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.