing your own body, right? Knowing what is normal and what is not normal.

One of the big things, obviously, with when you have estrogen dominance will happen is that your cycle is all messed up, right? For some women it can be as bad as having menorrhagia, which means that you have constant period for like 20 days and bleeding. It could also be a lack of periods. Again, lack of periods can also be because you have high testosterone or DHEA levels. But it can also be because you have high estrogen levels.

Other very symptomatic of estrogen dominance would be very characteristic, I would say, with estrogen dominance would be things like storing a lot of fat around your hips and your thighs. That’s very indicative of women with estrogen problems. Women who have thyroid nodules often time have it because of estrogen dominance, as well. A lot of the estrogenic cancers, such as breast cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine and lung cancer of nonsmokers. Women who are nonsmokers. Guess what? It’s again, the cancer cells, the malignant cells growth are fueled by certain types of estrogens.

I would say those are some of the more obvious symptoms of estrogen dominance. We definitely, you know, I think the other problem that it presents for women especially with PCOS and why we want to be mindful about it and ask ourselves “is this my problem?” Is this something that I should be addressing? By the way, it doesn’t have to be complex. If you’re following Amy’s protocols, it’s really about adding a couple of more things to address the estrogen issues. I would just mention one more thing, Amy, for your audience. I think the way estrogen dominance can present itself as a problematic issue is the fact that it causes a great amount of inflammation in the body.

I’m sure your audience knows this, we’ve heard this many times from you, when you have PCOS women just generally tend to be very inflamed. Estrogen, excess estrogen will drive that inflammation even further.

Amy:                     Inflammation is really one of the root underlying issues of so many PCOS symptoms. If the estrogen dominance is driving the inflammation, it’s important that you understand that. I know I … As I’m sort of entering that, or in the peri-menopause phase, I have been dealing with some estrogen dominance that I’ve had to kind of work at balancing. I know that for me the symptoms were fibrocystic breasts, very sore breasts, around my period and bloating, too. I found that increased bloating was kind of problematic and troublesome for me.

Magdalena:        Absolutely. When you can’t take off your ring, right? Your wedding ring or your regular rings, you can’t take them off, definitely that is due to estrogen dominance. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. Fibrocystic breasts, but also lumpy boobs. That is something that is very, very much connected to estrogen dominance, as well. Almost every women I know will suffer from that at one point in her life, you know?

Genetically, some women are more predisposed towards estrogen dominance. For example, I’m definitely one of them. To give you an example, I will go to Portugal and have a month of drinking quite a bit of wine and having gluten here and there and some dairy that will sneak its way to my diet. I’ll come back and I will have horrendous PMS that month, and I will have lumpy boobs.

Amy:                     Tell us about the wine because that was one of the driving factors, I think, for me. I was kind of getting into you know, I’ll just have a glass of wine with dinner. It was a way for me to kind of unwind from the day. Gee, it does have some resveratrol so, you know, I was drinking some red Pinot Noir. It was definitely driving estrogen dominance. Maybe you could just explain a little bit about that connection.

Magdalena:        Yeah, so there’s quite a lot of studies that show the connection between women who drink two glass of wine or more a day or night and risk of breast cancer. Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer being higher. We now know while obviously alcohol impairs our liver, one of the things that is really important to remember about estrogen is how we clear estrogen. One of the vital organs that clears estrogen, metabolizes, if you will … Metabolism of estrogen in this context here is basically splitting it to dirty and clean estrogen, just for simplicity, if you will.

Imagine like the river flowing and there’s this filter in between like an island. This island acts as a filter. One part of the river becomes clean and the other one is dirty. Estrogen is, think of it the same way in that the island in the middle is your liver. Basically, what happens with alcohol is that alcohol further attacks the liver. Here is the thing, Amy, I’m a strong believer that if you do something in moderation, and wine, you know, with a lot of benefits especially if you’re drinking organic wine with minimal sulfates being added, I think it’s perfectly fine as long as your liver is really well supported.

