Me and Being Gluten Free

The first time i heard about going gluten free was back in February in the form of an article from my good friend "First for Women" magazine. Once again, i was at the grocery store, wondering what else i could do to help my healing and weight loss along and there it was, with a big, bold headline "drop 12 lbs every week!" So i figured i would check it out and once again was surprised at how much sense it made to me.

Gluten is a protein that is found in wheat and certain other grains, its what makes bread so soft and fluffy. The more gluten a bread has, the softer, stretchier, and often, more yummy it is. Under normal circumstances, the gluten (protein) that comes from whole grain wheat and other grains is a very good thing for you. But if your body isn't under "normal" circumstances, and you have developed a sensitivity to it, it becomes very bad.

There are some very specific, actual diseases in which a person is not able to metabolize gluten. One of them is called Celiac Disease. It comes with its own list of symptoms and there is a test for it that your doctor can give you if you suspect you have it. From what i understand, no one knows how it is contracted and there is no cure for it, but it is manageable. For my purpose, I'm not going to talk about that, i would like to talk about the concept of developing a wheat/gluten sensitivity or allergy.

The whole idea behind developing a gluten allergy is that your body becomes unable to break down that particular protein and absorb it into the intestinal wall and into the blood stream. Instead the proteins leak through the intestine and into the body. This phenomenon is sometimes called "Leaky Gut Syndrome"

Your body starts to treat these unabsorbed bits of protein like a virus and begins to fight them. This causes multiple complications, inflammation for one, but also mild flue like symptoms: nausea, headaches, sluggishness, sinus congestion and nasal drip, and aches. It can also cause other things like rashes, eczema, irritable bowls, hair loss, painful PMS and of course weight gain and water retention.

So how does one develop a gluten allergy/sensitivity? Mostly from having hormone/chemical issues. What it breaks down to is this: if you have weight issues, you have hormone issues (if by nothing else than having problems with insulin, a hormone) and if you have hormone issues, eventually you develop allergies because your body cant keep up your out of whack system. I have to put chemical issues in there too for the simple reason that (nobody knows exactly why) going gluten free has been known to help people with such issues as autism and schizophrenia.

The funny thing is that most people don't know that they have developed an allergy to food that they had always been ok with. I sure didn't, but it is, in fact, very common. In his book "The Ultimate Metabolism", Dr. Mark Hyman suggest that when you start his diet you actually eliminate milk, eggs and wheat (the three most common food sensitivities) for three weeks to asses your bodies reaction to them.

*Side Tracked Moment*
I found Dr. Hyman's cook book while looking for books on vegetables and gluten free recipes. Reading the introduction really resonated with me, he promotes using food as a medicine to cure the body and return to health. His program is designed to help detox the body, reestablish hormones, reset your natural metabolism and loose unwanted body fat. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for an easy, clean and delicious diet.
*Moment over*

I guess most people, like me, have just gotten use to our physical discomfort or had no idea it was possible to develop an allergy that had never existed before. So i figured, cant hurt, might help right?

Going gluten free was easy in some aspects and hard in others. It was hard in the fact that i never realized that gluten is in so MANY things! Beyond the obvious like bread and pasta, you have to think of everything that is made with wheat flour. Like cookies, beaded food like onion rings, fries, and fried chicken and gravy. Most things that come in a box or are dusted with some sort of flavor powder have gluten in them. One thing is for sure, if you go gluten free, you automatically eat healthier because all of a sudden packaged foods are out the window, most fast foods are out the window, a lot of processed meat (which uses gluten as a binder) is out the window and white bread is defiantly out the window.

The easy part was that even though bread was off the table, being gluten free dose not need to be "low carb", therefore it was easy for me to stay on it and feel satisfied. There are plenty of gluten free carbs to live on and the easiest ones to find and prepare are corn, oats (if you don't have Celiac), rice and potatoes.

Going gluten free is easy to do and cheap if you are a "lives with the earth" sort of a person. It is easy enough serve rice and potatoes as side dishes instead of rolls or have popcorn instead of crackers. In a normal grocery store you can buy cereals and snacks that are naturally gluten free like cornflakes or rice cakes (just read the labels to make sure that gluten has not been used in the proses). But if you crave more culinary variety, there are certainly ways to get it. Many health food stores (and grocery stores that carry specialty items) will usually have a good selection of gluten free pastas and all kinds of bread and baked goods mixes. Online there are several places to find gluten free recipes and you would be amazed at what can be accomplished with rice four.

The best gluten free recipes i found came from cook books by Jacquelinge Mallorca. She wrote "The Wheat-Free Cook" and "Gluten Free Italian". For pasta and bread recipes that you cant tell the difference from its wheat counterpart, her's cannot be beat! I have included a link to her web sight under my links.

Keep in mind though, just because it it is gluten free dose not mean that it is healthy. You face the same problems with packaged gluten free foods as you do in those with wheat. No matter how gluten free, if it has been processed, striped of fiber (in the form of white rice, just like white flour), or is filled with sugar or fat, it ain't gonna do you any good. Contrary to the crazy hype, being gluten free is not an appropriate diet aid. That is, if you are already in good health and don't have any "gluten conscious" diseases but you want to loose a few before you go on vacation, this isn't going to do much for you. Your body is going to treat rice just as it would wheat.

That being said, there are many people out there with issues that experience dramatic weight loss once they go gluten free. Most of it in the beginning when 10 to 12 lbs of water weight flushes off once their body is no longer inflamed by consuming wheat. After that, with healthy eating, their body starts to heal and they continue to loose fat.

Of course i had hopes that such would be the case for me, but was not entirely surprised to find that it wasn't. However i have some other incredible experiences that made giving up wheat bread totally worth it. The first was that my stomach stopped hurting. That was a surprise for me because i had not realized until then how sick i was.....all the time.....after anything i ate. I knew that i didn't feel good a lot but was not able to place my finger on until a few days after i started eating gluten free and i wasn't in pain after dinner.

The other thing was that i didn't have to keep eating. Before, it seamed that i was always hungry. I would eat and then a little while later i would be starving again. On top of that, sometimes i would have compulsions. It has seriously frightened me sometimes when i couldn't stop eating. Case in point, one night i got myself some ice cream, after a few bites i decide i didn't like it and it was hurting my stomach, but did i put it away? No, i ate it all. In my brain, i was telling myself to stop, that i didn't like it, that it didn't feel good, but for some reason i still cant fathom, i could not stop. I know that sometimes when my stomach feels sick (which was often) i eat something else to try to settle it. Some times that works and sometimes it doesn't, but this was different. It has only happened a few times, but it is frightening.

Once i was gluten fee, all of that changed. It was like there was an "eat" switch flashing in my brain all the time and it finally got shut off! For the fist time in a long time i could leave food on my plate if i was full or if i was starving, a banana would do the trick and i could stop there. It may not be weight loss, but the self control has been a much needed relief.

Another welcomed benefit was a clearer head and more energy. That is usually the first thing to go when i fall off the wagon (which happens occasionally) and why when i do, it makes it hard to get back on, but the effort is always worth it.

So, the bad news was that, for me at least, this was not the answer to weight loss. But the good news is that it is a very helpful tool in managing my symptoms until i can get to and cure the root of my health problems.

Energy Healing

I guess now is a good time to talk about Energy Healing. I believe that the body is more than just flesh and blood. I believe that all living things also have a spirit and that that spirit is divinely and lovingly created by a Father in Heaven. Just as i know that the physical world is a large chain of chemical reactions and electrons that keep our atoms connected to each other, i believe that energy dose the same for our spirits. I also believe that our physical well been and our spiritual well been are not as separate as generally thought.

I think it goes without saying that you should give credit where credit is due. I know from my own experience i feel better physically when i pray and learn Gods word from the Holy Scriptures. I am very religious, i believe in and worship Jesus Christ, but in this particular entry I'm not talking about being religious. What i am referring to today is the God given ability to tap into our divine energy to heal our bodies.

Simply put, "Energy therapy techniques clear the blocked emotional energy and negative thought energy that has become so common for people. It is what we commonly refer to as stress. When we have blocked, scrambled, stuffed, and damaged energy flows and systems, we can not achieve our full potential." (Carol Tuttle)

Energy is a very real thing that, up until recently, i didn't know was a resource i could use to help myself heal. Like the rain and sun and the earth, energy is part of our world and is given to us for our benefit. Once we learn how to use it (just like a farmer uses the power of the sun and the earth to grow food) it becomes a tool to use for good.

Eastern medicine has been using it for centuries. It is usually termed an "alternative therapy" or "holistic treatment" but by comparison, it actually has a longer, stronger history than Western medicine. Some forms of energy therapy you may already be familiar with are: meditation, affirmations, setting goals, reflexology, and acupuncture or acupressure. All of these practices call on and use the energy in your body and the energy in the universe to accomplish a purpose.

Some energy therapies that are becoming very popular are Reiki, Rapid Eye Therapy (RET), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and Calyco. All of these techniques use basic energy meridians on your body to help stimulate the flow of positive energy throughout your body.

