Women are much more likely to suffer from autoimmune disease and hormone imbalances are believed to play a significant role in the autoimmune process. There are 2 major classes of chemicals produced by your body that are involved in immune system regulation. They are called cytokines and hormones.

Cytokines

To communicate, your immune cells use cytokines, which are proteins secreted by cells of the immune system that act as messengers. Cytokines released from one cell affect the actions of other cells by binding to receptors on their surface. You can think of these receptors as immune system mailboxes. The cells of your immune system communicate to each other using cytokines. There are many factors that influence cytokine function and stress is a very important one.

How Stress Hurts

I discussed stress in part 5 of the Women’s Autoimmune Series and now we will see how stress can negatively impact immune health and function. Stress actually makes your immune system less effective because it triggers an immune response itself. It causes your body to release inflammatory cytokines (cause inflammation)! When you produce these cytokines over long periods of time, as soon in chronic stress, the immune system is not able to maintain and healthy and appropriate response. We look at dietary factors as being significant “stressors” on the immune system and leading to increased inflammation , but stress itself causes inflammation even if your diet is excellent. Stress also contributes to hormone imbalances and hormones play a significant role in immune system health and regulation.

Hormones

Hormones are involved in the immune response, with estrogens being generally viewed immune-stimulating and progesteron

e and cortisol as being immune-suppressing. Many women suffer with hormonal imbalances and more often than not, they have too much estrogen compared to other hormones like progesterone and cortisol.

There are many factors that can contribute to estrogen imbalances:

• Poor liver function 
• Obesity
• Poor detoxification capacity
• Poor gut health
• Menstrual cycles
• Pregnancy
• Birth control pills
• Hormone replacement therapy
• IVF treatments
• Xenoestrogens (chemicals that act like estrogen in the body)

Many women suffer from what we call estrogen dominance. This means that you have too much estrogen and not enough progesterone to keep it in balance. The factors list above are common causes of estrogen excess. And stress makes this problem worse.  Cortisol and progesterone share a common precursor hormone called pregnenolone. When stress, inflammation, or immune dysregulation is high, your body will make more cortisol try to dampen the inflammation. The result is elevated cortisol at the expense of progesterone. Progesterone naturally opposes and balances estrogen…protects you from the harmful effects of estrogen. When progesterone dips estrogen is left unopposed and you experience what is called estrogen dominance.

Estrogen / Progesterone Balance

One of the most common ways to assess estrogen and progesterone balance in functional medicine is to evaluate the Progesterone / Estrogen ratio; this is also called the Pg/E2 ratio and E2 represents the form of estrogen called estradiol. The ratio is more important than the level of progesterone or the level of estrogen. These hormones need to be balanced so they are assessed as a ratio. While opinions differ on what this ratio should be, many experts believe ratio should be around 200 or 300 to 1. That means 200-300 progesterone for every 1 estradiol. You can see why the ratio is more important than the numbers themselves if you look at the ratios below
A. Progesterone 150 and Estradiol .5

1. Progesterone 600 and Estradiol 2
2. Progesterone 900 and Estradiol 2.75

These are all considered healthy progesterone and estradiol ratios even though woman “C” has much more estradiol than woman “A” does. When assessing hormones, as with so many other systems in the body; you want healthy balance.

Estrogen Dominance

Food

One of the biggest sources of excess estrogen is our diet. Commercially raised animals are treated with hormones to increase growth or milk production. Pesticides, fungicides and herbicides sprayed on crops which we and animals consume, interfere with hormone regulation and are referred to as endocrine disruptors. Your hormones are produced and controlled by your endocrine

Gut Heath

Your gut microbiome plays a major role in regulating your estrogen levels. An enzyme produced in your gut called beta-glucuronidase helps your system to neutralize and eliminate excess and harmful estrogens. Healthy estrogen metabolism depends on healthy liver and gut function.

Body Fat

Excess body fat is a leading cause of estrogen dominance. Your fat cells actually produce estrogen and store estrogen. Excess estrogen leads to increased fat accumulation. This becomes a vicious circle of estrogen causing fat and fat causing more estrogen!

HRT and Birth Control

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and many oral contraceptives contain synthetic hormones and are often lead to excess estrogen and insufficient progesterone support. These synthetic hormones are not easy detoxified by the liver and can lead to hormone imbalance and immune system problems.  

Histamine

Histamine is an inflammatory chemical produced by the immune system. Excess estrogen leads to increased histamine production whereas progesterone tends to lower it. It is not uncommon to find underlying histamine imbalances in women who suffer with autoimmune disease.

As you can see, there are many factors that can contribute to immune system problems and autoimmunity. Functional medicine looks at the whole body, not just the immune system or the body part that is being damaged by the immune system.

No system in your body functions in isolation.

If you would like more information about autoimmunity, functional medicine or Dr. Sexton go to napervilleintegratedwellness.com

Do your own research, inform yourself and ask lots of questions. When collecting information, you MUST consider the source. There is no shortage of false, misleading, outdated, profit-driven and utterly biased information in healthcare today; even from the most respected sources and organizations.