Is stress making your menopause worse?

Many believe that a hormone imbalance from menopause causes stress, but more often, it’s quite the opposite. As you enter menopause, your imbalances are amplified. One of the biggest influences on troublesome menopausal symptoms is the health of your adrenal glands and HPA axis, which regulate our stress levels by controlling the stress hormone known as cortisol. A common misconception is that menopausal symptoms stem from falling estradiol (aka estrogen) levels, but did you know that high stress hormone levels “steal” estrogen from you, leaving you with a deficit? This is known as the "pregnenolone steal".

Cortisol and estrogen have the same origins -- they are both hormones made from a common precursor -- pregnenolone. In a hormonally balanced body, pregnenolone converts downstream into sufficient amounts of estrogen. Many of us are currently experiencing collective levels of unprecedented stress, with job losses, worry for the health of our loved ones, trying to work virtually with children also at home, etc. This chronic, high stress leads to more pregnenolone being “stolen” to produce cortisol instead of estrogen, leaving us short and with an imbalance of hormone health. This pathway, called the “pregnenolone steal” was designed to be an adaptive response to short-term stress, such as “running from the tiger,” when it’s biologically more important to prioritize stress hormones over reproductive health. But in our modern era of chronic stress, this temporary mechanism of handling stress becomes sustained and works against us.

With functional medicine, we can test and treat the root cause of the problem in order to create lasting results. Sex hormones are exquisitely sensitive to imbalances in other body systems and are too often thrown off by high stress and HPA axis dysfunction, thyroid issues, gastrointestinal infections, food sensitivities, liver toxicity, and inflammation. Because the cause of hormone imbalance is different for everyone, we get the best results when we use comprehensive functional labs to find out exactly where the breakdown is occurring.

Thus, we get the best results in rebalancing hormones when we address multiple body systems. The “side effects” are that other symptoms besides menopausal symptoms often disappear as well, because treating the root cause has broad, systemic effects and provides lasting results.

If you are struggling with managing your stress levels and menopausal symptoms and would like to work with someone who can help you obtain a greater quality of life, book a consultation with us so we can get started on your path to health!