Surprising hormone disruptors to be aware of in perimenopause and menopause

What happens to your hormones during perimenopause and menopause?

During perimenopause and menopause, your hormone balance can fluctuate quite dramatically, even from day to day. You might feel great one day, then the next day you might be really down in the dumps. And it can all be due to the way that your hormones are rising and falling very, very quickly. So, we have to try and keep everything as balanced as possible, because that way we're less likely to experience symptoms.

But did you know that there are everyday things that you are using and doing regularly that may be contributing to this hormonal free-for-all, and also disrupting the balance of hormones?

Hormone disruptors that can impact your hormone balance

There are chemicals in all sorts of different things. Some of them are called xenoestrogens, and that means ‘false’ oestrogens. When you're taking these, or using them, they are actually being absorbed into your system, and they are mimicking oestrogen. So, they are revving up your oestrogen receptor sites, which can give you high oestrogen symptoms when, in fact, your own level may be pretty normal.

There are also things called EDCs - Endocrine Disruptor Chemicals. These are chemicals that can affect all of our hormones. So, we don't just have sex hormones like oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, but we also have hormones that regulate the thyroid, our bone production, and our nervous system. This means there are a lot of other hormones that can be affected by these chemicals too.

These hormone disruptors can be found in many everyday items. Here are a few to be aware of, and things you can do to help lessen their impact:

Plastic

The main places where you get these chemicals, believe it or not, are in plastic. Plastics are everywhere these days. Just going into my local supermarket, just about everything from that one piece of broccoli to a bag of onions is all wrapped in plastic. And these xenoestrogens from the plastic can then stick to the food, and we can absorb them when we eat it.

If you have a proper, old-fashioned, greengrocer where you can pick your food up without being in plastic, that's fantastic. I wish I had time and one nearby to be able to do that. Or maybe you've got a delicatessen nearby that gives you your cheese and things in pieces and not in bits of plastic.

If not, the best thing to do is, the minute you get home, take everything out of the plastic and then put the plastic in the recycling if it is recyclable.

One of the things I do now is to use wax sheets. You melt the wax, you paint the wax on the sheets, and you use these to wrap your food up in the fridge. And it makes such a difference. Things like cheese will keep much better and for longer.

Also, instead of using plastic tubs to put things into your fridge, you can use glass jars with lids. You can also recycle the jars that you use for other things and use those to store food. Or use the wax sheets. They're very handy, and I would thoroughly recommend them.

The other thing that a lot of people do is buy a quick microwave meal. You stick it in the microwave, not realising that the heat releases these xenoestrogens and EDCs into your food. So again, if you're microwaving anything, put it in a glass container and do it that way, especially if you use the microwave regularly.

And the other thing is water. I'm always going on about drinking water, and one of the ways that we do this is to carry plastic water bottles with us. The really important thing here is that if you are buying a lot of plastic water bottles, make sure they are what's called ‘BPA-free,’ because otherwise they may cause issues.

The other thing you can do is to have a big glass water bottle; although if you're out and about, it's not really a good idea because they're so heavy. If you go to hiking shops, you can get a very, very light, metal water bottle that can be really useful if you're out and about a lot.

Cleaning products

We are so fastidious about keeping our house clean. There's polish, there's wax, there's bleach down the toilet, the shower cleanser. There is now a cleaner for every single department in our lives, whereas I know when I was growing up, I think my mum used a bit of wax on the furniture and that was it. So, when we're home, we're breathing in the residue from these chemicals every single day. And I just don't use any at all. Obviously, the bathroom is a different story. But I just use wax on my furniture or one of these soak-it-up dusters that's supposed to pick everything up.

The other thing you can do is to use things like vinegar instead of a window cleaner. So, there are natural alternatives. All you need to do is have a Google and you'll find loads of really good suggestions for getting rid of all those cleaning chemicals.

Washing powder and fabric conditioner

If you think about it, you've washed your sheets, you've put fabric conditioner on them. Your skin is in contact with the cleaning chemicals in the sheets for seven to eight hours every night. And it's the same with your clothes. You're washing your clothes in all these chemical washing powders, and again, that's next to your skin daily.

