Menopause: The gut health and hormone link

OMAYRA ACEVEDO

PEAK TO PEAK – Disclosure: The Menopause series does not offer advice from professionals. It is a collection of stories and ideas that have helped women manage their menopause symptoms naturally.

If you’re new to The Mountain-Ear’s Menopause series, you may want to catch up by reading our first installment, titled “Menopause: The elephant in every woman’s room.” You can find it in the January 30, 2025, edition or by visiting https://themtnear.com/stories/menopause-the-elephant-in-every-womans-room,28567.

Hopefully, you’ve been tracking your eating and daily habits in your health and wellness journal, as discussed in the first Menopause installment. If you’ve found patterns that are triggering your menopause symptoms, great. If you haven’t, don’t worry; sometimes they’re difficult to detect. However, there’s still hope.

Aside from things like hot flashes and night sweats, many menopausal women complain about sudden gut discomfort, including bloating and constipation. Did you know that acid reflux is also a common complaint among menopausal women? Often, signs of gut issues go undetected due to the constant fluctuation in hormones.

A National Library of Medicine study revealed a significant connection between the human digestive tract (gut microbiome) and hormones. “The gut microbiota carries out many functions, contributing to health homeostasis and disease, including the metabolism of dietary components,” such as fiber and amino acids (proteins).

An interesting finding was the link between bile acids (produced in the liver from cholesterol), hormones, and the production of the complex molecule lipopolysaccharide, “a cell wall component of gram-negative bacteria that triggers inflammation [bloating].” 

Furthermore, gut health can reach far past the gastrointestinal tract, influencing the spinal cord and the brain, which produces and releases hormones. In short, if you don’t have good gut health, your menopause symptoms are more likely worse than they should be.

Acid reflux or GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), a common symptom experienced during menopause, includes heartburn, sour taste, difficulty swallowing, and indigestion. Some menopausal women have been known to suffer from acid reflux or GERD and never feel a symptom. 

Other signs that may reveal gut microbiome disruptions include the following:

This is why it is important to track in your health and wellness journal what you eat and how you feel after eating. Your doctor can’t do all the work. You should be prepared to discuss – in great detail – all your symptoms, including your gut health.

The bacteria in your gut microbiome metabolize and regulate hormones, especially estrogen. Your gut microbiome breaks down estrogen by eliminating excess amounts, meaning that an unhealthy gut may lead to hormonal imbalance due to improper hormone processing.

As discussed in “Menopause: The elephant in every woman’s room,” every woman is different. Aside from typical menopausal symptoms, some women may develop intolerance to gluten or dairy, or allergies to things they’ve been eating all their lives.

In another study by the National Library of Medicine, women who switched to the Mediterranean diet improved their gut health and lessened many menopausal symptoms. 

Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers followed 25,000 women for nearly 25 years. The research concluded that “participants who closely followed the Mediterranean diet had up to a 23 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality, with benefits for both cancer and cardiovascular health.”

Dr. Gerrie-Cor Herber-Gast, an academic researcher at the University of Queensland, investigated the relationship between the Mediterranean Diet and the risk of vasomotor symptoms (hot flushes and night sweats). 

The study involved 6,040 postmenopausal women with a 9-year follow-up, concluding that the diet was “inversely associated with vasomotor menopausal symptoms,” suggesting that the MD might be useful in preventing those common menopausal symptoms.

The Mediterranean diet focuses on consuming fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans, and healthy fats like salmon and olive oil in moderation. Things that, for most women, are easily digestible. 

If we digest – pun intended – the ingredients of the Mediterranean diet, we discover that they have a few important things in common.

The first and most obvious is the extremely low level of saturated fats. Saturated fats raise cholesterol levels and are hard to digest, so avoiding them is a good first step to a cleaner gut, leading to fewer menopause symptoms.

The second commonality is the lack of gluten, which contains amino acids that are difficult for the body to break down. The third and equally important factor is that the ingredients are high in good, digestible fiber. 

If you’re apprehensive about altering your entire diet, some women benefit from adding anti-inflammatory foods without changing much else. Women have also incorporated pro- and prebiotics to help with digestion. Others claim that taking enzymes was all they needed for better digestion and gut health.

In conclusion, if your gut isn’t healthy, it can significantly impact hormone levels, potentially leading to imbalances due to poor nutrient absorption, disrupted gut bacteria, and interference between the gut and brain.

To read about the National Library of Medicine study, visit https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9379122/.

To read about the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital study, visit https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/06/women-who-follow-mediterranean-diet-live-longer/.

To read about Herber-Gast’s Mediterranean diet findings, visit https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523055181.

To learn about anti-inflammatory diets, visit