I think the reason why energy therapy is so wonderful and successful where other treatments may fail is because it doesn't stop at just the physical ailments. If you can think of treatment of your physical body as one dimensional then energy therapy brings in the second and third dimensions to make a complete picture. Energy therapy also addresses your emotional and spiritual health, often down to a cellular level.

If you think how intimately your body systems are connected and how much your brain is capable of, it should come as no surprise to you that your mental and emotional state has a lot to do with your physical state. Because energy is both a emotional and physical thing, you can use it for either ailment (or often both). Energy therapy is used to help everything from physical pain and illness to addictions, and phobias and to manifesting and accomplishing personal goals.

I first began doing energy therapy because my mother got interested in it. She read "Remembering Wholeness" by Carol Tuttle and felt compelled to learn more. Since then she has certified in several techniques of energy therapy and has become an excellent energy therapist. At present she has mastered in the Calyco technique and practices it almost exclusively because it is fast and all encompassing. I started asking her to practice her techniques on me because she needed to build up her hours for certification and i figured "cant hurt, might help, right?" The thing is, it really did help.

Most of the time you will find me calling my mother on days that i mentally and emotionally cant see past my own nose. Or on days that i have major energy slumps and don't know how else to make it better. I say "Mom, (sniff, choke, sob) will you do some energy work on me?" and of course she says yes. We will go through my body systems, auras, chakras and even the timeline of my life, unlocking stuck energy and when its over i feel worlds better. Not only has it helped me through some tough emotional times but it has also helped relief actual physical pain from my lower back and other parts of my body.

Here are some things to know about energy healing:

1. Its not a faith healing. You don't have to believe in it to work, it will anyway.

2. Its not fortune telling. Although for me, it dose help me see a brighter future and accomplish goals.

3. Its not earth, devil, or mystic crystal worshiping. Energy is simply a part of your being and energy therapy is just moving that energy around. As my mom is fond of quoting: "I'm just the cleaning lady, i don't heal. I clean out the bad energy and that allows healing to happen."

4. It is quick and noninvasive. Sometimes we get major energy blocks when we experience physical or emotional trauma. Energy therapy allows this energy to be unblocked without the need to revisit or relive the trauma and is very gentle. Your therapist doesn't even have to know what its about, just that it is there and needs to be moved.

For me its like traditional psychiatric therapy only less invasive, more intuitive, more helpful and with better benefits.

Having said all this though, i think its important to mention that an energy therapist is not a doctor and any good one will not try to diagnose you or tell you to stop any medication or treatment from your doctor. Energy therapy is meant to work hand in hand with and compliment other forms of healing.

Defiantly there is a lot more to say about energy therapy than i have, but i'll let the experts handle that, I'm just a happy customer. For those who have further questions and interest, I have added links to the web sights for both Carol Tuttle and Carolyn Cooper (the founder of Calyco) on my links. Just as soon as my mom's sight gets up and running i will add the link to that too.

Back in the Saddle Again

So, i need to fully admit that i have fallen off the horse. It has been a good couple months since i have written on this blog or payed any sort of attention to my diet and workout plan. Back in March i had a series of personal misfortunes that really spun me into a depression. The day i told myself that it was ok to skip just one workout because i wasn't feeling up to it was the day i stopped all together. The book i had made myself to keep track of my diet and exercise gradually got buried in my "paper pile" and once it was out of sight, it was out of mind.

I am somewhat disappointed in myself because i feel like i have allowed myself to take another ride on the cycle of failure that has become way too familiar for me: start a diet, make it a couple weeks, let something derail you, go several weeks without doing anything about it, then maybe try again. It upsets me to think that if i had stuck with it, i would now have been through my first twelve weeks, and possibly a little thinner. Also because i have had a post halfway written for several weeks now and have not finished it even though i have had ample time and opportunity to do so.

But as the saying goes, if you get bucked off, you need to get right back on. You don't want to let it know it can beat you. So my foot is in the stirrup and i am a bit wiser and a lot more determined.

Several good things came out of this time i have had to "reflect" on my situation. During the past couple months i have discovered even more about supplements to help support the thyroid and adrenals and about using nutrition to balance hormones. Some topics i am excited to write about next are:

Hormone balancing
My experience with going gluten free
The endocrine "Holy Trinity"
Supplements, supplements and more supplements
Energy Healing

A few weeks back, as the my depression began to settle and i was beginning to see light again, i began thinking about my project here. I knew i needed to work out but just couldn't seem to get the fire under me. I prayed a lot about how to fix my body and was blessed with these two simple and loving answers.

Eat Nutritious Food

That may seem obvious but for me it went deeper than you may think. I don't usually eat "unhealthy". Thanks to a loving mother who promoted oatmeal instead of frosted flakes and wheat bread instead of white, i generally never buy food that has been processed beyond recognition and then formed into something resembling something recognizable. I deny my children "fun looking" food for its more nutritious counterpart, knowing that in time they will thank me. Usually if any of the "gross" stuff comes through my door its because Jim has brought it in. (The man literally lived off of ramen, hot dogs, twinkies and toco bell before we got married, and he doesn't deny his little girls anything.)

So what eating nutritious food meant for me was getting a lot more back to basics. I mean everything from scratch basics. If you begin to look at the labels of your food i think you will be amazed, as i was, how much chemical is in everything. I whole heartedly agree with Jamie Oliver when he said "if you look at the ingredients and you get past the first few but don't know what the next ficve are, its not food, its crap!" Things like high fructose corn syrup and all of those "enhancers" and preservatives didn't used to mean a lot to me. I figured that if i had been eating them all my life, what harm could it do me now? WELL TAKE A GOOD LOOK! Lately i have taken to making everything i can from scratch and have found it, if not terribly convenient, easier than i expected and very delicious.

I suddenly developed a strong desire to learn how to prepare vegetables better. I gave up a long time ago on buying fresh veggies because they usually rotted in my fridge before i got to them. Not because i didn't want them or like them, but because i didn't know how to make them part of a meal. Usually i keep bags of frozen veggies to defrost in the microwave and add as side dishes. Thats all well and good, but not good enough. That doesn't help me or my family develop a love for vegetables and fresh nutritious food. I have had meals lovingly prepared by those who know how to season and use God's bounty in a dish, and its delicious! The vegetables arnt an obligatory side dish but an important part to the meal. And thats what i was craving.

I ran to the library and got some books to help inspire and teach me to use more whole foods. I am still in the "learning curve" phase, at the family table i have had some home runs and some definite flops, but i look forward to sharing more of what i am learning and also more about the books that have inspired and taught me the most.

Live An Active Life Style

Once again, this may seem like a no brainer, but for me it hasn't been all that easy.

Elephants are one of the biggest and strongest land animals. They are also very intelligent, which makes them easy to be trained. It is common for a trainer to keep his elephant from wondering off by shackling one of his legs and tethering it to the ground. They start this when the animal is young and weak and unable to break the tether. After a while he learns that the shackle is more powerful and will give up. The grown elephant, though ten times more powerful and completely capable of breaking his restraint will not even try, he already believes that he cant.

For the past few years it has been hard for me to be physically active. Instead of giving me energy in would take it. Instead of releasing stress in became the source of it. Instead of losing weight, i gained it. Often it was painful and exhausting and left me worse than when i began. After a while i began to fear being too active. If i was having a good day (good day being defined as a day i was able to get out of be and do at least one chore) i didn't want to mess it up by using all my energy on twenty minutes of jogging. Even well into my progesterone treatment, this has been the case, so eventually i gave up. I began to believe that i couldn't work out.

The fact is that i am powerful. I have the power to cast off my shackles, i have the power to accomplish anything i put my mind to.

When i visualize myself they way i want to be, it is always as a fit and thin woman, but also an active one. I visualize myself doing things i want to learn like, aerial silks, and things i love to do like ballroom and belly dancing. I imagine all the things I'm going to do with my girls, hiking, canoeing, doing yoga on the beach. I want to be able to jump horses again and I have this dream of the the girls and me competing in horse trials together. I see myself running and plying with them. To me this is what it means to live an active life style. Forcing myself to do twenty minutes on the elliptical (though i was proud of myself when i did) and then laying on the couch for the rest of the day was not cutting the mustard.

When i received this revelation, i began to think of things i could add to my weight loss routine that would be more fun and keep me more active. I decided to start using my yoga and dance instruction tapes because that was stuff i wanted to get back into anyhow. But my heart just wasn't into it. One week went by, then two, and i hadn't done anything. I was just afraid to be active, afraid to work harder to loose weight.

Luckily a lot of that changed when a friend invited me to go walking with her. I figured, what the heck? I can walk, for crying out loud. It was a nice little workout, we did two and a half miles easily. I was being active, with no alterier motive, and i felt fantastic afterward! We did it again and i couldn't believe how great i felt the rest of the day. For my Mother's Day present, my husband and children gave me the most incredible bike and i had been looking forward to a sunny day to really put it to use. I took it out for a long bike ride on a day that we had to reschedule our walk and came back feeling fantastic.