You can swap over to using natural washing powders, cleansers, and fabric conditioners. I know they are quite a bit more expensive, so maybe that's something that you can just very gradually build in over time, rather than just dump everything and start from afresh.

Air fresheners

You see all these adverts on the TV; you know, "Keep your house fresh-smelling like a forest," when you're in the middle of the town. You're breathing these in the whole time, and they're absolutely full of chemicals.

I saw a TV program, a good few years ago, and they tested the blood of people who were living day and night with all these chemical air fresheners. And the chemicals from the air fresheners were actually found in their blood. So really, if you want to have the house nice and fresh, go for essential oils. You can get these little burners where you add some water and then maybe one drop of oil to make everything smell nice.

And it's the same with candles. So many of the candles we use are full of chemicals, so look for natural, soy-based candles: they're probably the best. You can also get natural incense sticks, so they are something you could use instead.

Cosmetics and body care products

A really big one, I think, for all of us, is what we put on our skin, such as cosmetics, creams, and body products. If you think about it, you get up in the morning and go for a shower; you may use shower gel, soap, shampoo, and conditioner. You're then putting your body cream on, your antiperspirants, your face cream, your makeup, maybe hair spray. Again, we are opening ourselves up to a huge chemical cocktail made up of all these different things.

There's an organisation called the Environmental Working Group, or EWG for short. If you go onto their website, they list just about everything that you can find in every product. It will tell you whether it's a hormone disruptor, whether it affects your thyroid, etc. So, it's a really handy website to find out what you're actually putting on your skin.

Look for organic products and maybe start swapping over. Once you finish something, go on to an organic version. As far as my shampoo, conditioner, body washes, body creams, face creams are concerned, I only use organic.

I had a really interesting query from a lady many, many years ago. She had started making her own skin care products, and after a few weeks of using them, she noticed that her hot flushes had stopped, and she wanted to know whether it was because she was using natural products. It's quite possible that some of her symptoms were being caused by all the chemicals she was absorbing. But part of it was probably the fact that she was doing something that she really enjoyed, and was in a nice, relaxed state as well.

Sanitary products

Those of you who are still getting periods will probably not have thought about the fact that tampons very often have plastic applicators; so, you're getting some xenoestrogen exposure, regardless of how briefly you're inserting the tampon.

Just remember that the vaginal membrane is probably one of the thinnest in the body; therefore, things get absorbed very, very rapidly through that. If you're using tampons, very often they're bleached, and maybe that tampon is inserted for a few hours at a time, so you're absorbing a lot of chemicals via the vaginal walls into the bloodstream.

So again, you can swap to organic ones, more natural ones. You can also look at things like Mooncup, and you can now get washable sanitary pads as well, which help the environment apart from anything else; so that's a good thing too.

Lessening your chemical load to help your hormones

With a lot of these products that you're using on a regular basis, the chemicals in them will have a safe limit for that particular product. But you're not just using one, you're bathing your body in a cocktail of chemicals of xenoestrogens and EDCs, and nobody's done any studies on the combinations, because each of us will have a completely different mix of chemicals that that we are being exposed to.

You can't get rid of everything all at once, but you could slowly start to change one or two things just to see if that makes a little bit of a difference. And you may actually be quite surprised at how much better you feel, maybe after a few months of going slightly more natural.

How these hormone disruptors impact your already extra-stressed liver

The other thing to be aware of here is that, if we are exposed to all of these chemicals and they are being absorbed into our bodies, our liver is going to have to deal with them at the end of the day; and our liver is already very extra-stressed just because of all the hormonal changes that are going on.

If our liver gets extra-stressed, that can cause things like fatigue, and poor sleep. It can cause digestive problems, and it can make us really irritable. So sometimes, just lifting the chemical load off our liver can make quite a bit of difference to our energy levels and to our sleep.

So, I hope you found this one helpful. If any of you out there have any stories about this, if you've found you've given up something and it's made a huge difference, then please share it with us in the comments section below.

And until next time, take care.

You may also find these topics helpful:

Hormonal changes in perimenopause and menopause: What you need to know

How to help balance your hormones naturally during peri-menopause

5 oestrogen-rich foods for menopause