DIM & Estrogen Balance

How DIM Supplements Support Estrogen Balance

An abundance of medical research has now established that maintaining healthy estrogen levels is essential in women and men.

In women, estrogen promotes sexual health, protects the heart and blood vessels, prevents osteoporosis, promotes brain health, and benefits the breasts, skin, hair, mucous membranes, and pelvic muscles.

In men, estradiol, the primary form of estrogen, plays an essential role in male sexual function and libido. Additionally, proper metabolism of estrogen is essential in men to help prevent an enlarged prostate.

DiIndoly Methane (DIM) is a ‘phytonutrient’ that helps promote healthier estrogen metabolism. In this article the hormone experts at Tutera Medical in Scottsdale, AZ discuss how DIM can offer a natural approach to resolving estrogen imbalance.

What is DIM?

DIM is a plant-based nutrient that is found in cruciferous vegetables such as brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, bok choy, kale, rutabagas, and turnips. These plants-based nutrients (phytonutrients) have been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years.

DIM is not a hormone itself, but it has similar characteristics to estrogen at the molecular level. Like estrogen, DIM can be metabolized by a class of cytochrome enzymes that exist in the non-water parts of the cells’ membranes. So, when DIM is consumed in food or supplements, it creates a metabolic pathway for the enzymes that precisely overlaps with the pathway necessary for healthy estrogen metabolism.

In other words, adding DIM through diet or supplements promotes beneficial estrogen metabolism and helps restore a healthy hormonal balance.

Understating Estrogen Dominance

Both middle-aged men and women experience changes in hormone production and metabolism that can cause an estrogen imbalance. There are three basic forms of this type of imbalance known as estrogen dominance.

For perimenopausal women, slower hormone metabolism can actually cause higher-than-normal levels of estrogen with a deficiency in its healthy metabolites. Additionally, progesterone levels fall during perimenopause, which results in a higher estrogen-to-progesterone ratio.

In men aged 50s and 60s, and overweight middle-aged men, testosterone is increasingly converted into estrogen – coupled with falling levels of testosterone. As too much estrogen accumulates in the prostate gland, it is believed to contribute to an enlarge prostate (benign prostatic hypertrophy or ‘BPH’).

How DIM Improves Estrogen Balance

Supplementing our diets with DIM in an absorbable formulation encourages active and healthy estrogen metabolism. DIM supports estrogen balance by increasing beneficial or “good” 2-hydroxy estrogens and reducing unwanted or “bad” 16-hydroxy estrogens. This improves estrogen metabolism, which helps treat all three forms of estrogen dominance.

Recent research, like a study by The Fred Hutchison Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington has shown that a higher intake of cruciferous vegetables is associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer and offers protection from hormone-sensitive cancers.

However, to get enough DIM from food to achieve these benefits, a person would have to eat at least two pounds per day of raw or lightly cooked cruciferous vegetables a day. Fortunately, the same benefits can be achieved by just two capsules of specially formulated DIM supplements.

Absorbable DIM supplement formulations also offer the advantage of not needing the active enzymes that vegetable need to produce DIM in the stomach.

How Much DIM is Needed for Estrogen Balance

To equal the amount of DIM provided by healthy amounts of cruciferous vegetables in the diet, women should take 15 mg per day of DIM in an absorbable supplement.

To improve estrogen metabolism in men a higher dose of DIM is needed than in women.  For men, it is recommended to take about 30 mg per day of DIM in an absorbable or bioavailable supplement, to promote easier weight loss and improve prostate health.

With monitoring and testing by a health care provider, these DIM amounts can be increased three to four times on an individual basis to achieve optimal hormonal balance and metabolism.

Estrogen Balancing | Scottsdale, AZ

Research indicates that DIM can help reduce the risk of some estrogen related cancers, alleviate PMS symptoms, help maintain healthy weight, increase libido in men and women, and aid in the prevention of enlarged prostates.

DIM supplements (available from Bolster Beauty Here) are a nutritional approach to achieving safer and healthier estrogen metabolism.

Estrogen Balancing | Scottsdale, AZ:  480-874-1515