The Estrobolome
Your gut bacteria decide how much estrogen stays in your body. Most people have no idea.
Grounded in the research on estrobolome
1. Meet the estrobolome
It's not an organ. It's the set of genes in your gut bacteria that can metabolize estrogen. Microbiologists Claudia Plottel and Martin Blaser named it in 2011 in Cell Host & Microbe, defining it as "the aggregate of enteric bacterial genes whose products are capable of metabolizing estrogens." So part of your hormone profile isn't set by your ovaries. It's set by which bugs are living in your colon.
2. Estrogen gets tagged for exit
Your liver doesn't just dump estrogen. It conjugates it, bolting on a glucuronic acid group that flags the hormone as spent and water-soluble. That tagged estrogen rides the bile down into your gut, headed for the toilet. If nothing touched it there, it would leave your body for good. That's the whole point of the tag: deactivate, package, eliminate.