Hormone estrogen or estradiol is a commonly used hormone that is checked, its levels are checked in the blood specifically if you are having fertility treatment or monitoring for your fertility cycle. A common question to be asked is my estrogen level high and to be able to answer this question, it needs to be also coupled with another information: what day of the cycle the estrogen was checked because the estrogen will start as being low on days one, two or three of the cycle and it will start increasing to peak approximately around ovulation is when the thickening or when the lining is quite thick enough for the embryo. Very high estrogen levels at the beginning of the cycle can raise some alarm bells and can cause some worries to your clinician. A raised or an elevated baseline estrogen might be a sign of a low ovarian reserve, it might be a sign of a cyst in the ovary that is producing estrogen and remember it’s not estrogen that is elevated per se that causes infertility but if it is associated with a low ovarian reserve then it might be a cause of infertility. If it is associated with a cyst, then that might be contributing to fertility issues and even in the presence of a normal ovarian reserve if the estrogen is high at the wrong timing of the cycle, then the embryo might be finding it difficult to implant in the lining. It’s a very complex process of the hormones of fertility – we need them to be present at the right concentration, at the right timings of the cycle in order for such a complicated process to work or to function. So a high estrogen at the beginning of the cycle might raise some alarm bells – please discuss it with your doctor. If you are checking your estrogen in different countries or if you are going to compare your estrogen result with someone else online these days one, one thing to warn you about is that different countries use different units to report the estrogen concentration, so when you are trying to discuss your result whether with your doctor or whether you are checking your result what does it mean online, make sure to check what unit you are checking that against.
High levels of estrogen, artificial from what you’re taking then yes because they could suppress things. If you’ve got a big cyst that, for example that’s producing estrogen, again, that could suppress your natural hormonal production that would make eggs grow. There’s no normal level of estrogen because it depends on where you are in your cycle: at the beginning of your cycle, when there’s no eggs growing – levels to be low, as your egg grows and it peaks mid-cycle, that’s when your estrogen levels are going to be higher, so if you’re measuring the estrogen levels along with FSH, for example, ideally they’re measured at the beginning of your cycle, just to make sure everything’s okay.
What happens is during a fresh cycle when your ovaries are being stimulated, those cells in your ovaries are secreting estradiol which is a different form of estrogen and you can measure your estradiol levels during a cycle. Some clinics don’t do it anymore, it’s just one of those things used to monitor ovarian hyperstimulation and it can be used as a sort of educated guess as to how many eggs you might get. Those high estradiol levels are the ones that can disrupt your endometrium and affect those 200 different genes that we talked about. The estrogen levels in a normal menstrual cycle are a completely different mechanism to what it would be compared to estradiol in a fresh cycle.
