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Essential Oils for Menopause

By Jodi Cohen

Menopause is a naturally occurring transition that involves changes in hormonal levels.

As you age, your reproductive cycle begins to slow down and prepares to stop. Your ovaries produce the hormones estrogen and progesterone. Together, estrogen and progesterone control menstruation. Estrogen also influences how your body uses calcium and maintains cholesterol levels in your blood.

As menopause nears, your ovaries slow the production of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Then this decrease occurs, your menstrual cycle (period) starts to change. It can become irregular and then stop. The process is gradual and happens in three stages:

  • Peri-menopause: Perimenopause can begin eight to 10 years before menopause when your ovaries gradually produce less and less estrogen. Peri-menopause may be associated with symptoms like irregular periods, hot flashes, and mood swings in perimenopause.
  • Menopause: Menopause is the point when you no longer have menstrual periods (i.e. you have gone without a period for 12 consecutive months). At this stage, your ovaries don’t release eggs, and your body doesn’t produce much estrogen. 
  • Post-menopause: The time after menopause. While most symptoms of menopause ease up in post-menopause, you can continue to have mild menopausal symptoms for several years. 

Physical and psychological changes may occur as your body adapts to different hormone levels. The symptoms you experience during each stage of menopause are all part of your body’s adjustment to these changes.

  • Hot Flashes or Night Sweats
  • Difficulty sleeping (insomnia) or sleep disturbances (Night Waking)
  • Anxiety
  • Forgetfulness, trouble finding words and remembering, or brain fog
  • Migraines: Can change in intensity and severity 
  • Urinary urgency (a pressing need to pee more frequently)
  • Emotional changes (irritability, mood swings, or depression)
  • Dry skin, dry eyes, or dry mouth
  • Breast tenderness
  • Joint stiffness, muscle aches and pains
  • Changes in libido (sex drive)
  • Hair loss or thinning
  • Frequent feelings of anger or frustration
  • Intolerance to cold
  • Weight gain and expanding mid-section
  • Decreased energy levels
  • Difficulty coping with stressful situations
  • Tinnitus
  • Vaginal dryness and pain

Changes in your hormone levels cause these symptoms. These hormones, generally associated with reproduction also support cardiovascular, bone, and muscular health.

Essential oils are not hormones—the chemical messengers that travel through the bloodstream to maintain the delicate balance in our bodies—but they may help balance the body to best support you through this hormonal transition by:

  1. Helping to balance the organs of your endocrine system (produce and release hormones).
  2. Supporting optimal detoxification to ensure that old hormones are eliminated from your body and do not get reabsorbed and recirculated.
  3. Returning hormone receptors to ensure that the right hormonal signals are sent and received by the cells.

As you may know, hormones control how you feel, think, function, and look, including your mood, energy level, weight, and the quality of your skin, hair, and nails.

Your hormones circulate through your body, influencing and coordinating activity between your cells. Hormones are responsible for countless body functions, from hair growth and skin quality to metabolizing food, maintaining body temperature, causing your heart to beat, preparing your body for sex and reproduction, replenishing energy, weight gain, and of course, your mood. They also significantly influence how your body stores fat and when and how your body decides to burn it for fuel.

Hormones are produced, secreted, and regulated by your endocrine glands and organs—including the hypothalamus, pituitary, ovaries, adrenals, and thyroid, along with the liver, gall bladder, and lining of the gut—and travel through your bloodstream, carrying information and instructions from one set of cells in your body to another. When you support these systems to function optimally, the hormones released into our bodies are in balance. 

Essential oils are plant–based, and some contain phytoestrogens or compounds derived from plants that behave in a similar way to the hormone estrogen and can either block or mimic the effects of estrogen in the body. Research on “Estrogenic Activity of Isolated Compounds and Essential Oils” found that phytoestrogens in certain essential oils “showed estrogen–like biological activity” and may help balance hormones and support the relief from hormonal fluctuations that may contribute to menopausal symptoms such as mood changes and hot flashes.

These plant-based substances may have a similar effect on the body to estrogen, which may help those with low estrogen—such as people going through menopause—and may help with symptoms like hot flashes and mood swings. “Estrogenic activity of isolated compounds and essential oils” refers to the ability of certain individual chemicals found in plants, particularly those extracted as essential oils, to mimic the hormone estrogen when interacting with the body’s estrogen receptors, potentially causing hormonal effects similar to natural estrogen.

