Is your favorite glass of wine doing more to your body than you think? It’s time to find out.

This week on the Hormone Prosperity Podcast, Dr. Kyrin dives into an often-overlooked yet essential topic for midlife women — the connection between wine consumption and hormonal health. Sparked by a brilliant question from Alicia, a 51-year-old listener navigating hormone replacement therapy (HRT), this episode unpacks the complex relationship between alcohol, gastrointestinal health, and hormonal balance.

Grab your favorite cup of tea (or rethink that Chardonnay 🤔) and join us as we explore how that glass of wine might be silently impacting your hormones.

Here’s what’s brewing in this episode:

• Alicia’s Story

What caused post-wine symptoms like diarrhea? Is it the wine, hormones, or something more? Dr. Kyrin uses Alicia's experience to address a question many of us have wondered about but were too unsure to ask.

• Hormonal Poverty and Prosperity

Why just focusing on estrogen and progesterone isn’t enough. Dr. Kyrin explains how hormonal balance is influenced by insulin, thyroid, cortisol, and even your digestive health.

• The Hidden Power of Your Gut

Did you know that your gastrointestinal health is the foundation of your hormone health? Learn how functional stool testing differs from the traditional approaches and why it’s key to unlocking hormonal prosperity.

• The Wine Dilemma

Does wine disrupt hormonal harmony? Discover how alcohol impacts your body’s ability to properly detoxify and balance your sex hormones.

• Practical Next Steps

Dr. Kyrin shares actionable advice on proper hormone testing, the importance of addressing your gut health, and how hormonal prosperity can help you regain control over your midlife well-being.

This episode is for YOU if…

• You’re over 40 and navigating hormone imbalances.

• You enjoy a glass (or two) of wine but wonder if it’s doing more harm than good.

• You’re tired of “cookie-cutter” approaches to menopause and want a comprehensive plan tailored to your body.

• You’re ready to move from hormonal poverty to hormonal prosperity.

🎧 Tune in now to discover how your gut, your hormones, and that beloved glass of wine are interconnected. Don’t miss this eye-opening and empowering conversation with Dr. Kyrin, designed to help you take charge of your health!

Your Call to Action

1. Take the Free Hormonal Poverty Quiz

Could you be in hormonal poverty? Find out in just 90 seconds!

👉 CLICK HERE to take the quiz and assess where you stand.

2. Join the Hormone Bliss Challenge

Want step-by-step guidance from Dr. Kyrin? The Hormone Bliss Challenge will walk you through actionable steps to rebalance your body, reclaim your sleep, and say hello to vitality.

👉 CLICK HERE to join today.

Help Other Women Get Their Bliss Back

Enjoyed this episode? Please share it with a friend who’s also struggling with hormonal imbalance or midlife metabolic mayhem. Together, we can help more women reclaim their vitality and health. Don’t forget to leave us a review or rating—your support helps build this empowering community!

Podcast Episode Transcript:

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

It's Dr. Kyrin. And in this episode we're going to answer a question by Alicia who is wondering if wine is messing with her hormones. And I love this question because it can apply if you're not doing anything to try to address your hormonal poverty. Wine can mess with your hormones. We're gonna talk about why, and it can apply if you are doing something to manage your hormonal poverty and get to hormonal prosperity. So we're gonna talk about both of these and it definitely applies to you because a large majority of people in western nations actually consume alcohol. So it's an important question for us women over 40 to ask, is wine messing with our hormones? <Laugh>? Here's the answer. So Alicia writes, I'm 51-year-old female. I just started HRT. She's using an estradiol patch and a progesterone oral daily. She's sleeping better and has more energy and she thinks her mood is better overall.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:03):

She takes magnesium malate at night and she takes two progesterone at night. Last night she had two glasses of wine this morning she had diarrhea. Could this be caused by the wine? Is it common? Please help. I love this question. So let's talk first about somebody who's already addressing some of their hormonal poverty, poverty issues. So Alessia, if you're watching, you are addressing some, I heard you me mention estradiol and I heard you mention progesterone. So yay you. And there are other issues that go into creating hormonal poverty that you might not know about that could predispose you to having diarrhea when you consume wine and be contributing to your hormonal poverty. Because if you're only looking at two hormones, estrogen and progesterone, you're missing the point of hormonal poverty, which is not only about estrogen and progesterone. Mainstream medicine would have you believe that it's pretty much only about estrogen.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:58):