There’s a whole bunch of things we can do to support our liver and we can talk about those. Three big things you can do right away. It doesn’t get so taxed by that alcohol and having that occasional glass of wine is not going to make that much of an impact.

Amy:                     Yeah, and something that I’ve tried to do is just kind of reserve it for the weekends so I’m not drinking it during the week. I will just sort of make people mindful of the fact that so many women with PCOS have, are dealing with non-alcoholic fatty liver disorder. Our livers tend to already by compromised, so that’s just something to consider, as well.

Magdalena:        Yeah, totally.

Amy:                     Not to get you off your train of thought, Magdalena, but I think you were talking about, we were talking about some other signs and symptoms of estrogen dominance. We were talking about the fibrocystic breasts, the bloating, anything else?

Magdalena:        Yeah, like having for example terrible PMS. As women, we are so used to having horrible PMS. Truth be told, when you are truly balanced in your body and you metabolize estrogen fairly well, then your period will come and go with very little signs of being present. Which is a very foreign concept to a lot of women. I want to just offer you, and invite you to just think of it as like when you address your estrogen issues, your PMS becomes much lighter, as well.

Estrogen dominance can also be a contributing factor towards anovulation, right? You already have issues with women with anovulation in your community because of high testosterone levels, but guess what? High estrogen levels can also be further contributing to that. The other things I would say is, you know, a big thing would be mood swings for a lot of women having too much estrogen when cause that sort of, you know, the person you can’t live with, right?

For some women it’s really frustrating that you’re really skinny, you exercise a lot and you do Yoga three times a week, and women go for five mile runs three times a week. They’re like man, I still have cellulite on my thighs. How awful is that? Truth be told that is because basically estrogen is partly responsible for metabolism of fat and so, that fat gets stored into, for some reason, the lower part of the body and the thighs and the butts tend to be … That’s on a cosmetic level, but let’s also not forget the fibroids, which is another very common, benign, thank goodness, symptom. A condition, I would say.

The problem with fibroids, you know, the Western medicine approach to it is what is the doctor going to tell you, right? Most of the time they either put you on birth control pills, which we all know we shouldn’t be going down that path. Or if the fibroid or fibroids are so big they’ll ask you to do a full hysterectomy, right? As a woman, I don’t want to lose an organ even if I plan to have no more kids, right? Then you’re going to be basically depending on tweaking hormonal, your hormone intake for the rest of your life, right? Plus, I feel like it’s just barbaric, because a lot of fibroids can be resolved.

Different ovarian polyps, as well as polyps in the uterus can also be due to estrogen dominance. I actually had a woman working for me a few years ago. Actually, her departure has created a policy in my company that I don’t hire anyone on my team unless you’re absolutely, completely passionate about what we do and you live this lifestyle. She was one of those who wasn’t really. One day she came back and said, “You know, I was diagnosed with all these polyps in my uterus and my doc says I should remove my uterus. What should I do?” I’m like well, you know, you work with me. Why don’t you at least try three little things? Get off glutes, sugar and coffee and see what happens.

Low and behold, she actually did more than that because she started feeling better and better. You know, Amy, within three months she went back to her doc and had another ultrasound and the doc was like, “What have you been doing? Your polyps have pretty much disappeared.” Basically, they shrunk by 80%. They were almost invisible. Not only did she save her uterus, but her daughter started having similar problems with fibroids and she pretty much cured her using the protocol.

I will say estrogen dominance is one of the easiest and fastest responding hormonal imbalances as compared, for example, to adrenal issues which is such a multifactorial approach. I find with estrogen if you do a couple of things supporting your liver, incorporate a few foods, you’re pretty good to go. A supplements, which we can talk about, as well. I say this as someone who, you know, my doc is an integrative doc. You probably know her, Amy. She’s part of our group. When she saw me for the first time I went there with my whole labs and printouts.