Essential oils derived from plants and herbs may also possess similar qualities to adaptogenic herbs, in that they promote hormone balance. Your hormones help control mood, growth and development, the way your organs work, metabolism, and reproduction. Too much or too little of any hormone can harm your body. Essential oils can balance your endocrine organs to promote optimal hormonal levels and function.

For example: 

Your endocrine glands work together to control the level of hormones circulating throughout your body to keep your body healthy and in balance which helps ease symptoms during menopause. Your hormonal health depends upon the optimal function of the organs and regions of the brain that produce and regulate your hormones. The following blends of essential oils can be used to balance these different organ systems and regions of the brain to support optimal function.

Your hypothalamus is a small pearl-shaped gland located just above your brain stem which directs hormone production by the ovaries and adrenal glands. These hormones play an important role in the menopause transition. Your hypothalamus controls all hormonal messages—collecting, assessing, and responding to internal and external signals from the body.

Nerve cells in the hypothalamus make chemicals that control the release of stimulatory or inhibitory hormones, which start or stop the production of other hormones throughout your body. For example, your hypothalamus gathers information sensed by the brain (such as the surrounding temperature, light exposure, and feelings) and sends it to the pituitary. The Hypothalamus’s ability to interpret the information received determines which hormones are secreted. It needs to be functioning optimally for optimal hormonal balance.

This information influences the hormones that the pituitary makes and releases that stimulate or inhibit many of your body’s key processes, supporting:

  • Metabolism, Appetite, and Body Weight
  • Body temperature and Hot Flashes
  • Stress Management
  • Mood Regulation
  • Energy 
  • Sleep cycles

Your hypothalamus is the primary driver of your endocrine glands. In collaboration with your pituitary gland, your hypothalamus controls all of the hormonal messages for your endocrine, stress, and digestive systems. In essence, your hypothalamus and pituitary tell your other endocrine glands to make and release hormones that affect and protect every aspect of your health.

To this end, your hypothalamus must gauge the hormone levels needed in your body. To do so, your hypothalamus monitors your body, by sending and receiving signals to and from your body. Your hypothalamus needs to function optimally for the appropriate signals to be sent and received. If the hypothalamus is damaged due to environmental toxins, stress, or trauma, incorrect signals may be sent or received and your hormonal health will suffer.

To help return your hypothalamus and pituitary gland to balance, apply 1 drop of Hypothalamus™ to the forehead right above the third eye (right above the nose between eyebrows and hairline) up to 6 times daily. Hypothalamus™ blend helps to encourage the natural ability of the hypothalamus to receive clear messages from the body.

Healthy adrenal glands can help to ease the hormonal transition during menopause.

Your adrenals—small glands on top of the kidneys—are responsible for 25% of sex hormone production before menopause, with the remaining 75% produced by the ovaries. 

As we get closer to menopause, reproductive hormone levels decline because the ovaries no longer produce estrogen or progesterone. This change in hormone levels is what drives the symptoms we experience. Your adrenal glands become the backup system for these hormones (with a little support from fat cells and the ovaries). Your adrenal glands respond by making a hormone that can be converted into estradiol, a form of estrogen. Estradiol plays a role in bone health, heart health, and neuroprotection after menopause. Think of it like a train switching tracks. This transition can be smooth and seamless if the adrenals are in optimal condition.

Unfortunately, the adrenals also produce the hormones that help the body respond to and manage stress, such as cortisol. Chronic or prolonged stress can exhaust the adrenals and diminish their ability to produce sex hormones as the body will always prioritize the need for survival (fight or flight) over keeping sex hormones in balance. If adrenals are supported and in good shape, you will not experience PMS or cramping prior to menopause and will avoid or significantly diminish menopause symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats.

As you may know, your adrenal glands produce hormones that support your stress response, metabolism, salt and water balance, immune response, and sex hormones.

The outer part of the adrenal glands, known as your adrenal cortex, produces the following hormones:

  • Cortisol: Helps your body respond to stress and regulates metabolism. Cortisol stimulates glucose production helping the body to free up energy stored in your muscle and fat tissue to make glucose. Cortisol also has significant anti-inflammatory effects.
  • Aldosterone: Helps maintain the right balance of salt and water balance in the body and control blood pressure and cardiovascular function. Without aldosterone, the kidney loses excessive amounts of salt (sodium) and, consequently, water, leading to severe dehydration and low blood pressure.
  • Corticosterone: Helps regulate your immune response and suppress inflammatory reactions.
  • Androgens: Sex hormones that support sexual development and function, including estrogen, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and testosterone.

