Your hormone symptoms are unpredictable. Your mood is all over the place. Some months are fine, some months are a disaster — and nobody has been able to tell you why.

You've tried the supplements. Maybe even hormone replacement. And something is still off.

Here's what even functional medicine and a holistic approach are still missing: it might not be a hormone problem at all. It might be a hormone processing problem. And the place to look isn't your ovaries. Your hormonal balance starts in your gut.

In this episode I'm breaking down the estrobolome (the part of your microbiome that controls how much estrogen is actually circulating in your body at any given time). When it's off, everything feels off. And it's way more common than anyone is telling you.

What we get into:

• Why your body can produce the right amount of estrogen and still have too much of it cycling through your system
• The enzyme that pulls estrogen off the elimination track and sends it right back through your body (and how to get it back on track)
• Why this shows up as unpredictable cycles, mood swings, bloating, and weight that won't move ...and keeps getting mistaken for a hormone imbalance
• The everyday habits sabotaging your estrobolome and easy fixes that start to turn it around
• What to do before ever going to hormone replacement

Your gut is actively deciding whether your used estrogen gets eliminated or recycled back into your body.

This often overlooked piece has everything to do with how you feel and how your hormones are functioning.

Next week: already on hormone replacement and it's still not working — or making things worse? That's exactly where we're going.