Real Health Diagnostics

Episode 02 · May 27, 2026 · 52 min

The Gut–Hormone Connection

Why gut health and hormone health move together — and what the research and the reports actually show.

Audio · 52 min

The audio for this episode will be available here shortly. The full transcript is below.

By Madison Ordway, FDN-P

Show notes

In this episode

We dig into the gut–hormone axis: estrogen metabolism, the microbiome's role, and why digestive symptoms and hormonal symptoms so often show up together. Madison connects the science to what shows up on a GI-MAP and a DUTCH report.

Topics

  • The estrobolome and estrogen recirculation
  • Why gut work often precedes hormone work
  • What to look for across two reports

Further reading

  • Madison's feature in Women's Journal on gut health and female hormones

Guest

Independent functional-health clinician

An independent, licensed practitioner who works alongside RHD clients on hormone-related questions.

Transcript

Lightly edited for readability.

Madison Ordway: One of the questions I get most often is whether to start with the gut or the hormones. And my honest answer is that they're not really separate systems. The microbiome influences how your body processes hormones — there's a collection of gut bacteria sometimes called the estrobolome that plays a role in estrogen recirculation. So when someone comes to me with hormonal symptoms and a history of digestive trouble, I'm rarely surprised to see both stories show up in the testing. We wrote about this for Women's Journal, and I'll link that in the show notes. Today I want to go a layer deeper.