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PCOS ladies: How to look after your gut Microbiome to improve your hormone levels

Posted on by mlfreyer

Let’s start with a simple explanation of the microbiome 

We have ten times more bacteria in and on us than we do our own cells! How crazy is that? And the bugs that form such a big part of us have been crucial to human health throughout our evolution. They are our friendly bugs, our helpful house guests and we need to look after and nuture them so they will look after and nuture us!

5 Reasons Why Your Microbiome Matters?

Your microbiome plays an important role in your health:

  1. It recycles oestrogen – any oestrogen processed by your liver is delivered into your gut and your friendly bugs process it so it gets released into your blood stream. Us PCOS ladies are low on oestrogen, and so the more we can recycle and reuse the oestrogen we do have, the better balanced our hormones will be.
  2. It supports digestion. All you ladies with IBS who have trouble with constipation, diarrhoea and cramping or bloating would likely benefit from working hard on healing your gut. The microbiome release signals to our gut to move food along at the right pace- not too fast, not too slow…but just right!
  3. It plays a HUGE role in your immunity, which on top of what you’d expect, such as improving our defences against bad bugs, it also controls the level of inflammation in our bodies, and inflammation as we all know is also something that worsens PCOS, and could even increase our risk for autoimmune disorders.

How to restore your microbiome:

  1. Feed your friendly bugs! What do they eat? Fibre! You can do this by increasing your daily intake of vegetable and fruit. 5 a day is not enough. Aim for 10-15 servings mostly non-starchy vegetables, then fruit. This sounds boring and unfun but it doesn’t have to be! With the plant-based food trend there are so many delicious recipes out there using veg of every kind!
  2. By doing no 1. above, you will naturally eat less processed foods . Bad bacteria thrive on junk food!
  3. Take a good probiotic. This can help heal your microbiome by putting the friendly bacteria back (but remember the bugs will still need feeding, so don’t skip no 1.)
  4. Exercise! Who knows why but our bugs love it when we exercise… it nourishes them too!

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