She looked at my genetics and she said, “Have you ever had breast cancer?” I’m like, “Whoa, no.” She said, “Normally, women of your age,” I think I was 45 at that time when I walked in. She said, “Typically women with your genetics at that age will walk in here, they have some kind of history of either, typically it will be breast cancer.” I say this as someone who’s been having, I mean terribly and infamously terrible estrogen detoxifier and metabolizer. I will tell you that amongst all the different hormonal imbalances that I’ve had, estrogen dominance is the easiest one to reverse. I just want to put that hope out there.

Amy:                     I’ll have to say that my mother had a total hysterectomy at 40 because of fibroids. I know, I was a teenager then and she really struggled and gosh, I wish that I had this information to give her. It would have avoided so much pain and suffering.

The other thing that I wanted to just mention is that you talk about working with an integrative doctor, but so many of us don’t have the luxury. It’s hard to find integrative physicians. When we go and talk to our general practitioner about estrogen dominance, they sort of look at us cross eyed. Like, I have no idea what that means. That’s a fallacy. We’re not really speaking their language.

I was wondering if you could give us some guidance on testing. If somebody is listening and they’re kind of checking off all of these symptoms, how can we get an answer on paper that we have estrogen imbalances?

Magdalena:        Yeah, that’s a good question. The first thing is always go with your symptoms. Some doctors who even take insurance are pretty open minded and want to learn from a patient. But I hear what you’re saying. There’s a couple of tests I want to recommend. One is if you’re on a really low budget and you insist on having insurance pay for it, then you can talk to your doctor about getting a blood test for specific estrogen metabolites. Metabolites are basically the off products of estrogens being broken down. This is specifically, and let’s put that maybe in the show notes, Amy, because I know a lot of people are going to struggle with that word.

Basically, it’s called a 2 to 16 hydroxyestrone ratio. What happens with the two is basically the bad guy, a bad metabolite, aggressive metabolite, 16 is the protective one. How much of a balance between those two could be an indication of how you’re breaking down estrogens. It’s a snapshot, if you will, of what’s happening with your estrogen landscape, but it’s still better than nothing. It’s such an inexpensive test that most doctors should be able to order that.

As a patient, you go in and say look doc, I’ve got lumpy boobs, I’ve got fibroids, or whatever might be debilitating symptoms, they should be able to do that test for us. The second one, if you have a little bit more cash to spare, if you have insurance that’s a little bit more generous and covers your expenses, then DUTCH, you spell d-u-t-c-h, it’s a urine test. That’s my favorite test because it shows you everything from all the steroid hormones so basically testosterone, DHEA, progesterone, estrogens, cortisol.

More importantly, if you talk about estrogen dominance specifically what I love about this test is that it shows you exactly how you’re breaking down those estrogens to these different metabolites. This shows you all the pathways on it. It does need to be interpreted by a practitioner. I have a place that we can order that online without going through a doctor. The only thing that folks are going to be stuck with is that you need a doctor interpretation of the labs. There’s a number of integrative docs doing interpretation DUTCH. It’s become pretty much a golden standard, now.

I think we these two tests, Amy, we should be able to make some headway.

Amy:                     We’ve done a podcast with DUTCH tests and I think it’s Dr. Carrie Jones. I’ll post that link in the show notes, as well. I think you might be referring to your lab works because we have a podcast with them, as well, where you can order your own DUTCH tests. Yeah, so lots of information that really allows you to be empowered and take control over your own health.

Magdalena:        There is also saliva testing as an option. The problem with saliva I have found is that it’s a little bit out of, it’s becoming a little bit out of fashion. Part of it is because we now understand it’s not just, there are three different types of estrogens. The saliva with show you how the three different estrogens fair in comparison to each other. That’s one of the markers to look at.

We now know is that how the liver and your gut breaks down those estrogens is far more important. Saliva can’t show you that, and for that reason I wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend it.

Amy:                     You talked a little bit about your liver. If your liver is kind of compromised it can cause issues the way that estrogen is broken down. It can cause imbalance and dominance. What are some other things that kind of lead to estrogen dominance?