That was just a few days ago. After that ride i got a crazy idea. I decided to do something i always thought would be cool to do but never thought i would have enough courage to go through with it. I decided to do a triathlon. The idea was crazy (me? an obese stay at home mom? don't athletes usually do that sort of thing?) but it just felt so right! As soon as i got home i looked up where some might be in my area and found one that was right up my ally. It takes place the end of August and is a 500 meter swim, 10 mile bike and 3 mile run.

I think maybe the reason this feels so good to me is because its not about loosing weight. Its about being active, about being the person i want to be now and about finishing the race. Even if I'm dead last, when i finish, I'll know that i have also accomplished.

Maybe my brain works differently than most, but sometimes i learn best buy doing first. Case in point, for years i tryed to learn how to crochet, i read books, had friends try to teach me the different stitches but all i ever came up with was a tangled knot and a ball of frustration. One day i was given the pattern to crochet a baby hat. With that pattern and a small pamphlet to interpret the abbreviations on it, i finally learned to crochet. After one hat came two and after that i was able to crochet anything else, all i needed was a project.

I think doing this triathlon is a lot like that for me, psychologically. I know i can run three miles, i know i can bike ten, today i proved to myself that i can swim 500 meters. The project is learning to do each one with out rest and then being able to put all of them together. I'm not going to think or worry about loosing weight. If it happens, that will be fantastic, i would love for that to be the case, but its not going to be my focus. My focus and goal is to be active and finish the race.

So, finally feeling awake and refreshed about life and with all of this in mind, i am ready for the next twelve weeks of my goal to be fit, thin, and healthy by my birthday in December. Only this time the twelve weeks will be geared toward training for the triathlon and focused more on the "fit and healthy" part and less on the thin.

A Quick Update

I have been working on my latest entry for about the last ten days and honestly i don't know why it is taking me so long to finish it. Just in case i don't finish it in this century, I thought i could let you know how I have been progressing on my health plan. The answer is great! ....until about a week ago.

For almost two weeks straight i hit most of my work outs and did very well on my diet. I need to stress that the fact that i did it more than two days back to back is a major achievement for me because before, stress and depression would become crippling at that point. So i am very proud of me for that.

Even though i was sore after my first few work outs, i didn't stop, even if that meant i was lifting weights at midnight. (A girls got to do what a girls got to do.) After the first week i was feeling pretty good and after the second i was feeling really good. I lost five pound on the scale, but i don't really count that or let it go to my head. I can fluctuate big time depending on my time of the month and i figure that the first ten pounds is just water weight anyhow. But i was starting to feel good inside, like all the sedentary bad stuff was beginning to be broken up and moved out.

When i woke up a week ago Friday, i had a little scratchy throat, nothing to be concerned about so i went about my day. Right about three o clock i was driving around, doing errands, and all of a sudden i felt terrible. My nose got clogged, my head got hot and all my muscles got weak.

To recap the several days after that, lets just say there was lots of soup and tissue involved. I was finally able to breath through both nostrils a few days ago and now feel like i have regained my energy.

The good news is that I'm not freaking out about missing a week of working out. Not too long ago, a set back like this would have discouraged me for months. The fact that tomorrow morning is looking like a good day to get back on the horse and I'm ok with it, is freaking me out! I was sad about the missed week at first but then i just said to myself, 'hey, this isn't a race, its a goal, its about building consistency and a life style.' So I'm going to get sick every once in a while, its ok, i just get back up when i can and hit it again.

So that's what I'm going to do, hit it hard and consistently for another two weeks, I'll let you know what happens then!

PCOS and Me

As soon as i started using progesterone cream i started feeling better. The first thing to go was my insomnia (i think i forgot to list that under symptoms of low progesterone in my last entry and im sorry, it is a major, major issue!) For the first time in a long time i was able to sleep and stay asleep. Or, if i woke up, i was able to get back to sleep. The next thing that left me was my depression; i was able to feel calm and happy. After a few weeks i was able to get off the Welbutron and am happy that i no longer have to take antidepressants. After that it was the brain fog that cleared up. I had not noticed how fuzzy my thinking had become until it was more clear. Like putting on glasses for the first time and going, "hey look! i can see!"

Just getting rid of those few symptoms made a world of difference in my life i felt much more functional, i was working at 75% instead of 25%. The problem was that i wanted to be at 100% but i was still having issues. For one i was still gaining weight, and two i was still coming up against anxiety as a hurtle.

I have to admit that i had been hoping and praying and looking, for a long time, for a little pill that would magically, over night, make me all better and drop 20lbs instantly. I thought that if i finally found out what my body needed and finally gave it, i would be rewarded with rapid weight loss with no effort. I was counting on by body to spring back like it did after i winged Emily, but it didn’t.

Some women are lucky and using progesterone will go very far very fast, and that is fantastic, but sometimes it can’t work alone. Sometimes there are women like me whose case is a bit more severe and takes a bit longer to recover from. Most everything i have studied says that your hormones need about 12 weeks to recover and good six to seven months for underlying issues to heal. It can be very frustrating to suffer for a long time, finally get your answer and then be told that it is going to take another six the seven months to work. In the long run, i guess it is not long to wait, but when you just don’t have much more to give, it looks like forever.

But i was undeterred, now that i knew that low progesterone was the cause of my problems, i knew that if i were to truly heal from it i needed to find what was causing it in the first place. So i did what i do best, research!

I started by seeing if there was a connection between low progesterone and any of the other conditions my endocrinologist had discovered. There was no real connection between the low vitamin D, but a big one with the insulin resistance.

Insulin Resistance (a.k.a. pre diabetes or syndrome X) is what happens when your body has trouble processing the insulin you produce to help break down complex carbohydrates (like sugar and starch) that you eat. Insulin floating around in your veins with nowhere to go is very dangerous and if it can’t help carbohydrates be used for energy (which is its job) your body will store them as fat. This is a very serious syndrome that most women with low progesterone (and who are usually overweight) have. I will talk more about this later.

Apparently, 98% of women who have insulin resistance also have PCOS. Polycystic ovary syndrome (which happens to be one of the most common female endocrine disorders) is when cysts develop on your ovaries. When this happens it can cause a laundry list of problems. Because it inhibits your ovaries from producing progesterone, these are some things that can happen: weight gain (predominatly around the stomach), depression, anxiety, facial hair growth, menstrual problems, acne, infertility, mood swings, thinning hair and even skin tags. Do a lot of these sound familiar? They should, most of them of symptoms of estrogen dominance.

There are six kinds of Ovarian Cysts, the first two are pretty normal:

1. Follicular cyst. The pituitary gland in your brain sends a message, by increasing luteinizing hormone (LH), to the follicle holding the ripening egg. This is called a “LH surge”. Normally, the egg is released from the follicle and starts down the fallopian tube where it may then become fertilized by a sperm cell. If the LH surge does not occur, the follicle doesn’t rupture or release its egg. Instead, it grows until it becomes a cyst. These cysts seldom cause pain, are usually harmless, and may disappear within two or three menstrual cycles.

2. Corpus luteum cyst. When there is a successful LH surge and the egg is released, the follicle responds by becoming a new, temporarily little secretory gland called the corpus luteum. The corpus luteum produces large amounts of progesterone and a little bit of estrogen, to prepare the uterus for conception.

Occasionally, after the egg is released, the escape hatch seals off prematurely and tissue accumulates inside, causing the corpus luteum to enlarge. This type of cyst will usually disappear after a few weeks. Rarely, a corpus luteum cyst can grow to 3"-4" in diameter and potentially bleed into itself, or twist your ovary, thus causing pelvic or abdominal pain.

These are the cysts you have to watch out for:

3) Dermoid cyst. A dermoid cyst is mainly fat but can also contain a mix of different tissues. They are often small and usually don’t cause symptoms. Very rarely, they become large and rupture, causing bleeding into the abdomen, which is a medical emergency.

4) Endometrioma or "chocolate cyst". These are cysts that form when endometrial tissue (the type that lines the inside of the uterus) invades an ovary. It is responsive to monthly hormonal changes, which causes the cyst to fill with blood. It’s called a “chocolate cyst” because the blood is a dark, reddish-brown color. Multiple endometriomas are found in the condition called "endometriosis". Although often asymptomatic, chocolate cysts can be painful, especially during your period or during intercourse.

5) Cystadenoma. Cystadenomas are cysts that develop from cells on the surface of your ovary. They are usually benign. Occasionally, they can become quite large and thus interfere with abdominal organs and cause pain.

6) Multiple cysts – the polycystic ovary. Women who don’t ovulate on a regular basis can develop multiple cysts. The ovaries are often enlarged and contain many small cysts clustered under a thickened, outer capsule. There are many factors causing a woman to not ovulate and develop polycystic ovaries. Polycystic ovarian syndrome is a complex condition that involves multiple hormonal and organ system dysfunction. Multiple ovarian cysts are just one facet of this disorder.

The only way to be sure that you have PCOS is to get a pevlic ultrasound and have a doctor look at the little buggers.....so i did. Sure enough, my ultrasound showed that i had "quite a few" cysts clustered around my ovary.

