The Estrogen Burden: How to Rebuild Your Hormones from the Root
Fixing Estrogen Dominance with Food, Light, and Bioidentical Support
If you’re tired, puffy, anxious, bloated, emotionally volatile—or stuck in a body that no longer feels like yours—your hormones may be trying to get your attention. Estrogen dominance is one of the most common, least understood drivers of metabolic dysfunction today. It affects both women and men, and it’s not just about how much estrogen you have—it’s about the lack of opposing forces like progesterone, pregnenolone, and thyroid hormone.
We live in a world that constantly pushes our bodies into stress mode. Under those conditions, estrogen takes over—and everything else falls apart.
What Is Estrogen Dominance?
Estrogen dominance means estrogen is elevated relative to other key hormones—especially progesterone in women and testosterone in men. It can show up even when bloodwork looks “normal,” because the problem isn’t always how much estrogen you have. It’s how well you detox it, how inflamed your tissues are, and how much protective opposition you have from other steroid hormones.
Symptoms of estrogen dominance include:
Weight gain and fluid retention
PMS, breast tenderness, endometriosis, or heavy cycles
Mood swings, anxiety, insomnia, and brain fog
Low libido and infertility
Fatigue, low muscle tone, and slowed metabolism
“Dad bod,” gynecomastia, or erectile dysfunction in men
This state isn’t just uncomfortable—it’s metabolically suppressive. Estrogen slows thyroid function, raises cortisol, impairs bile flow, and makes the body less efficient at burning fat or building lean tissue. It keeps you stuck in a stress response—while pretending to be your reproductive ally.
Why Modern Life Pushes Us Into Estrogen Dominance
Estrogen dominance used to be rare. But today, most people are swimming in it—thanks to a perfect storm of stress, toxins, poor light exposure, and broken metabolism.
Key contributors include:
PUFAs (polyunsaturated fats): These oils block thyroid hormone, increase estrogen signaling, and suppress mitochondrial energy production.
Xenoestrogens: Found in plastics, fragrances, receipts, pesticides, and birth control—they mimic estrogen and overwhelm your detox pathways.
Low-carb or low-calorie dieting: Chronic under-eating downregulates progesterone, pregnenolone, and thyroid hormone.
Liver and gut dysfunction: Impaired bile flow or gut dysbiosis leads to poor estrogen clearance and recirculation.
Chronic stress: Your body diverts pregnenolone into cortisol (the “pregnenolone steal”), starving your sex hormones and locking you in survival mode.
This hormonal pattern shows up in bloodwork as normal or even low estrogen—but the body is drowning in estrogenic activity at the tissue level. That’s why so many people are estrogen dominant without realizing it—and why they don’t get answers from conventional hormone panels.
Progesterone: The Hormone That Brings You Back to Life
Progesterone is more than just a “female hormone.” It’s a powerful anti-inflammatory, pro-thyroid, anti-stress hormone that’s necessary for both sexes. It:
Opposes the inflammatory effects of estrogen
Protects the thyroid and supports metabolism
Lowers cortisol and balances mood
Supports ovulation and fertility in women
Enhances insulin sensitivity and reduces water retention
Ray Peat called it the most protective hormone in the body. Progesterone helps bring the body out of stress mode and into a place where it feels safe to repair, reproduce, and thrive.
In women, low progesterone is linked to PMS, miscarriage, endometriosis, fibroids, and insomnia. In men, small doses of progesterone can reduce aromatization of testosterone into estrogen, lower prolactin, and calm the nervous system—without impairing libido or muscle mass.
Pregnenolone: The Master Hormone That Fuels the Whole Cascade
Pregnenolone is the upstream precursor to progesterone, DHEA, testosterone, cortisol, and more. It’s made from cholesterol inside the mitochondria—and when mitochondrial function is suppressed, pregnenolone production tanks.
This leads to a situation where the body can’t make enough downstream hormones—even if you're eating all the right macros. Without pregnenolone, your body keeps recycling stress hormones like cortisol and estrogen because it literally can’t make the protective ones. Energy drops. Metabolism slows. Estrogen dominates.
Supplementing with pregnenolone (when timed correctly and paired with thyroid and carb support) can help refill the body’s hormonal reservoir, restore balance, and ease the nervous system out of chronic stress.
The Role of Light in Hormonal Health
If you’ve been working on your hormones but ignoring your light environment, you’re missing a major pillar of healing. In pro-metabolic frameworks, light is treated as a nutrient—not just a mood booster or sleep aid, but a key activator of hormone synthesis, detoxification, and thyroid function.
Morning and evening sunlight—rich in red and infrared wavelengths—penetrates deep into tissues and stimulates mitochondrial energy production by activating the enzyme cytochrome c oxidase. This increase in ATP production is not just about energy. It’s essential for the conversion of cholesterol into pregnenolone, the starting point of your entire hormonal cascade. No light = no pregnenolone = no progesterone.
Morning sunlight in particular has profound effects on the brain and endocrine system. Within 30 minutes of waking, exposure to natural light—without sunglasses or glass barriers—helps reset your circadian rhythm by activating the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). This regulates pulses of cortisol, thyroid hormone, dopamine, and sex hormones throughout the day. It also helps suppress prolactin, a stress hormone that suppresses ovulation, libido, and testosterone when elevated.
Ray Peat often described this light exposure as a form of “metabolic permission”—a biological signal that it’s safe to shift from stress hormones into reproductive, restorative function.
If you don’t have consistent access to natural light, red light therapy can be used to mimic these mitochondrial benefits. Red and near-infrared LEDs (typically 660 and 850 nm) help stimulate mitochondrial respiration, reduce oxidative stress, and promote hormone synthesis in the thyroid, ovaries, adrenals, and even the brain. Both Peat and Dinkov have emphasized how red light can aid in lowering estrogen, restoring progesterone and testosterone, and improving liver detox function—all without pharmaceuticals.
Equally important is avoiding blue light at night, which delays melatonin production, elevates cortisol, and interferes with estrogen clearance. Your hormonal rhythm depends on the contrast between bright, warming light early in the day, and dim, red-toned light after sunset. Hormone health isn’t just about what you take or eat—it’s about when you’re in darkness, and when you’re in light.
Restoring Balance: Why Bioidentical Support Works Best with Food and Light
Progesterone and pregnenolone can be restored with bioidentical support—but only when the terrain is ready. If you don’t eat enough, if your thyroid is suppressed, or your liver and gut are compromised, simply adding a hormone cream won’t fix the root. In some cases, it can worsen symptoms by pushing the body too fast.
Dr. Mercola has long recommended bioidentical hormone replacement as a safer, more effective alternative to synthetic HRT. Ray Peat and Georgi Dinkov take it further: using low-dose bioidentical support alongside carbohydrate repletion, light therapy, and thyroid support to restore physiologic hormone function, not override it.
This is what I help my clients do: rebuild hormonal balance from the root. We don’t just chase symptoms. We restore energy, unblock detox pathways, rewire light rhythms, and let the hormones follow.
Next Steps
If you’re living with hormone symptoms that just won’t budge—whether it’s PMS, weight gain, low libido, bloating, anxiety, or poor sleep—it’s time to stop guessing. Estrogen dominance is more common than ever, and most people are treating it from the wrong end. It’s not just about estrogen—it’s about the metabolic collapse that lets estrogen take over.
Whether you're male or female, cycling or post-menopausal, I can help you understand what’s going on in your body and how to restore balance—with food, light, and strategic support.
👉 Schedule a one-on-one session on my scheduling page and let’s build your hormone repair plan.
