When should you take a DIM supplement? If you believe that your hormones are imbalanced or you’re experiencing symptoms of high estrogen, you might consider taking a DIM supplement. Regarding how to take a DIM supplement, it’s usually best to take it in the morning with a bit of food. If you have sleep problems related to high estrogen levels or estrogen dominance, you might consider taking it in the evening to help you sleep longer.
The Benefits of DIM Supplements
DIM stands for diindolylmethane. DIM is a compound made from cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli, and DIM is created when cruciferous vegetables are exposed to stomach acid. To get a lot of DIM, you’d have to eat a large amount of cruciferous vegetables, so many people decide to use it as a supplement.
DIM supplements are a more concentrated form of the beneficial compound, and they skip the process needed to convert it to an active form.
DIM supplements can help your body produce better types of estrogen and reduce more harmful types. Specifically, DIM can help in the production of 2-hydroxy estrogen. Taking a DIM supplement can also help prevent the conversion of testosterone to estrogen, supporting hormonal balance.
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Benefits of DIM supplements include:
Helps with Estrogen Dominance
Symptoms of estrogen dominance can include PMS, weight gain, heavy periods, and irritability. Fibroids, water retention, and painful periods are also symptoms of estrogen dominance.
Estrogen dominance is when you either have too much estrogen in your body or too much relative to your progesterone levels.
Estrogen dominance can occur for various reasons, including stress, problems with the adrenals, excess fat, your environment, digestive problems, and autoimmune disorders.
Since DIM helps balance estrogen levels and optimize them, it can help with the symptoms of estrogen dominance.
Menopause and Perimenopause
Perimenopause is the period between your later reproductive years when you’re a woman and menopause, and your periods may become irregular before they stop. During perimenopause and menopause, hormones change, and progesterone levels can start to decline. This can lead to ups and downs in estrogen levels, causing symptoms like night sweats, mood swings, and hot flashes.
Since DIM promotes the production of beneficial forms of estrogen, it can help with imbalances that can occur during menopause and perimenopause.
DIM can also help block aromatase, an enzyme that allows testosterone to convert to estrogen. DIM can help avoid excessive estrogen production and support healthy testosterone levels.
DIM might also block DHT, potent testosterone associated with hirsutism and acne in women, and prostate cancer in men.
Anticancer Effects
Evidence suggests that DIM supplements might help prevent the growth of cancer cells, including breast cancer cells, and their spread. In a study that included 130 women with breast cancer who were taking tamoxifen therapy, DIM supplements significantly improved their ratio of two estrogen types compared to a placebo.
In animal and test-tube studies, DIM has shown protective effects against prostate, colon, and ovarian cancer.
In a mouse study, DIM appeared to help prevent cervical cancer.
Prostate Health
DIM supplements aren’t just beneficial for women. A DIM supplement can help protect against prostate problems, including enlargement and cancer.
Weight Loss
Since estrogen plays a pivotal role in fat accumulation, DIM supplements can help with weight loss. An estrogen imbalance, whether too much or too little, is a weight gain risk factor in men and women.
DIM supplements might also help prevent the formation of fat cells and stimulate their breakdown.
Other Benefits
Some of the other benefits of DIM supplements can include:
- May help hormonal acne
- Can reduce hot flashes
- Relief of PMS symptoms
- Could correct estrogen imbalances in men, which are linked to infertility, erectile dysfunction, and breast growth
- Helps your body naturally detoxify
- Improves mood
- Supports heart health
- May help with fibroids
- Improves memory
When Should I Take a DIM Supplement?
If you try a DIM supplement, you should talk to your healthcare provider. There isn’t necessarily a best time of day that will be right for everyone when they take the supplement.
Most people take it in the morning, and it doesn’t cause drowsiness or related side effects, and you can take it with a bit of food and a full glass of water.
As mentioned in this guide, if you have insomnia that’s likely associated with hormonal imbalance or estrogen dominance, you should take your DIM supplement at night. Just as it doesn’t have a sedating effect, it also doesn’t have a direct stimulating effect.
The goal should be finding the time that will work for you so you can remember to take DIM regularly. There’s no right or wrong time to take it.
Some people experience side effects like headaches or digestive upset, so taking it with food can help reduce these.
You might also notice changes in the color of your urine, which isn’t harmful and can be reduced by drinking a lot of water throughout the day.
In human studies, doses of DIM are usually between 100-900 mg daily. Doses up to 200 mg daily are generally considered well-tolerated and least likely to cause side effects—a few reports of side effects like nausea and vomiting with amounts of 300 mg or more.
You should not take a DIM supplement if you’re pretty. Your hormone levels change in particular ways during pregnancy, and you don’t want to take any supplement that could affect that because it could be dangerous.
Final Thoughts
DIM supplements have potentially powerful benefits, and they can help both men and women with hormonal balance, weight loss, anticancer benefits, and more. If you have questions or concerns, speak to your healthcare provider about when to take a DIM supplement and what to know before you start it.
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