Here's the thing, it is likely that every women will experience some form of PCOS in her life, occupational hazard of being a women. Most of the time, it will happen and resolve itself without you even knowing it. It is not uncommon for your body to miss an ovulation (even though your period is regular) every once in a while, it is also very normal to have several follicles developing at once. Your body is forever eager to reproduce. Sometimes things like stress or birth control interfere with your body's natural rhythm and things just get in a traffic jam. Some cysts develop but a lot of the time they dissolve by themselves and life goes back to normal. What is not normal is if the cysts stay around, grow bigger and symptoms start to interfere with daily life.

How a women develops PCOS seems to be a topic of debate among the professionals, no one seems to know for sure. Mostly it is a "chicken or the egg" scenario, do you get fat from having PCOS or do you get PCOS from being fat? Personally, i think it could be both and i will explain how.

Usually, PCOS works in this vicious cycle: cysts slow the production of progesterone, androgens (the “male” hormones in your body) start to get overloaded (that is a lot of the reason for hair growth), low progesterone causes other hormones not to be as affective (insulin, adrenals, thyroid) and causes weight gain, fat cells that store estrogen (estrogen goes into making fat cells, so the more and bigger they are, the more estrogen is floating around in your body) add to estrogen dominance, lowering progesterone and causing more weight gain.....

So the way i see it, if you allow yourself (through a sedentary life style and poor food choices) to accumulate lots of fat on your body to the point where you can no longer process insulin (because your body has literally had so much glucose that it's receptors no longer take note of it) and there is an excess of estrogen being stored in your fat cells, you can very likely cause your body not to produce enough progesterone to ovulate. When that happens, things get backed up and a cyst will develop. From there things compound and go down the crapper pretty fast.

OR...

You can be a healthy person, a fit person, and just miss an ovulation or have something like birth control interferes with your body's normal mojo. Things get backed up, a cyst develops, blocks progesterone production causing estrogen dominance. Estrogen dominance causes other hormones not to work, you start gaining weight, which causes more estrogen dominance and craziness and from there things compound and go down the crapper pretty fast.

In my particular case, i think i got PCOS first. Thinking back on it, i can honestly say (though i had not yet reached my goal) that i was in the best shape of my life. If being fat is all it takes to develop PCOS, why didn’t i do it when i was a size 20 instead of a size 12? I think that it had more to do with the IUD i was using for birth control at the time. I believe that from either the hormones or the devise itself, i missed an ovulation. Because of that i developed cysts on my ovaries and once that happened things compounded and my life went down the crapper pretty fast and nobody could tell my why because no one knew that i had PCOS.

I don’t know what my doctors think; i still don’t know why the endrocynologist didn’t know that if i had insulin resistance (that she diagnosed me with) that meant that i most likely had PCOS (the most common of all female endocrine disorders) which is a byproduct of LOW PROGETERONE!

Doctors do not have a cure for PCOS, they do not have a little pill that will magically heal you over night and make you drop 20lb. They do have surgery options and a pill (Metformen) that helps blood sugar in diabetes patients (and therefore it helps those with insulin resistance and therefore women with PCOS) that has a lot of unsavory side effects, but not a cure. Nature however, dose.

Using natural progesterone can completely heal PCOS and help with all of the hormone problems in between. That being said, i guess i should do a disclaimer now. Everyone is different, and i am not a doctor. Going the surgical route may be the best option for your particular case, and all though there are a lot of people who have major problems taking Metformen, there are some who do well on it. All i can tell you about is my experiences and the things i have learned. For me, this has been the safest and most logical way to heal. If you have been searching for an answer, this could be the right choice for you too.

Part II

I have been taking progesterone for about seven months now. After several weeks of testing different doses and other supplements, i found which worked for me and finally, after long last, am feeling like my old self again. For me the fix was not a quick one but don't let that detour you. Your endocrine system is like a line of dominoes, once one goes, it brings down the whole line. My body had gotten to a point where my other systems needed help too. I plan to give all the intimate details of my trials and errors but i am excited to let everyone know that it is now time for me to move onto Part II of my project program.

Now that i have told about where i have been and how i came to be where i am now, i want to tell about how I'm going to get where i want to be. When i started this blog i was still trying to get my hormones under control. I feel like i have accomplished that, so now i am excited to take on my other physical problems. As of today, i am 250 lbs and a pant (tight) size 22. The depressing thing is that i have never been this big even when nine months pregnant!

My plan is this, i will follow a Body for Life 12 week program three times in a row only with certain adjustments, I will be eating gluten free (i have a whole entry planned to talk about this subject later).

*check it out at www.bodyforlife.com*

The first 12 weeks will be aimed toward healing. My body has been like a runaway train for the past four years and even though i feel like i have got the breaks fixed, it is still going to take some time for it to slow down and get into reverse. Progesterone and supplements go a long way in healing hormone problems but they cant do it alone. Diet and exercise absolutely need to be a part of the equation for it to work. During this 12 weeks, my focus will not be necessarily on weight loss (i actually don't expect any for the first several weeks, but i would love it if i did!) but more on giving my body the nutrition and exercise it needs to gain back energy and balance.

The second time will be geared toward loosing the fat that i have gained over the past few years. My goal will be to get back into the many clothes i already have in my closet that i don't fit into presently. Ideally, i will be back into a familiar size 14-16 by the end of this section and then i will feel like i can pick up where i left off.

The third time will be to reach my ultimate. To finally have a flat tummy, to go shopping for "on the rack" clothes, to not have trouble moving around and be able to physically do all the things i have always wanted to and to look HOT in a swim suit! By my birthday in December, i would like to at least be a size six.

All of this i hope to accomplish in the 290 some odd days i have left on my project countdown.

Last December i turned 30. I wont lie, for a little while i felt a bit freaked out. I just felt like "where did my twenties go?" Well, they went by the way side as i had two pregnancies, changed a lot of diapers and went crazy. I decided right there and then not to let the next ten years of my life slide by in a fog, i was going to have my "twenties" in my thirties. I'm glad i had my children when i did because now that i have my brain back i can do so many fun things with them! I am looking forward to having energy to run and play with them and teach them to dance and go horseback riding with them. I am looking forward to being a fit and healthy role model for my girls.

I am looking forward to being the "old" Vanessa for my husband, the best friend that he fell in love with back in high school. Out of the eight and a half years that we have been married i have been mentally/hormonally stable for only about 18 months of it, and about half of that time he has had to be away from me! (yes, i know, he is a good man) He has been so supportive and helpful in me getting back on track. It has not been easy at times for us to be intimate because even if i was in the mood, it is hard to feel sexy in a body that feels so heavy and cumbersome. I am fortunate to be married to a man that loves me for me and has never made me feel bad about my body and has always found me beautiful, but i am looking forward to having a body that i feel sexy in and to be as there for him as he has been for me.

In the end, that is what this healing is all about. I long to be physically fit but not without the mental and spiritual well been to go with it. One depends upon the other and they are designed to complement each other.

That having been said, my ultimate goal is to be a size 6. I actually don't care how much i weigh when i get to that point, as long as it is healthy. A lot of people get caught up in the scale but because i plan on having a lot of muscle definition, i will most likely weigh more than other girls of that size.

Muscle weighs more than fat, we hear that a lot but it is true. Case in point, my collage room mate was always pretty thin, soft but defiantly not fat, i think she was a size 7. After graduating collage she joined the Marines. She told me that after boot camp she had gained 20 lbs, but had shrunk to a size 4! I realize that i have a lot of fat to get rid of before my muscles comes into the weight picture, but i just want to be clear that I'm not going for "be as skinny as i can be!" and letting the scale dictate what that is. I have spent a large part of my adult life being unhealthy and have no intentions of trading one problem for another.

I feel my biggest challenge right now is just waking up my body to movement. During the past several months i have had to keep a pretty sedentary lifestyle to keep my anxiety under control. Lots and lots of sitting. I usually consider myself a pretty strong woman but have as of late found my self not being able to do things that have always come easy to me. Like opening jar lids or walking long distances.

I have come to the startling realization that there is no cap to my possible weight gain. There is no point at which your body says "oh, all full, there is no possible way anymore fat can be stored here". In fact, there is always room for more. My body will grow as large as i allow it to. It was a shock to me when i had to get a size 20 and i thought that that was the largest i would ever get, until i had to buy a size 22.

It is true that i could say "this wasn't my fault", i honestly did try to lose weight, several times without success because of my hormone problems. I can honestly sympathise with anyone who has had that frustrating experience, it is possibly one of the worst feelings in the world. On the other hand i have to take responsibility for my actions, i sure didn't do myself any favors in my diet quite often.

Now that i feel able, (and that is where anyone has to start) i am ready to give changing my body another try. I am both frightened and hopeful. Frightened because i have failed so many times before and because i have never had to start from being this out of shape before. You could say i am at the bottom of my barrel. But i am hopeful because now i have answers where there were none before and mentally i feel more clear than i have in a long, long, time.

Like i mentioned before, this blog has several purposes and one of them is to keep track of my progress. From now on, my posts will end with updates on my diet and exercise progress. Thank you to all my friends who read my ramblings, your support means more to me than you can ever know and i will do my very best not to let you down!