Magdalena:        Yeah, so you know, definitely our gut microbiome really plays a very big role. Basically, the gut bacteria, right, that we carry in our small and large intestines. We now know that there is a subset of bacteria that’s called the estrobolome that basically is responsible for breaking down estrogens, the different metabolites that I talked about. Remember, it’s not the amount of estrogen that you have that is a problem, but it’s how you break down those estrogens that are causing most of the issues in women.

For example, the fibroids that we talked about, the cancers, right? It’s the metabolites, those dirty estrogens are the ones that are causing the proliferation of the pathogenic cells. Gut health, and this kind of goes back to, I’m sure this is what, I mean, I have your books and so, I know exactly what you’re teaching. Getting off gluten, dairy, and soy. All the anti-inflammatory foods, right? It’s going to help restore.

If you can, incorporating good quality fermented foods, right? It’s definitely going to help the whole time. Then having high quality probiotic, but also trying different probiotics and circulate, rotating them on a regular basis. Every month and a half, six weeks to eight weeks try a different probiotic and see what works. You know, Amy, I really wish the probiotic makers could give us samples, so we could buy a small sample and see how it works for us rather than having to spend $30, $40, $60 on a bottle and then go like uh-oh, it doesn’t agree with me.

Everything from spor biotics to your regular probiotics, but also incorporating prebiotics, there’s a fruit for the probiotics, having a whole combination of those will be really helpful for your gut health. I think the third element that we can do right off the bat is really clean up your skin care product regimen. If there’s anything that you’re still buying from the leading brands that you see on television or see in glossy magazines, all the big brands that are advertising there, let me assure you that these brands, in order to be able to afford $20,000 for the little ad that you’re seeing, are going to be loaded with exactly the kind of chemicals that you do not want in your body.

I’m talking here specifically about phalates, I’m talking here about, it’s not just BPAs, but … It’s kind of ironic, I just came back from this conference, Amy, you know? We were chatting about that. One of the biggest problems with BPAs now is like okay, everybody is removing BPAs but guess what? Bisphenol is the name. Now they’re having BPFs, BPS and there’s like 16 other ones. Guess what? Turns out that all of them are even worse than the BPAs.

Amy:                     Of course.

Right? Yeah. Getting rid of your plastic bottles. Just simple changes. Get rid of your plastic bottle. Get a glass container or a stainless steel container, right? Skin care products are, like I said, this is like for example your body cream, right? It’s going somewhere, right? It’s all going to go into your body. You’re covering a very large area that’s going to have a very high absorption in the area. Just skipping things like that and substituting, there’s so many beautiful clean brands today.

Whether you walk into your health food store, your Co-op, Whole Foods, it’s going to be definitely a much better option. I would say maybe probably lastly like if you’re still using those nice smelling things in the house like

Amy:                     Oh, yes. The Glade Plug-Ins?

Magdalena:        Yes, Glade Plug-Ins. Chuck that damn thing away pronto. That thing goes straight into your bloodstream. Inhalation is the fastest way to introduce a substance, right? Take a look at how people snort cocaine and then within half a minute they’re like a different person.

Amy:                     If you want your house to smell beautiful, get some really nice essential blends.

Magdalena:        Absolutely.

Amy:                     And use those. They’re just so much better for you. We know that eliminating some of these toxins can help us bring estrogen back into balance. You had mentioned adding probiotics, prebiotics, what are some other things that we can do to help balance our estrogen?

Magdalena:        You know, I want to go back to our earlier discussion we had about the liver. I can’t tell you how much love and support it needs. The liver pumps, there’s five liters, there’s five quarts of blood that goes through the liver every single minute. Picture that. Five liters every single minute. The amount of work that the liver is doing on a constant basis is horrendous. We can support the liver a little bit it’s going to be so incredibly rewarding.

I’m going to mention two things you can do right off the bat to help this out. The first thing is anything bitter stimulates bile production, and the more bile production the easier it’s going to be for the food to be digested, the less load it is on the liver. You can do bitters in two forms. Either incorporate cruciferous vegetables, between three to five servings.