And a few select doctors who are in the know will know that progesterone is a part of that too. But the large majority of them won't know that insulin, thyroid, cortisol, DHEA, are involved with creating hormonal poverty and that these hormones like cortisol, are directly informed by other parts of your health, namely your gastrointestinal health. Yep, I said it. Most of you don't think that your GI tract has anything to do with your hormones. And what I wanna tell you is that your GI tract is the center of your body, literally and figuratively is the center of your hormonal health. It is the main pillar of health for women's hormones. So when you're talking about diarrhea, that's a gastrointestinal problem. What does it have to do with hormones? Well, part of what you need to have done as a proper evaluation for hormonal poverty is a functional gastrointestinal evaluation. That's not a regular

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (02:59):

Stool test that looks for specific parasites and bacteria and viruses that can infect humans that mainstream medicine would recognize and treat with antibiotic or an antiviral or an anti parasitic medication. But this includes a functional evaluation of your gastrointestinal tract. How much inflammation do you have going on in there? Or is your body overgrown with abnormal bacteria and undergrown with healthy bacteria? You might know as probiotics. Do you have enough prebiotics? How are your digestive enzymes doing? How are your bile acids doing? How is your body digesting food processing it? Is it not processing fats properly? Proteins, carbohydrates? It's really a functional evaluation. Mainstream medicine is very focused on anatomic problems in the gastrointestinal system. So if you have a functional problem like irritable bowel syndrome or IBS is the most common one I used to have that, then they're just gonna go based on symptoms.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (04:09):

They're not really going to do any other diagnostic tests 'cause they don't know about functional stool testing or food sensitivity testing. They're gonna skip over it. Then they're gonna go looking for an anatomic problem by doing a endoscopy or imaging study of the upper or lower gastrointestinal tract. Maybe you've had that. I had that and they put a scope down when I weighed 243 pounds and looked at my stomach and, oh, you have gastritis. Well, that's all they found. And they put me on high powered proton pump inhibitors. Maybe you're there too. Well that stops you from digesting your food. So it actually causes more problems downstream. But that's a whole other topic. So back to the functional stool testing. They might in mainstream medicine, scope you from the bottom. They did that to me looking for Crohn's, ulcerative colitis. They might do a biopsy and they might look for celiac disease a genetic sensitivity to gluten.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (05:07):

But if you don't have any of these anatomic problems, they might look for gallstones, right? Or fatty liver. They're pretty much gonna say, Hmm, well you have irritable bowel and they're gonna give you a medication that calms down the muscle of gastrointestinal tract. And when your bowel is less spastic, they're gonna claim victory. But what you need to know is that there are problems happening at a sub anatomic level, at a functional level that can predispose you to hormonal poverty, to immune system dysfunction, and to getting diarrhea whether or not you are taking hormones. So Alicia, I like this question because it's interesting that you, it sounds like you believe that you, your progesterone and estrogen have something to do with the diarrhea.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (05:57):

And what I'm here to tell you is it doesn't, okay? You have a gastrointestinal problem that is functional, right? That's pretty much most often what causes diarrhea less often. It's an anatomic problem like Crohn's or ulcerative colitis or diverticulitis. And the wine is a toxicant. It is a solvent that is a poison. If you drink enough, it will kill you and it doesn't actually take that much to kill a human being. So it's a poison. We just don't drink enough of it usually to kill us. We just drink little bits and then we wonder why we have a problem, which is kind of a conundrum, but it kills cells in the gastrointestinal lining. It clogs up your liver from processing these hormones. So here's where there can be an interaction between alcohol and estrogen, progesterone and other sex hormones is that your liver is the main processing plant or sanitation department for these sex hormones.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (07:02):

