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Does your body need help clearing out hormones each month?

What the experts say

Mindy Hetzer PelzD.C. · chiropractor, author and fasting educator

Yes, and fasting is one of the ways to help

What it rests onHer published mechanism: estradiol which peaked to release the egg 'now needs to be cleared from the body. If it isn't properly metabolized, it gets stored, often in the belly and breast tissue.' She holds that longer fasting in days 16 to 19, combined with ketobiotic eating, 'supports your liver and helps your body do that estrogen detox work efficiently.'

Source: drmindypelz.com ↗
Jennifer GunterMD · OB/GYN and pain medicine physician

No. Menstruation is not an excretory route and the cycle is not a detox

What it rests onHer account is that the endometrium is supplied by spiral arteries which weaken and bleed, so what leaves is ordinary blood mixed with endometrial cells, and that hormones are cleared by the liver and kidneys rather than expelled with menstrual flow. Verbatim: 'Menstrual blood is blood. It's not special, magical blood. It's not toxin-filled blood.'

Source: vajenda.substack.com ↗

Overview

The obvious version of this disagreement is the wrong one, so it is worth reading both sources side by side. Gunter's post is a response to a podcast clip in which, by her account, Pelz said the cycle gets rid of hormones and toxins. That quotation is Gunter's characterisation of the clip, not a statement Pelz has published herself.

What Pelz publishes on her own site is narrower and credits the liver, which is the organ Gunter says does the clearing. So the sourced disagreement is not "is menstrual blood toxic" but "does a healthy woman's oestrogen clearance need help, and can a fast provide it". The wider version would put words in Pelz's mouth that she has not published.

Where they agree

Both agree that hormone clearance happens through the liver and kidneys. Neither claims menstruation itself removes hormones from circulation, once Pelz's own published wording rather than the quoted clip is used.

What would settle it

Evidence that fasting measurably changes oestrogen metabolite clearance in regularly cycling women, and that anything about ordinary luteal-phase oestradiol handling is deficient in a healthy woman to begin with. Gunter's position is standing physiology and would need a large finding to move; Pelz's position would move on either result, since it is currently a mechanism proposal without a measurement.

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