Amy:                     Just to clarify, and in case people are confused, you said bitters because I think that’s a b-i-t-t-e-r-s. I think a lot of people aren’t really familiar with that term.

Magdalena:        Yeah, so anything, yeah, great. Thank you, Amy. Bitters is in anything that tastes bitter, or you can do it in the form of a tincture. I’ll talk about this in a second. Any bitter foods, such as cruciferous vegetables. Those would be your broccoli, arugula, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collard greens, bok choy, right? Having between three to five servings a day, I’m talking here about a serving is half a cup. It’s not that much. Preferably cooked because cruciferous vegetables raw are really hard to digest and you want it to be easy. Lightly cooked incorporating then into your daily routine really, really is going to help a whole bunch to stimulate digestive juices enzymatic production. By the time the food gets into the digestive system, it’s going to be well broken down and less work on the liver.

The second thing on the bitters that I was mentioning, you know, Amy, how you go to Italy or maybe you have Swedish friends or German friends or Polish friends? A lot of time, especially in European traditional cultures, we always have aperitif before a meal. Guess what? These Aperitif’s will always be bitter. They can be sweet sometimes a little bit, too, just to mask the bitterness. The reason why we traditionally were doing a lot of bitters before and after a meal is because of supporting the digestive system and the liver in breaking things down.

Apart from the food that I mentioned, I’m just a big fan now, and Amy I’m going to start making my own bitters, I’ve decided.

Amy:                     Oh, excellent.

Magdalena:        Yeah, just some, I came from a conference. I saw some incredible formulations including wood beer bitters, cardamom and cinnamon bitters. I’m like bring it on. I want to make my own.

Amy:                     I’ll be your guinea pig.

Magdalena:        I’ll sign you up. Basically, it comes in this little bottle you can find in a lot of health food stores. It’s basically, it looks like, it’s a tincture bottle and is typically in dark amber glass. It comes with a driplet on the inside and you squirt that. Use 30 drops in your mouth before a meal or after a meal. Some of them will be alcoholic, and some of them will be mixed with glycerin, so it doesn’t taste so alcoholic.

A phenomenal way of getting your digestion primed for food. I can’t tell you how many women have said their constipation has improved, their asthma will have gone away, they’re losing weight. This is all they did was just increasing the amount of bitters they’d be eating in their diet. A really big thing for estrogen, as well.

Amy:                     That’s such a great tip. Really. I’m going to give that a try.

Magdalena:        Yeah. One more food if I could mention because it really is a rock star in our field and there’s so much research now coming out, is broccoli sprouts. The bitterness in broccoli sprouts is basically it’s like before broccoli becomes a full-grown plant, you start off with these little sprouts. Just from within three to four days from seeds, so whatever sprouts, that’s the time you want to harvest them.

They’re full of a lot of nutrients and stuff like all sprouts are, but what sets them apart from all the other sprouts is the fact they contain 200 times more sulforaphane per gram as compared to full grown broccoli. The big deal about sulforaphane is the fact that it helps us to very quickly and very affectively … Two things, is one to help us detoxify those estrogens really quickly, so it’s basically an estrogen detoxifier. But guess what? It’s also an estrogen blocker.

What it does, sulforaphane, now we know from research is it parks itself on the receptor, for example of the cancer cell, and it blocks the estrogen from coming through so the cancer won’t grow. Furthermore, and the third thing they have found that sulforaphane creates self-death and self-destruction of cancer cells. I mean, how crazy powerful is that?

For women who are having breast cancer the recommended dose is a cup a day. I’ve got some recipes that are even on my site, as well, which is basically you put broccoli sprouts with some water and lemon juice and a bit of salt and you whiz it in your blender and then have it as a drink. If you do it as a preventative measure, if you’re dealing with less severe things like for example lumpy boobs, then just doing half a cup of that is good enough. I tell you, within two weeks of doing this every day, lumpy boobs go away for women.

