UPDATED April 15th, 2018
When planning menus, we don’t always think about foods that increase estrogen. However, women require estrogen not just for conceiving children, but also after childbirth and especially during menopause, when estrogen levels tend to decrease significantly. Why do you need estrogen exactly? If you’ve got too little estrogen in your system, you’re at higher risk for osteoporosis in addition to some inconvenient and uncomfortable things like vaginal dryness. Your heart, blood vessels, bones, skin, muscles and hair all like to have estrogen in your system to function optimally.
Getting your estrogen fix from phytoestrogens (foods that mimic estrogen in the body) is nothing new. Phytoestrogens are plants with naturally occurring hormones that your body turns into estrogen, most of the time anyway. Jill Blakeway, a licensed acupuncturist and clinical herbalist and co-author of Making Babies: A Proven Three-Month Program for Maximum Fertility cautions on Babycenter, “Some soy isoflavones work as an estrogen blocker but others mimic estrogen – meaning the body thinks it is estrogen.
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