P.S.
It is part of the Body for Life program to take 'before and after' pictures. So here i am today, in all of my 250 lbs of glory. Because i love you so much, I'll spare you the picture of me in a bikini, but you still get the idea, it is time for a change.

The Power of Progesterone

I don’t consider myself an uninformed or unintelligent person and so i hope im not the only woman out there that has gone through menses and two pregnancies and never understood (or really even knew) what progesterone was. As far as i knew, estrogen was the woman hormone responsible for all of my reproductive workings. I have had reproductive classes in high school that spelled out the whys and wherefores of a woman’s cycle and so im sure at one point in my life i was aware of such an important hormone. But, the truth is, the only one that anyone ever seemed to care much about was estrogen. "Estrogen keeps you younger" "i take estrogen for my hot flashes" "Estrogen levels are making me crazy!" "Estrogen is the woman hormone" "you need estrogen to regulate your cycle" see what i mean? What i found out is that, thought estrogen is indeed an important hormone, it is only half of the equation, it only works as long as it also has progesterone to work with it and progesterone is literally ten times more important than estrogen as far as being a fit and healthy woman.

*major national geographic moment*
Let’s learn about our menstrual cycles to see how important it is for these hormones to work together. I don’t mean to insult anyone's intelligence here, but i seriously had to go back to sex ed 101 and so, now you do too.

A women's menstruation is based on a 26 to 35 day cycle. Some women have short cycles and some women have longer ones. On days 1 through 15 (day one being the first onset of bleeding) your body has shed the blood that has build up in your uterus and has a little rest period where estrogen and progesterone levels are low and steady. This is called the follicular phase. During this phase, estrogen begins to rise causing the walls of you uterus to start filling with blood and your ovaries to get another egg ready to go. Around day 15 your progesterone rises sharply, telling your body to release that egg and let it float into the fallopian tubes. This is called ovulation.

With a ripe egg and cushiony uterus, you body sits around waiting for it to be fertilized. This is called the lutreal phase. If you don’t have sex (the only 100% sure form of birth control) or otherwise don’t allow sperm to get to that part of the body, it gets tired of waiting around and expires. Around day 21, your progesterone will plummet below the levels of your estrogen, signaling your body to flush the lining of the uterus along with the useless egg and start all over again. This is called menses. The dramatic fall of progesterone below estrogen is why so many women experience depression, swelling, weepiness, mood swings and food cravings before their periods, otherwise known as PMS (pre menstrual syndrome).

If your methods for birth control don’t work, or the egg is otherwise fertilized, the egg will implant on the lining of your uterus and your progesterone will stay steady to support it. In about nine months that little seed will become a crying, giggling, hungry, pooping, wonderful bundle of joy, your baby. And the miracle of life continues.



This delicate balance of bodily chemicals affects every woman on earth from her first period (mine started at 12) through menopause (usually between the ages of 40 to 50). A lot of women think that "hormone problems" are limited to women going through "the change", but not so! Perimenopause can start as early as your thirties and because of the massive amounts of hormones in our environment, our young daughters are experiencing heavier and harder menstrual problems every year. We women in child bearing years should also remember that our bodies have a hard time bouncing back from baby sometimes. (btw, using progesterone can help with post partum depression in a major way, more on that later)

Also, progesterone is not there just to make your cycle go round, it is one of the major players out of all your body's hormones. It is the building block for the key hormones your adrenal gland makes and your thyroid uses. So if you don’t have enough progesterone to go around, those systems suffer as well and your whole body goes to crap! Now that you see how important progesterone is, you can see why having too little of it can cause a BIG problem!

When your progesterone consistently rides below your estrogen levels, it is called estrogen dominance. Remember how, in a normal cycle, that causes moodiness? (Or as they used to say, "Women’s Complaints") Well, if you have low progesterone it is like living with PMS all month long, only worse, your estrogen can literally become toxic to you. Some symptoms of estrogen dominance are:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Panic attacks
• Aching body and joints
• Fatigue
• Breast tenderness
• Decreased sex drive
• Mood swings
• Mood swings
• Allergy symptoms
• Insomnia
• Weight gain
• Water retention
• Hair loss
• Migraines
• Heavy periods and bad cramps

But it doesn’t stop there. Because your body is an amazing thing, it can run on fumes for a long time. A lot of women will go for months or years not knowing they are feeling like crap because of a hormone imbalance. They soldier on (or are given an antidepressant) until they become crippled with one or more of these conditions:

• Uterine fibroids
• PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome)
• PMDD (premenstrual dysphonic disorder
• Infertility
• Miscarriage
• Autoimmune disorders
• Adrenal gland fatigue
• Thyroid dysfunction
• Fibrocystic breasts
• Hypoglycemia
• Insulin resistance (and diabetes)
• Accelerated aging
• Fibromyalgia
• Chronic fatigue
• Gallbladder disease
• Breast, cervical and ovarian cancer

If you have been suffering with any of these things, i am sorry, i know how bad it can feel and affect your life. The good news is that supplementing with bio identical progesterone can help and heal you. Here are the steps you need to get started:

1. GET TESTED
No doctor offices or drawing blood. ZRT hormone saliva test kits can be bought online. You can find them on Amazon or eBay or from www.supplementspot.com. These tests are designed to take on a number of different hormones and you will usually pay by which ones and how many you get tested. I would suggest that you test your progesterone and both kinds of estrogen, estradiol and estrone. The cost is about $50 per hormone tested.

You doctor's office may offer progesterone testing, but you should know that a blood test is not near as accurate as a saliva test. Your blood chemistry changes rapidly over the course of the day because it is a carrier system. It delivers chemicals and hormones and all sorts of other things to all parts of the body. Once it has "dropped off its package" it can be hard to tell how much of that hormone is actually being used in your body. That is where saliva can help. The proteins in your saliva give a much more accurate picture of what and how many hormones your body is actually using.

It is important to know where both your estrogen and progesterone levels are because you can have estrogen dominance where your progesterone is low and estrogen in normal (that’s what mine showed) or where your estrogen is low and your progesterone lower (this happens a lot with women going through menopause and may need both supplements) or estrogen is high and progesterone is low. At any rate, it is important to know where you start so you can check your progress later.

Once you package comes in the mail, just follow the instructions. You will want to test on days 15-20 of your cycle. Just spit in the vile, mail it in to the lab and you will have your results about 10 days later.

Depending on your results, you will be able to figure out how much and how often to supplement with progesterone. You should know that even if your results come back completely normal, it is still safe to use progesterone to help with bad PMS or in times of high stress. (i will fill you in more on that later)

2. SUPPLEMENTATION WITH BIO IDENTICAL PROGESTERONE
The bio identical part is important. There is a big difference between progesterone and a progestin. Bio identical progesterone is derived from natural sources and because it is, your body recognizes it and more readily accepts it. Things found in nature cannot legally be patented; therefore, if a pharmaceutical company wants to sell its own little pill, it needs to change the chemical makeup of the hormone. That is why a progestin (commonly used in birth control pills) is really not progesterone at all. Because it has been chemically altered, your body's rejection of it is usually the cause of all the nasty side effects.

There are a lot of progesterone creams being peddled out there, but a reputable brand is Progest. You can usually find it at any health food store and costs about $35. The store may have more in their selection and i think that as a rule of thumb, if they are there, you can trust them.

The cream part is important too, it is the most efficient way to take your progesterone. If taken orally in a pill, most of it will be destroyed by your liver before your body can use it. You can take shots, but honestly, wouldn’t you rather just rub on the cream? The progesterone is absorbed through the skin and held in your fat cells to be used. It is a gentle and efficient method.

A typical dosage is a quarter teaspoon, twice a day. This is a very basic dosage and a good one to start from, but don’t worry if you have to adjust it. This website has been instrumental in helping me follow my symptoms and adjusting my dosages to a helpful level, www.natural-progesterone-advisory-network.com. It may take several months of using progesterone to cure the underlying causes of your problems, but you can feel relief from your symptoms in as little as 48 hours from using bio identical cream.

3. EDUCATE YOURSELF
I have so much to share on this blog that i feel i haven’t even scratched the surface and even as i make new entrees, i am constantly learning something new that will help me or you. Every woman i different and your path to healing may differ from mine, learning as much as you can can help you make the right decisions for you. Here is some suggested reading:

"What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause" by John R. Lee, MD
He has another book of the same title about perimenopause.

"From Hormone Hell to Hormone Well" by C.W. Randolph, Jr., MD

"Feeling Fat, Fuzzy or Frazzled?" by Richard and Karilee Shames, MD,PhD,RN

These books offer a lot of great advice and information.

Why i dont like doctors

Now don’t get me wrong, i believe we need doctors, after all, who else is going to put your finger together after you cut it off carving a pumpkin? They have a place and a purpose and i am grateful for that. so i guess that it would be more fitting to say that i don’t like general practitioners or their little toties they pass you off to. in the last four years it has been my experience that unless i have a cold or infection, they are pretty much useless.

