Probiotics and the importance of a healthy gut have been in the collective health-consciousness for a few decades. Consumers generally have a rough idea of why a diet or supplement regimen focused on gut health can transform gut issues (think: leaky gut, food allergies, intestinal wall damage, glyphosate exposure, etc.) However, it may be less clear that the impact of probiotics hardly stops in the gut. I would love to expand your sense of how much of your body ecology can be transformed, from your yoni to your psychology, when you tend to the “garden” in your gut.
Whole Systems Approach
Much like how a permaculturalist knows that the health of a multiple of integrated systems (air, water, soil, microbes, bacteria) contributes to the health and resilience of food forests, naturopaths and wholistic practitioners recognize the same multi-system approach can strengthen the health of our body ecology and overall well-being.
For instance, if suffering from a dysfunctional or depleted gut microbiome, the symptoms might not be obvious for women. Secondary or tertiary issues like anxiety, gum disease, acne, stress, chronic yeast infections, weight trouble… are actually related to the health of your gut, which controls virtually every aspect of your biology.
The main takeaway is that almost none of the issues above are overtly linked to intestinal microflora being out of balance, creating a frustrating scenario of: symptoms, treatment, suppression of symptoms, then eventual re-emergence of symptoms in a chronic cycle since the root cause may never be addressed. This speaks to the importance of maintaining a healthy microbiome to the body’s natural ecology.
In an effort to unpack the mysterious connection between the microbiome and nearly every other system in the body, I would like to guide you to a greater understanding of the physiology, or cellular mechanics, directly involved.
Vaginal Health and Excess Estrogen >> It Starts With Your Gut.
There is an intricate relationship between bacteria found in the intestinal tract and the direct health of the vaginal canal.
Excess Estrogen Issues
Specific beneficial gut bacteria exist that literally consume estrogen and convert it into not just harmless, but actually helpful, substances. The community of these kinds of estrogen-transforming bacteria in the gut are called collectively ‘the estrobolome.’ It is the estrobolome bacteria’s job to metabolize and clear excess estrogen.
But what happens if your gut is lacking in both number and diversity of microflora? Researchers have found that estrogen levels could rise, which makes sense. If you have fewer estrogen-eating bacteria to control circulating levels of estrogen, then, your estrogen levels will rise or remain high. If you have low diversity of gut bacteria, the estrobolome bacteria’s func