The adrenal medulla, the inner part of your adrenal glands, produces your ‘fight or flight’ hormones that are released after the sympathetic nervous system is stimulated to help you deal with physical and emotional stress. These fight-or-flight hormones include:

  • Adrenaline (also called epinephrine): Rapidly responds to stress by increasing your heart rate and rushing blood to the muscles and brain. It also spikes your blood sugar level by helping convert glycogen to glucose in the liver. (Glycogen is the liver’s storage form of glucose.)
  • Noradrenaline (also called norepinephrine): Works with epinephrine in responding to stress. Noradrenaline can cause vasoconstriction (the narrowing of blood vessels) which contributes to high blood pressure.

Your adrenal glands help determine and regulate the body’s stress response by secreting the stress hormone cortisol, which like progesterone, requires the precursor ingredient pregnenolone. Pregnenolone is an important precursor to your body’s production of sex hormones like testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen. Poor adrenal function is the largest cause of the hormonal imbalance with the sex hormones, as the precursor for sex hormones is the same as the precursor for the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol then causes the imbalance of progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone.

Since the body prioritizes the stress response over all other bodily functions, high demand for cortisol blocks the body from converting pregnenolone into sex hormones and cortisol is produced instead. This is known as the “pregnenolone steal” resulting in an imbalance of progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone, which contributes to menopause symptoms like estrogen dominance, weight gain, fatigue, irritability, and decreased sex drive. It is important to down–regulate the need for cortisol in order to increase the supply of progesterone and balance your hormones. Applying the Adrenal® blend over the adrenal glands (back of the body, one fist up from the 12th rib), can help to increase the body’s ability to adapt to stress and reduce the demand for cortisol production at the expense of progesterone.

Essential oils can be used like adaptogenic herbs to help support the adrenal glands for the optimal energy reserves required to support your healing. The Adrenal® blend also contains several stimulatory oils like Thyme, Cinnamon, and Rosemary that help you feel invigorated, revitalized, and energetic. To use, either smell or topically apply 1–2 drops of Adrenal® on the adrenal glands (on the lower mid-back, one fist above the 12th rib on each side). Menopause and hormone imbalances stabilize when the adrenals are operating at full capacity.  

Although your autonomic nervous system does not directly control the adrenals, a chronic Sympathetic “fight or flight” response can trigger a stress response. In a state of chronic stress, your stress response mechanism, known as the HPA Axis, triggers your adrenal glands to produce high amounts of the stress hormone cortisol which can push the body into adrenal fatigue. The parasympathetic state normalizes an elevated HPA Axis, helping to put the brakes on excessive cortisol output, which can help heal the adrenals. Applying Parasympathetic® in combination with Adrenal® can help balance the adrenals.

Hormonal balance can also be impacted by the levels of hormones already in the blood, or by levels of other substances in the blood, like minerals or toxins. Supporting your detoxification channels can help eliminate excess hormones and return hormone levels to balance.

Your liver helps to regulate the balance of hormones in your body by producing cholesterol, the precursor necessary for the creation of hormones, and breaking down and removing excess hormones. Your liver helps to transform and eliminate excess hormones, including sex hormones, thyroid hormones, cortisone, and other adrenal hormones from the body. Your liver functions in your body in much the same way a pool filter functions in a pool. Just as a pool filter cleans a pool by catching the dead leaves, dirt, and insects, the liver detoxifies your body from harmful toxins and excess hormones.

If the liver cannot do this properly, excess hormones can build up in your system and lead to hormonal imbalances like estrogen dominance. Here’s what this looks like. Once estrogen has done its job in the body, it is sent to the liver so it can be broken down and removed through the colon. Unfortunately, if your liver is congested or overwhelmed, then it is unable to function optimally and thus cannot remove estrogen at its normal rate. Estrogen is not metabolized properly and can be reabsorbed back into the body, contributing to symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, irritability, low libido, and depression. 

Excessive hormonal buildup in your body further taxes and overwhelms your liver, contributing to a vicious cycle of hormone imbalance. What’s more, if too many excess “used” hormones float around in your bloodstream, your hypothalamus might fail to signal the pituitary gland to send out fresh hormones. If there are too many hormones in the body it becomes unbalanced and symptomatic. For example, an excess of estrogen might lead a woman to experience hot flashes, bouts of anger or depression, weight gain, cramps, or irregular cycles. Another important factor in the body’s capacity to make hormones is the liver’s ability to process fatty acids. We must have fats in the diet to make steroid hormones, and the liver has to be able to process them. Supporting your liver with essential oils can help to improve its vitality and capacity to support hormonal balance. 