I have already talked about the runaround i had while on a quest to find out what my shaking was all about but during that time i was also fighting a battle for my general health. On top of the shaking, depression and anxiety, i didn’t know, for the life of me, why i was so exhausted all the time. i had the hardest time thinking, i could no longer function. doing basic things like cleaning and cooking and getting dressed took everything out of me and as always, i was gaining weight. I also knew that a brain candy pill wasn’t going to help me, so i decided i had better find out what was the real problem, and fast.

My first thought was that it was my thyroid. Several of my friends suffer from an underactive thyroid or hypothyroidism and i am familiar with all the symptoms, i had most of them. i had already been tested a few times and was frustrated that the tests always came back with the score of someone who should be a size six. It just didn’t make sense to me so i did what i do best, internet research.

I discovered that most tests just test the TSH and not the other hormones that make up the inner workings of your thyroid. i found out that it was extremely possible to have an underactive thyroid and still test "normal". (i will give all the details about this subject in a forthcoming entry). Armed with this information and printed proof from my computer, i demanded my doctor give me another, thorough, detailed test. he was more than willing (which totally deflated the entire speech i had prepared to convince him) because he already knew everything i had told him.

*rant moment*
Let me line this up for you: i go to him because i am an all out wreck, but part of that is many symptoms of hypothyroidism, that is why he gave me the test in the first place. the test come back normal so he sends me on my merry way, leaving me to suffer for months before i come back and say "maybe we didn’t look close enough" and he basically says "i know, well, since you are here, let’s do that now."
Maybe you can tell me, why, if he saw all of my symptoms and knew that he should look closer, why the heck didn’t he the first time?!
*rant over*

The test did come back with some abnormalities this time, but he couldn’t help me, he had to send me to a specialist, an endocrinologist. An endocrinologist is a doctor who specializes in the study of the endocrine system in your body. that is all the glands that produce your hormones. i was lucky because a lot of people have to wait three to six months to get in with an endocrinologist, i was able to see one in two weeks.

I was very excited, finally i would be able to get the help that i needed, finally my life would return to normal, finally i would be able to shed my ugly fat! the doctor came in and looked at me, looked at my chart, asked me how i was feeling than sat back and began to lecture me. he told me that my test scores were fine and that all i needed to do was diet. he assured me that as i got older like him, i wouldn’t be able to consume as many calories and that it didn’t really have anything to do with my thyroid. he also assured me that all my other ailments were just in my head and that i should see a psychologist.

Ok, here is the thing, when you have a proven method of weight loss and all of a sudden it stops working and you gain weight instead, that is not normal! saying that as a fifty-something man he could no longer consume the 2000 calorie diet of his youth and that is why he had a potbelly is not the same for a woman who is not yet out of her twenties! he would not listen to me as i tried to plead my case. he suggested that i cut my calorie intake from 2000 to 1500 a day and we would see where we were in two weeks.

That may have seemed like a reasonable request on paper (less calories + caloric burn = weight loss) but really it only works for someone who wants to loose a few pound from the holidays or a model who's career depends on it. (i will have a lot more to say on this subject later) The idea of starving myself, (because that’s what that would be) the sheer anxiety of adding hunger and calorie counting to my stress load was too much for me. It wasnt that i was unwilling to eat healthy, it was just that what he was saying was ridiculous and unhealthy.

By the time we were done with my appointment i was in tears. i had gone in there with so much hope, i had been praying for help, and he had utterly crushed me. i sobbed in my car in the parking lot before i drove home.

I was depressed for a while, but i am also a determined woman, i demanded that my doctor refer me to a different endocrinologist. this time i was not so lucky, i had a three month wait ahead of me.

Those months were like riding the waves of a stormy sea. i would rise high on the expectations of a doctor's help and then fall into a depression as i was written off or passed off to another doctor who never bothered to look past a test that said i was fine. i obviously was not. up, down, up, down and all the time my anxiety and depression and growing waistline raged all around me. at times i began to wonder again if i really was just crazy, if it was all in my head but deep down i knew that i wasn’t and i kept praying for an answer.

That summer i was given a wonderful opportunity to go out to California for several weeks with my husband and children. we would be taking a workation, taking over my mom's nanny job during the week and hitting the beach every weekend. i love the bay area of California and was very excited for the change of pace and scene.

Going out to California meant that i would have to miss my long awaited appointment with the endocrinologist but as luck would have it i was able to take someone else’s canceled appointment just a day before we left. This doctor listened to me and looked me over really good and sent me for a gauntlet of tests. she said that taking these test was like taking a snapshot of my body and that they may not reflect how i was feeling (no kidding, right?) and that she wouldn’t just write me off if i was still not feeling well. that did comfort me until she called me with my results a couple weeks later.

She told me that my thyroid was fine, that i had signs of insulin resistance and had low vitamin D. she didn’t know what all of that meant or what to do for me but that i should look up a book on insulin resistance and take a vitamin D supplement. yadda, yadda, yadda....she never called.

As you can imagine i was disheartened. i did look up some info on insulin resistance which I found out is the precursor to diabetes (more on this subject later) but opted not to take a vitamin D pill. i figured that if my body was having a hard time making it from the massive amounts of sunshine i had been getting, a supplement wasn’t going to get the job done. once again, i prayed for an answer.

I received an answer to my prayers one day as i was preparing for a family outing to the beach. I was looking for a good magazine to read while working on my tan and was attracted to one that had "bio identical hormones" written across it. It was the magazine First for Woman, one of those two dollar magazines that every month promotes the latest and greatest in weight loss. (they are my literary junk food and i love to indulge ever so often)

I had heard a bit about bio identical hormones before. while waiting for my doctors to come to their senses and give me a prescription that would make my thyroid work like a well oiled machine and melt all my unwanted fat, (hey, that is exactly what happened to one of my friends) i was determined to find a supplement (legal or un) on my own so that i could finally end my (and my family's) suffering. I had been determined to take matters into my own hands because no matter what my doctors were saying, i knew something was wrong with me. it simply did not add up that i could have a healthy thyroid while haveing the sympotoms of an underactive thyroid!(I warned you, i can be freakish about this sort of stuff) what i learned was that thyroid bio identical hormones are from natural sources so that your body uses them better, but that you still need a prescription. Always willing to learn more, i got the magazine.

I was disappointed at first to see that it was talking about estrogen and progesterone (a hormone i was not very familiar with) but as i read the stories, i was amazed; it was like they were telling me my life! in a three page article i found that having a unbalance between your estrogen and progesterone causes you to have anxiety, depression, low sex drive, weight gain, insomnia, tender breasts, mood swings, brain fog, migraines... basically bad pms all the time and that is just the beginning. basically it listed everything i had been suffering for the last three years and the stories of the woman in the article were like pages out of my diary.

What was even more wonderful to find out was that to confirm if that that was my problem, all i had to do was take an at home saliva test. no doctor visit, just order it on line, spit in the vile and send it in. What was even better was that if that was my problem, the fix was even easier! i just go to my local health food store and get a bottle of bio identical progesterone cream, OTC. i was flabbergasted! no doctors to go through, no several weeks of waiting to be heard, no "i don’t know what’s wrong with you", no stupid chemical prescriptions with gosh-awful side affects!

I ordered the test, i spit in the vile, i waited on pins and needles for the test results and when i got them they confirmed that i was indeed out of balance. the normal range for my progesterone for that time in my monthly cycle should have been around 175, my test came back at 44.

It is a funny thing, because i expected that when i finally was able to know what was wrong with me i would be so happy and relieved, just to know. here i was with the cause and cure finally presented to me ......and i was spitting mad.

I was grateful but overwhelmingly furious! all of those times i went to a doctor for help! all of those horrible times i was stuck in the deep dark places of my mind! the years, the wasted years that i could not be the mother my children deserved or the woman my husband fell in love with! all because of a freakin hormone imbalance! What three doctors and two endocrinologists couldn’t tell me, i found out in a two dollar grocery store magazine.

My thoughts about antidepressants

I am still not sure how I feel about antidepressants and I will tell you why. On one hand, I don’t think I could have survived with out them. On the other hand, they left me with some lasting horrible side affects.

Not long after I started on Effexor, Jim left for a nine month tour in Iraq. Being so far apart for so long had its very lonely moments, especially near the end, but all in all it was a good period in my life. Now that I wasn’t acting so crazy I was free to have a wonderful time with my girls. We had a nine month girls party! we ran through my house in just our underwear, watched Barbie movies while doing our nails and had pajama parties. I was able to get them two little ponies and teach them how to ride and in the summer we did a lot of traveling. By keeping ourselves busy and recording it all to send to Jim, who was so far away, we were content enough to visit with Jim over the phone and over the webcam.

I was hopeful that during this time I would be able to finally loose weight and Jim would come home to a happy and healthy me. I was on a very small dose of Effexor, the starter dose in fact, because anything more than that made me sleepy all the time. (for a week I was not able to get out of bed because I was just too tired, even with the small dose I was groggy and needed lots of sleep to function well but it was manageable)I started working out and eating right again but it was not to be. My weight did not budge. the good news, though, was that I didn’t get any bigger.

I was grateful that I was given a mental break. like I said before, I don’t think I could have gone through Jim's deployment without the Effexor but it was just that, a break. A few months before Jim came home I started noticing my anxiety coming back. Finally the drug was not working at all. I talked to my doctor about switching to a different antidepressant, Wellbutron.