Meaning it has the job of packaging them up and getting rid of them through the stool. So alcohol actually is also metabolized by some of the same enzymes in the liver. So if your liver is busy detoxifying alcohol that you've drunk, and that's from wine, beer, hard alcohol, vodka, tequila, it doesn't matter what type of alcohol, it's all processed through the same system in the liver. If your liver is busy processing it, and you better believe that it prioritizes that because it recognizes it as a toxicant and says, oh my gosh, we've gotta get this out of here. It is not going to properly detoxify your sex hormones. So you drink a glass of wine at night and you think, oh, I'm good. Some people take it 'cause it helps them sleep, it's gonna help me sleep. And that's not usually the case. It actually disrupts your healthy restorative sleep.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (07:58):

But nonetheless, most people who do that think that they're sleeping well. So they're good. Then you wake up and you have diarrhea. And so yes, here is where the alcohol can be interfering with your estrogen and progesterone. So your body has been busy detoxifying the alcohol all night, not worrying about your hormones. So your hormonal prosperity and balance that you might have achieved before starts dropping and you go into a temporary state of hormonal poverty. So yes, it could be the alcohol, but most people don't get diarrhea when they drink alcohol, which tells me that you probably have a functional stool problem contributing to your hormonal poverty that's informing other hormones that you probably haven't looked at, like your cortisol, which needs a salivary test, checking it four times in a day, your insulin,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (08:55):

Your thyroid, most likely you'll have a cortisol problem. And that directly relates to your gastrointestinal problem. And that's a whole other video and a whole other topic. If you wanna hear about that, please let me know 'cause I'm happy to do a video about it. But your cortisol stress hormone and your gastrointestinal system hormone intimately involved with your sex hormones. So if you're not using any sex hormone replacement therapy, what are you waiting for is my question. Get your hormones properly checked, and if you are deficient and you're not able to make enough of your sex hormones, replace them after a certain age. Once we go through menopause, we lose the ability to make the majority of our estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. We lose the ability to make enough to keep us in hormonal prosperity, to keep us out of heart disease, heart attacks, osteoporosis, bone fractures, dementia, immune system dysfunction, autoimmune disease cancers.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (09:55):

We lose all of that. So

 if you're not taking care of that, go do that. But do not neglect all the other things, factors in your body that go into either keeping you in hormonal prosperity or putting you in hormonal PO poverty like your gastrointestinal health. Because this is where I see a lot of women and I say, yay you if you're dealing with your estrogen, your progesterone, and or your testosterone, yay. And there's more work to do. I see women like this all the time complaining that something about their health isn't right. Usually it's more than one thing. Those 60 plus symptoms of midlife, metabolic mayhem, and they keep scratching their head, I'm I on the right dosing route? Should I be using a pill or a shot or a transdermal cream or a patch, or sh should I go to trophies or should I use pellets?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (10:49):

And they're thinking that the dosing is wrong or that the way they're dosing is wrong. And what I'm saying is you're look un looking under the wrong street light. You need to move into the dark corners where there's no street light shining where people aren't telling you to look that I'm telling you to look because I know to tell you to look professionally, personally is you need to look at these other factors that go into informing your health. And key for what you described, Alicia, is your gastrointestinal health. There's something going on there. Your regular doctor isn't gonna know how to evaluate this. They're just gonna do tests looking for anatomic problems, or take your symptoms and give you a drug. That's all they're gonna do. And I know I've been treated that way. It didn't fix my problem. You need functional testing and food sensitivity testing, and I teach you more about this in my hormone blist challenge. If you're not sure if you're in hormonal poverty or I could be talking about you and you're wondering, how would I know, go ahead and take my quiz. We'll have the link

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (11:53):

In the show notes and you can take, the quiz takes less than two minutes and that will give you a good idea. But ultimately there are specific tests and if you want to have dialogue with me about this personally, come join my challenge that will be launching in February for the Hormone Bliss Challenge to help you learn the exact steps that I've taken and that I have helped thousands of women take to get out of hormonal poverty into hormonal prosperity so that you can get off the couch into your genes and back into life. Thanks so much for joining me. I so welcome and enjoy answering your questions. Thank you for them. And until next time, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.