When I talk about the impact of gluten on hormone health, I’m talking about how a protein found in barley, wheat and rye can have significant, negative impact on your hormone health. If you’re suffering from depression, weakness, weight gain, arthritis, headaches, digestive problems, etc. gluten intolerance or gluten sensitivity may be the root cause of your symptoms.
Gluten can affect your hormone health by stressing the adrenal glands, causing adrenal weakness and a number of hormone-related health issues.
The adrenal glands are located right above your kidneys, it discharges hormones into your bloodstream and also react to feedback from different hormones and chemicals in your body. Their major responsibility is repair and anti-aging.
When the adrenal glands become weak from habitual stress, they cannot maintain all the demands made upon them, then destructive metabolism (a breakdown of systems also known as catabolism) occurs. This destructive metabolism causes your body’s systems to be unable to repair itself which causes their function to slowly degenerate. This results to tiredness, low libido, depression and hormone imbalance symptoms such as Premenstrual syndrome and hot flashes, etc.
Gluten intolerance puts stress on your adrenal glands directly. This stress is from the inflammatory response produced in a gluten-intolerance person’s digestive tract. When gluten produces an inflammatory response, it is the balancing efforts of the hormone pathways that calm the stress and produces an anti-inflammatory response.
If this happens once in a while, it wouldn’t disrupt the adrenal glands ability to function properly. But in women with gluten intolerance, this inflammation occurs every time they eat gluten, which can happen several times daily.
So, eating foods rich in gluten makes your adrenal gland to get stressed from all the inflammation it produces in the intestine.
When an individual continues to consume gluten rich diet, the stress produced becomes chronic which results to many symptoms created by “adrenal weakness”.
What does this means for your health?
When your body has been under habitual stress, it is compelled to either get you through the day or it can make sufficient amounts of sex hormones.
It can’t do both because it is excessively stressed. When put in this circumstance, your body chooses the most supportive thing to do which is to get you through the day, to the detriment of producing sufficient sex hormones. This inadequate production of hormones does not happen equally across all the hormones, however; progesterone tends to decline more than does estrogen, leading to a net estrogen dominance.
Symptoms of estrogen dominance (progesterone deficiency) are endometriosis, fibrocystic breasts, menstrual irregularity, cramping, polycystic ovaries, heavy bleeding, migraines and Premenstrual Syndrome.
Major symptoms of progesterone deficiency beyond the once listed above is miscarriage, depression, infertility and anxiety.
What you can do to solve this health challenge
The remedy for adrenal stress involves management of lifestyle choices like getting high quality sleep, timing of meals and exercising regularly, discovering any diet sensitivities and using nutritional support to fortify adrenal function. Supplements like vitamins B5, B6, C, licorice extract and some forms of ginseng can be of immense help.
Gluten intolerance can be treated by sticking to a strictly gluten-free diet. Total avoidance of all products containing wheat, rye and barley is the only remedy (Also if you are going to eat oats, make sure it is gluten-free oats). Treating adrenal fatigue is also important in order to regain full health.
The presence of gluten sensitivity and its resultant stress upon the adrenal glands is very common, but seldom diagnosed. As a result, a lot of women suffer from symptoms that can be treated with simple diet & nutrition changes and lifestyle changes. And these are completely natural remedy to improve your health; dealing with gluten sensitivity and adrenal exhaustion does not require surgery or drugs.
If you are having symptoms of adrenal exhaustion and gluten sensitivity. You can consult your doctor to get a thorough examination of how your adrenal glands are working and whether your symptoms are related to adrenal stress caused by gluten.
Celeste London is a Holistic Hormone Nutritionist who teaches women how to use food to balance female hormones and shrink uterine fibroids naturally. If you’ll like to learn how to use food to balance female hormones and shrink your fibroids naturally. You can book a consultation with here – https://calendly.com/hellocelestelondon/