Anybody who is considering taking Effexor needs to know this now: it is a BEE-OTCH to get off of! And its not just me, from reading other forums of people who have taken it or are taking it, it is one of the worst ones to try to get off of. One man in particular has been on it for ten years simply because he cant get off of it!

Most antidepressants fall under SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) These drugs make your brain produce more and receive more serotonin, the chemical in your brain that is responsible for making you happy, among many other things. So that you don’t hurt yourself, you need to be winged onto and off of these sorts of drugs. if done too quickly your brain starts going through major withdraws and that can have horrible physical consequences.

Case in point, when the girls and I were visiting my mother in California that summer, I went through a five day period that I was not able to get my prescription refilled. I was able to stave off some of the craziness for a few days by taking very high amounts of vitamin B, but eventually I started suffering sever withdraws. I started shaking uncontrollably. It sacred the poodle-doo out of my poor mom and with the both of us unable to come up with any other option, she called the ambulance and had me taken to the hospital. Why they didn’t just give me some Effexor, I don’t know, but with a combination of benadril and morphine in my blood, I was able to sleep through the rest of my withdraw until the wal-mart pharmacy opened the next day. Once I was able to get back on my normal dosage, I was fine, but like I said, not for long.

With the Effexor no longer effective, I started to wing off of it and onto the Wellbutron but it was not so willing to let me go. I was able to go off of Prozac in a little more than a few days, and I didn’t even notice the change. the recommended time to wing off of Effexor is two weeks of lowering your dosage and lengthening time between dosages. it took me two months to get off it, not even to get off it but to get onto a different drug that did pretty much the same thing! The Wellbutorn never helped me as much as the Effexor did but it did take the edge off of the depression. (Eventually that stopped working as well.) During that time I even went through withdraws. I had headaches and muscle aches and I started shaking again.

A lot of people think that what I mean by 'shaking' is like a trembling of the hands or a shiver. Nope, this is a full body convolution. When the shaking didn’t go away after several weeks of being off of the Effexor I saw my doctor. He didn’t know what was going on with me so he sent me to a neurologist. He looked me over really good and sent me to get a lot of test done. I got an MRI and an EEG. They both came back saying that I was completely normal. The neurologist didn’t know what was wrong with me so he did nothing. I was not having epileptic seizures. Apparently to have an actual seizure, you have to not be able to keep your mental faculties. I shake and convulse but am completely aware of who I am and what’s going on.

So that was that. I lived with it. I noticed that it always was set off when I got stressed (like around my period) but it would come and go seemingly without any provocation as well. it would happen as I was driving or as I was working as a dance instructor and a lot of the time as I was laying down to sleep. I also noticed that it could be set off by loud noises and flashing lights. It wasn’t until just earlier this week (that is just over a whole year that I have been living with it)that I finally found out exactly what it was.

I was having a particular hard time with it and Jim sat down and dug through a bunch of internet info and forums. we found a person that had been on Effexor and was suffering from 'myoclonus'. We were like what the heck is that? so we looked it up. Myoclonus is "is brief, involuntary twitching of a muscle or a group of muscles. It describes a medical sign and, generally, is not a diagnosis of a disease.....Myoclonic jerks may occur alone or in sequence, in a pattern or without pattern. They may occur infrequently or many times each minute. Most often, myoclonus is one of several signs in a wide variety of nervous system disorders such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD)" Wikipedia.

There are several kinds of myoclonus, mine falls into the stimulus sensitive kind. almost always it is brought on by a trauma to the brain or spinal cord via chemicals or physical injury. Digging a little deeper we found that myoclonus is listed (although very deep in the paper work) as a side affect of Effexor. how long is this "side effect" going to last? I don’t know. we have found people that have been living with it for years.

I am not sure why I picked it up. it could be that I have always been prone to it. I have had restless leg syndrome (a type of myoclonus)since I was eight but this is what I think is most likely to have happened. I think that during my withdraws that summer I experienced serotonin syndrome witch is when a pool of serotonin backs up in your brain because there is nothing to uptake them. at that point serotonin becomes toxic and it can be fatal. My husband and I think that is likely how my brain nerves got shot and stayed shot after I got off of the Effexor. I don’t know what the doctors think, I still don’t know why the doctor that prescribed it, the one that saw me shaking, the psychiatrist they consulted with over my medication withdraws and the neurologist couldn’t tell me that what I was experiencing was myoclonus and that it is a side effect of Effexor and almost all SSRIs!

So do I regret antidepressants? Yes, especially now that I know the real problem was the major depletion of progesterone in my body. Could I have done without them? No, the break from madness that it gave me I could not have done without. It is a classic tale of 'I wish I knew then what I know now'.

Do I think antidepressants have a place in the world? I would have to say yes, there are valid issues of the brain that need some chemical action (although I am disposed to think that there are hormone issues there as well). But over all, I think that they are given out too, I wont say freely, but commonly. women, like me, are going to their doctors for help and given a catch-all band aid for catch-all craziness. they don’t try to look deeper. Eventually the "band aid" gets worn out and stops working because it was never the right fix for the problem to begin with. some people go through several different antidepressants or a combination of them, all the while living with the gosh-awful side effects, that for me, I don’t know if they are better or worse than the problem in the first place!

All I can say in the end is that I am grateful that God has answered my prayers to find the root of my problem and cure it. And as He usualy dose, He did it in the most unlikely of ways.

PS
I had my husband record me in a stimulus enduced fit of myoclonus. He flashed a flash light at me and this is what happend.

my trip to crazy town.

Any body who is anybody knows that my daughter Emily was made out of sugar that looks like Jim and Mercedes was made out of spice that looks like me. They are the kind of children that you see in old black and white tv shows like 'leave it to beaver' or 'bewitched'. they are cute and funny and wholly adorable, even when they are getting into trouble.

Now they do occasionally have to have time outs and sometimes I do have to remind them who is actually in charge, but I get the "now that’s good parenting" compliment a lot more than I think I deserve. my children are naturally good natured and well behaved and have been an incredible blessing in my life.

I love my children. it is important for everyone to know that because I am going to be perfectly candid in my description of what sort of mother I was during this time period. it is not something I like to talk about because I am ashamed of it and because it is so far removed from the real me. those of you that know me may have a hard time picturing me going through some of these scenarios, but they are true.

Understanding that I had an adrenal problem was my first look into hormonal health. suspecting the hormones from my IUD to be part of it and not wanting anything to get worse, I had it removed. my husband and I now only use barrier methods as a contraceptive, birth control hormones will never touch me again.

By the time we moved to the city my fainting goat spells had mostly resided, but other things came into play. the worst anxiety and depression I have ever had in my life! now remember, my depression was in the "scary, possibly fatal" categories while pregnant. this was not a pretty time for me.....or anyone near me.

It started out slow, I didn’t notice it at first. the move had been stressful and family life had been stressful and my health had been stressful....so it was no surprise to me that I was feeling stress. I had also been grumpy and depresses but it never went away it just got worse.

At first it seemed that it was a really bad, long pms. every month my "pms" got worse and lasted longer. first it was a week of weepiness and grumpiness before my period. then it became a lot of yelling and screaming at everything and depression while eating the entire kitchen two weeks before my period. then it morphed into insomnia, murderous mood swings, headaches, crazy binge eating, no libido and sobbing for no reason for the three weeks before my period. When you get to a point where the only remote sense of sanity happens while your on your period, your condition is no longer just "a bad pms".

It was like my mind was broken. I could logically say to myself "what the hell is wrong with you?" but not be able to control my reactions to normal life. I had to constantly separate myself from the girls so that I didn’t yell at them and spank them over stupid things. their beautiful little happy noises as they would play made me angry, so angry! I would yell and yell. not just the 'hey, you, get off my porch' snapping but the super psycho, in your face 'no more wire hangers!' type yelling. I would scream at my little girl to stop her crying. I couldn’t stop the venom from coming out of me even as I saw it happening. telling my children that I loved them came out in a harsh, angry "I love you!" (how is that for mixed signals?)



My anxiety was so high that I could not sleep. a typical evening went like this: Put the girls to bed at 8:00. I would yell at them (because I was incapable of speaking calmly or nicely) that I loved them and that they really needed to stay in bed (they had a habit of squeezing some more awake time by asking for drinks and by coming into the living room at least twice, each, fore extra hugs and 'I love you's') because I loved them and didn’t want to spank them or yell at them. I would explain to them that I was feeling 'nervous' and that they should leave me alone. I would actually be trembling with anxiety by the time I got to the couch. the only thing that helped me unwind was to binge eat (I’m talking a whole quart of ice cream in one night, on top of dinner and snacks) and watch TV for six straight hours. Jim would come home from work and have the good sense to bypass me completely and go straight to the computer and then to bed. (the few times he didn’t, im afraid I had to rip off his head for disturbing my stress coma) around two or three in the morning I would be tired enough to go to bed and be able to get a fitful sleep.