Liver™ supports hormonal balance by removing excess hormones of all types from the bloodstream. Weakened liver function increases the availability of estrogens in the body. Apply 2–3 drops of Liver™ directly over your liver (right side of the body, under your breast) upon waking and before bed to help improve liver function and with it, hormonal balance.

Your gallbladder is a small, pear-shaped organ that stores and concentrates bile, a fluid made in the liver that helps the body break down fat and carry toxins (including old hormones) out of the body. The liver packages up toxins and excess hormones—like estrogen—and bile carries excess estrogen into the small intestine and eventually out of the body in the stool.

Unfortunately, as you age your gallbladder produces less bile—around 20% less bile being produced as you move through menopause. What’s more, estrogen and progesterone lead to slower emptying and increased cholesterol–to–bile ratio in the gland, leading to supersaturation of bile and more sludge.  When the bile thickens, it disrupts the flow and elimination of toxins and old hormones from the body.

In short, too much estrogen can reduce bile flow, allowing hormones to re-circulate and contribute to excess estrogen resulting in hormonal imbalances and menopause symptoms. Sluggish gallbladder function or viscous and stagnant bile flow often leads to sluggish hormone elimination and resultant hormone symptoms. This may be attributed to high estrogen symptoms like cramping, breast tenderness, water retention, and acne.

Gall Bladder™ blend helps support optimal gallbladder health, improving the viscosity of the bile, allowing better fat digestion, and eliminating toxins and old hormones.  

Gall Bladder™ blend contains a proprietary formulation of the following organic and/or wild-crafted therapeutic essential oils, including Black Cumin which is especially beneficial for the gallbladder and for restoring healthy bile flow, since the chemical constituent stearic acid in cumin seed is an ideal emulsifying agent that binds water and oil. Gall Bladder™ blend also contains Roman Chamomile essential oil, one of the deepest detoxifiers that support the liver in proper function, but stimulates the liver to release toxins held deep in the liver’s tissues. Roman Chamomile also aids in the release of toxicity held in the digestive tract, which can help recovery from a stomach virus or a weekend of poor dietary choices.

To support the optimal flow of bile and allow toxins to flow out of the body, apply 2–3 drops of Gall Bladder™ underneath the ribs at the gall bladder (right side, underneath the ribs. If you lean forward, it is easier to apply under the ribs).

Estrogen Balance™ is designed to support the liver with the gentle mobilization of estrogen. Estrogen Balance™ works best when applied over the liver (on the right side of the body under the breast) in combination with castor oil before bed. It is important to use it in combination with a binding agent such as chia seeds, psyllium, or a supplement like GI Detox or BIND.

Hormone Balance™ helps to balance the body so that the liver, gall bladder and thyroid—the key organs that produce and synthesize hormones—can function optimally to enhance metabolism. Hormone–based weight gain is one of the first lines of defense against hormonal imbalance. Without the hormones to direct the release of fat for fuel, the body holds on to the extra weight. As hormones fluctuate during the monthly cycle, pregnancy, and post-pregnancy menopause, or when blood sugar is out of balance, the body becomes increasingly resistant to weight loss. Apply 2–3 drops of Hormone Balance™ (ideally first thing in the morning and before bed) over the liver/gall bladder (right side of the body under the ribcage) or thyroid (throat)

Gut Repair Kit™ – If the stomach isn’t digesting proteins or the small intestine isn’t producing the proper enzymes to absorb fats, our bodies won’t receive the proper building blocks to produce hormones. Similarly, the beneficial bacteria in the small intestine metabolize hormones like estrogen that are discharged from the liver. If your body lacks the probiotics and bacteria to break down estrogen or the intestinal permeability is compromised from a leaky gut, you will reabsorb estrogens. The extra estrogen binds to sensitive areas such as the breast, uterus, or ovaries, contributing to fibroids, tumors, and PMS symptoms. Finally, if toxins aren’t regularly leaving the body via bowel movements, they can leach from it into the nearby tissues of the reproductive system and impede their function.

Jodi Cohen

Jodi Sternoff Cohen is the founder of Vibrant Blue Oils. An author, speaker, nutritional therapist, and a leading international authority on essential oils, Jodi has helped over 50,000 individuals support their health with essential oils.