Amy:                     Wow. Do you grow your own or do you buy them?

Magdalena:        I travel quite a bit and so because of that I don’t, but what I do is I just get it from my local health store. That’s another great thing is that you know, you can find them pretty much in every health store Sprouts sells them, Whole Foods sells them. Pretty much everywhere I travel around the United States. You know, whenever we go for conferences, Amy, right? You’ve probably seen me do that. I always buy my own breakfast foods and put it in the fridge in the hotel or in the apartment. Broccoli sprouts is always one of them. Every time I go somewhere, they always are present in most of the health food stores.

A lot of people ask me what about the other sprouts? The alfalfa and red clover. All of them are amazing. They have their own set of different properties, but if you’re looking for sulforaphane and specifically to address estrogen dominance, they’re only found in broccoli sprouts.

Amy:                     You know, Magdalena, I think what I love so much about your work is you really bring to life the idea of food as medicine. Sometimes I think women, you know, it’s so easy to reach for the non-vegetable alternative. Kind of the junky food. But when you really understand at this level of what vegetable sprouts, these bitters are doing, bitter vegetables are doing to heal our body, it really puts things into a different perspective and I think empowers us to make better choices.

Magdalena:        Yeah, that is so true.

Amy:                     I know we’re running out of time, and I know you have so many other tips and tricks to balance estrogen. Can you tell us more about your resources on hormonebalance.com?

Magdalena:        Yeah, can I mention the new program that we have?

Amy:                     Yes, yes I would love that.

Magdalena:        Yeah, so you know, Amy, I feel like the way your business is very much driven and I remember when I first met you, I don’t know five or six years ago and you said, you stood up and you said, “I serve women who are so underserved in this world. Women with PCOS.” I never forgot that. I always remember like how? The estrogen dominance, like you tell me, who is the woman in your life you know who never had any sides and symptoms of estrogen dominance? I don’t think they even exist.

Guess what? Most of them don’t even realize that they have it. Estrogen Reset is the new program that we just rolled out. I’m super proud of it because it really is like a mission based, plus the passion, plus the super personal project is now that you know my story I’m high risk for all these estrogen problems, too. It’s basically a four-week program that takes you through the fundamentals and so how to fix your gut, liver and sugar balance, which is so close to the heart, I’m sure of all of your PCOS followers. Sugar balance.

We set this at the foundation. Then it goes into part two. We go into specific protocols. For example, if you’re dealing with lumpy boobs what can you do? If you’re dealing with anovulation what is the protocol? I have very specific protocols that address these very, very narrow estrogen dominant symptoms. Yeah, so you know, it’s there and I guess we’re going to have a link in the show notes, right, for that.

Amy:                     Yes, yes. I’ll put a note.

Magdalena:        My whole intention for the program is to in a very inexpensive way, because really, it’s going to be one of the cheapest programs that we have out there. The reason why I priced it so low is because I really don’t want the price to be a reason. I’m not going to do it for free because I feel like we get things for free we don’t value things. I think monetary exchange is an energetic exchange and you commit to things when you pay for something. I want people to pay for it by making it expensive enough so this is never a reason for somebody not to get going. I really want, my whole mission is to see a million women change their estrogen dominant symptoms to completely reverse and manage that, so they never ever have to deal with the fear of breast cancer or having their uterus removed and all these other awful stuff that we do face.

Amy:                     What an awesome mission. Thank you so much, Magdalena, for the work that you do. I really admire you. I often think of it, I think when women have gone through the PCOS Diva programs and they’re ready to ramp it up a notch, I like to send people over your way because you’ve really dialed into how to manage your hormones naturally with food and all of these other things. Herbs, spices.

Thank you for all that you do and if this, if estrogen imbalance dominance is an issue for listeners, please go check out Magdalena’s program and I will list the link in the show notes for sure. Thanks, Magdalena, for coming on again.

Magdalena:        It’s so wonderful to be back, Amy.

Amy:                     Thank you everyone for listening. I look forward to being with you again very soon. Bye, bye.