It may be hard to imagine being that crazy, so let me help you. have you ever been driving down the highway, minding your own business and look up to see a cop's flashing lights in your rearview mirror where it wasn’t before? you know that constricting in the chest of "oh, no, what did I do?!" imagine that all the time, with a sense of forbidding doom, like something bad is going to happen or is just around the corner. lets add some depression to that. not the little 'im bloating so I don’t fit into my skinny jeans anymore' depression (although that was there too) but the 'someone I loved just died' heavy grief depression. I was also growing out of my clothes at an alarming rate. let me tell you, it is a sad, cold, horrible day when you discover that you have gotten too fat to fit into your sweat pants anymore.

Logically, I knew that if I wasn’t able to handle the basics of life, that something was wrong with me. I did a lot of research and tried a lot of different things. First was my tried and true method of diet and exercise. I would scrape energy from the bottom of my reserves to work out and diet. working out used to relief my stress but now it only added to it. when I didn’t see or feel the results I would get depressed and fall off the wagon. after I came out of the sugar and tv coma, I would get back on the horse but it was a vicious cycle. eventually I got to the point where the thought of starting an other diet-exercise plan made me run screaming to the refrigerator.

I came across Alyssa Cohan's book about eating raw. it made a lot of sense to me. the basics of living a "raw lifestyle" is that you eat nothing but uncooked, living, fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts. this allows your body to detox, build up enzymes an heal your body of anything that may be wrong with it. I am not going to say a lot about it now,(I’ll have a lot to say about it later) but I will say that as I was doing research about it, it felt good. I followed it for several weeks but was unable to maintain it through my anxiety enough to reap the benefits of it. eventually I gave it up.

I tried a slew of herbal remedies and vitamins, non of witch, even if they had worked in the past, even took the edge off for me.

With more research I discovered that I could be suffering from PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder (that is pms that is so bad it interferes with your daily life, I think I could check that box)I know better now, but at the time the only help I could find for that disorder was either birth control or an antidepressant. both I was loathed to consider. I didn’t want to do birth control because even though it was promoted to help women with PMDD, I knew how I was with synthetic hormones. even then I was willing to consider it if it would help with the hell that I was living in but when I read reviews of people using it and the horrifying effects it was having on them, I closed the door on that option for good.

My husband and I talked about getting on an antidepressant. I didn’t want to do it because of my last bad experience with it. I didn’t want to become a zombie, or loose whatever little bits of sexual desire I had left and I sure as heck didn’t want to add more weight gain to my already fat body.

*side tracked moment*
weight gain is a major side affect for most people on most antidepressants. a lot of them say that they would rather be fat and happy than skinny and depressed. personally I have only ever been fat and miserable. I don’t know that I ever really could be completely happy and fat at the same time. for me being fat is what keeps me from doing a lot of the things that make me happy. things like sex or dancing or horseback riding are a lot more fun to do if you are not the size of two (or three) normal people put together. this I know for myself and for a fact. I have often lamented the fact that my condition was the kind that made me fat. if I had to go through this torment why couldn’t it at least be the kind that made me waste away? ultimately I plan to be fit and happy but if I cant shake this mental anguish, I would be willing to give depressed and skinny a try.
*depressing thought over*

The night that I came to the conclusion that the risks of taking and antidepressant outweighed the mental hell I was going through, I cried. I had to finally fess up to the fact that I was not normal. that nothing I was doing was helping. I had to admit to myself that I couldn’t do it on my own and that I literally had to be crazy because I couldn’t cope with normal daily life. they were bitter tears.

Once I admitted to myself that my brain chemicals were wacky and that I was loopy and needed medication, I did my due research to find one that would have the least adverse affects on me in the categories of weight gain and sex drive. with a list of potential meds, I went to my doctor, together we decided on Effexor.

The difference was night and day. the first day I was on it I felt like a new person. I was happy, relaxed. I sat on the couch and flirted with my husband. he was literally shocked that I was coming on to him. for the first time in over a year, when my girls were playing, I smiled and laughed with them. Emily came and gave me a hug. looking at me she said "mommy, you’re not angry anymore." it broke my heart but it warmed it too. I was also glad that I was no longer angry.

Fainting Goats - Click here for more home videos

fainting goat syndrom

It took me the better part of five months from my accident before i was able to get back on my workout horse. Once i did, i was very excited about it. i knew i was destine to finally reach my goal of wearing a single digit size pant. I was excited, enthusiastic and.....my stomach was getting bigger.

How could that be? I was doing exactly what had worked for me before? After several months of not being able to work out and not gaining back all the weight i had lost, i couldn't understand why, when i was dieting and exercising again, my stomach was getting bigger! there were a lot of times i was afraid i might have been pregnant again because i had so many symptoms, feeling faint, sick and lethargic but i never was. So, i did what seemed the only logical thing to do, i worked harder and dieted stricter. It didn't help and other odd things started happening.

Before, when i was having such great success working out, it gave me energy for the day and it felt great, so that is what i expected. but things started to change. at first i just wasn't getting that pick me up that i had been getting before but eventually i found myself saving all my energy just so that i could work out.

Fainting goats are a curiosity of nature, i first heard about them from my college roommate. They are a particular breed of goat that when startled or scared have a specific uncontrollable physical reaction. their muscles go rigid, so they are stiff like a statue, then they topple over.

For me it started out suttle. at first i was just having major energy slumps, not being able to wake up and get out of bed, body feeling like lead and at five o' clock pm i was wiped out. then came the energy "drains" as i liked to call them. these would come upon me all of a sudden and without warning. i would be standing in the hall or putting groceries away in the kitchen and all of a sudden it was like someone pulled a plug in me and all my energy just drained right out. most of the time i didn't have the strength to make it the couch or bed. i would collapse into a heap where ever i happened to be and would have to wait it out before i could move again.

sometimes were worse than others. sometimes it would last for twenty minutes and other times for a few hours. i never lost consciousness, but at times i may as well have because i could not even muster the energy to call out for help. i really have to thank God that my young children were kept in safety because there were times i think only the burning down of my house could have motivated me enough to move. Then, as if that wernt enough, it got worse. Loud noises started triggering it and i started getting mean.

Just like a fainting goat, a loud noise or surprise would trigger a response in me and my muscles would turn to jelly and i would involuntarily crumble to the floor.

One of the things my grandma and i really love to eat is biscuits and gravy. every time she visits me i make some for us and i wasn't about to pass it up when she visited us that fall. It had been very hard for me to get out of bed, but i made a valiant effort and hauled myself into the kitchen to uphold our (that is just me and grandma's, not any of her other 13 grandchildren) special tradition. i had the homemade gravy going, i was almost done with the scrambled eggs and was ready for the processed and commercially packaged biscuits. I opened the can of biscuit dough, there was loud "pop", i felt my muscles go weak and had just enough time to put down what was in my hand before i was sprawled on the cold tile floor of my kitchen. Jim had to help me back to bed and i was able to enjoy breakfast several hours later.

One might see then, why i couldn't tolerate the laughing and playing of my little daughters but there was more to it than that. the sound of it made me angry and i had to banish myself to the far end of the house to keep from yelling at them all the time. it was like i was experiencing a really bad PMS. i was cranky, overly emotional, irritable and depressed. plus, no matter how hard i worked, my weight was not going anywhere. so i saw a doctor, again.

I had seen him before my whole hand fiasco because of the energy slumps i had been having. he ran some test and declared me perfectly healthy (except being overweight) and sent me on my way. (That was destined to become a common theme of all doctors that i would see in the future) I saw an herbalist after that who was able to recommend some vitamins that had helped me a lot then but not so much with what i was presently dealing with.

This time i went to him with an assurance that something was very wrong with me and he could tell me exactly what it was. He ran some blood tests to check my thyroid and ordered a glucose test to see if i was diabetic. they both came back with the results of a perfectly healthy and functioning person. nothing wrong. he suggested if i was still having problems i should do a sleep study. (no, i didn't see the relevance of spending money on that either) The herbalist was not able to help me this time either, so i lived with it.

I love how God answers prayers and gives blessings. Jim had been seeing a chiropractor. in a passing conversation, Jim told him of how i had been afflicted and that we did not know what it was. the chiropractor said it sounded like adrenal fatigue and that he thought he could help me.

Your spine holds a wonderful thing called a spinal cord. this cord connects all the nerves in your entire body to your brain, including the ones from your glans. i have found in my life that there are basically three ways your spine can give you pain. the first is an obvious misalignment. once your bones are back into place and off the pinched nerve, all is better. another way is your body is trying to tell you something. sometimes its emotional pain your body needs to release before it can be healed. in this particular case for me, my body was trying to tell me that something was not right with my adrenal glands. i was able to see for myself on a chart of where body organs correlated to the parts of the spine. the places that are connected to the adrenals were the exact parts on my body that had been hurting me for months, my neck and lower back.

The chiropractor adjusted me and gave me herbs to support my adrenals. after a time it helped. i wish i could say that it cured me, but if it had, this would be a short blog. but that it helped me was good, it was a welcome relief that i desperately needed because it was then that we moved to the city. That is also when i lost my mind. i completely drove off the logical map and became lost in evil-wench land.