It is the Little Things!

Well guys, I hate to admit it but the last month has been a bit crazy and I just thought I'd give you an update so far:

I took Tri-Sprintec for one month, had my period like normal with no other negative symptoms. The only difference I could see is that I did feel like my hormones may have leveled because I was not like an emotional rollercoaster. But I decided to not take it anymore.. like I have said before I wanted to try to go a more natural way. I didn't want synthetic hormones doing the work for my body. I want my body to learn how to use them on it's own! So this past month I have been birth control free. My emotions are back. All of them! My period is late, which I guess I had to expect. (Although, I was crossing my fingers it would be normal!) I know one month is hardly any time at all to see results, but for some reason I am just completely turned off by birth control. It just doesn't feel right for me, so I am listening to myself in hopes I am right.

I also took D-chiro-inositol (DCI) and Vitex while taking birth control. I am fairly certain that DCI helped a lot with bloating. I didn't feel bloated hardly ever. Before, anything I ate made me feel five pounds heavier and it was awful.  I am not sure about the Vitex yet, but I read that it is supposed to help with fertility and may increase the risk of pregnancy even while on birth control (which is not necessarily a risk for me, but I'm not quite ready for kids yet :)), so I quit taking it while I finished my birth control and now I am back on it. I have to order more DCI, so I haven't been taking it faithfully the last few weeks.

So here's the other thing: I have started to be more active, going to the gym and trying to be up and moving more so I have made some progress there but there is definitely much further to go! I've had my hit and miss days, but I KNOW I feel so much better when I get a workout in.

Then there is the diet*. Guys. This is the hard part for me. Why do I love food so much? Sigh... I have definitely consumed less carbs, and so that I think has helped with the bloating. I've noticed that when I have too many, I feel gross! So I do know it has an impact on me. Sugar.... not so much. I have a major sweet tooth. Major!

It sounds silly, but food has always been a huge part of my life. I love food, and I want it to be yummy food. I love veggies. I love fruit. But I also love cake, and pizza, and rolls... I know food is for nourishment, not entertainment or for self-gratification but that is what it has been in the past for me and I am finding it extremely difficult to change! I don't mean to say any of that as a pity party, and even I know I have the willpower to change. I am just going through the battle in my mind. Is it better to completely cut things off or is it better to allow yourself an indulgence once in awhile?

Anyway, so that is the update on how things have been so far! I am grateful for the little progress I have seen, which really isn't much, but it's there and I have to notice them to keep me positive! :)

*Sidenote: When I say "diet" I mean my day to day food intake. I hate using the term I am on a "diet" because it makes it sound temporary. I am not in this temporarily! I think that is why it is hard for me to say I will never have cake or pizza again, because I KNOW I will! :)

PCOS links to research

I thought it might be a good idea to give you some of the websites that I have found to help me understand PCOS and what kind of treatments are available. Even though there is not a "cure," there are a lot of options to consider and you want to figure out what you feel is best for you.

Here are a few links that I read to understand what exactly PCOS is and how it affects women.
A basic medical analysis: http://www.medicinenet.com/polycystic_ovary/article.htm
A fertility website with a more natural view: http://natural-fertility-info.com/pcos-fertility-diet
A very good informative quide: http://www.polycystic-ovary-syndrome-guide.com/natural-cures.html

There are waaaaay more websites than that, but those are the ones I have found to be informative and helpful so far.

Personally, I want to treat PCOS as naturally as possible. The more research I do on birth control, the less I want to use it, although I am currently taking Tri-Sprintec. The reason I have found is that birth control uses synthetic hormones that balances everything so that your body doesn't have to. So basically, it gets rid of the symptoms, but as soon as you go off the pill, your menstrual cycles will be wacky all over again. I found a girl on youtube who goes into detail about her experience with PCOS and how she was able to overcome it through natural means.
This is a link to her profile on youtube, and she has a 90 day series that is incredibly insightful.
http://www.youtube.com/user/KatieHumphreyFitness and this is her actual website: http://www.freedomfrompcos.com/ and she has resources and several plans you can choose to follow.
She talks about the supplements she took from Insulite Labs, a program to overcome PCOS through supplements, healthy diet, exercise, and overcoming food addiction. This is the website for Insulite Labs: http://pcos.com/
The current natural supplements I am on are D-chiro-inositol (DCI) to help with insulin resistence and Vitex, which I got from this company: http://www.chiralbalance.com/

I have been taking DCI and Vitex for about 2 and a half weeks. I haven't seen a huge change, I still have had some pretty strong sugar cravings (but it could be that I had PMS too!) but I haven noticed that I don't feel as bloated after everything I eat. I'll keep you updated on how it goes!

New to PCOS

Some of the biggest issues I have had with PCOS so far is weight gain and anxiety. Weight gain is frustrating alone! I have gained 50 lbs in the last two years, and 40 of them have been in the last year. I was so frustrated with myself because I thought I was eating too much, being lazy, too stressed, etc. I am sure to an extent it was true, but I had no idea why it seemed like my weight was ballooning when my diet had not really changed much from previous years.

My anxiety is not just that I'm afraid of what this disorder is doing to my body, but also just anxiety in general. I have a lot of it! I am honestly not even sure how to explain my anxiety, its like an attack that happens whenever it feels like it. I think anxiety is a fairly normal emotion that we feel in life, and I wouldn't say I have severe anxiety but sometimes it does get the best of me.

Oh, and one more. I have felt so exhaustively tired! I literally have to peel myself out of bed in the mornings, and I often end up taking one to two hour naps during the day. It is so hard to want to get things done and have no energy to do it. I felt like I was nuts, and sometimes I still do. Today I feel good though, so I am going to take advantage of that! (I'm not sure if it is because fall is here and I love October or if the supplements are kicking in to improve my mood and energy, but I'll take it!)

Oh just kidding, one more: Irregular menstrual cycles. Sometimes I am not sure if I am grateful for the lack of them or worried. I honestly leaned more towards grateful, haha! But it was frustrating because I kept wondering if I was possibly pregnant or if one of my ovaries had shut down, or if I had some kind of cancer or serious problem. After missing 5 months of menstrual cycles, i decided it might be more of an issue than I thought. It also made me wonder if I was even ovulating, which having done some reseach it seems I probably am not.

Now that I have gone on complaining about my symptoms, it is time for me to figure out a plan. It is what it is, ya know? So What am I going to do about it? Because I don't want to feel like this my whole life. Maybe I will, maybe that is the trial I will have in this life. But I don't want to feel this way knowing I did nothing to try to solve it.

Having been recently diagnosed, I don't feel like I have a lot of experience with medication and diet yet. What is hard for me right now is trying to figure out what my symptoms are and if PCOS is why I am having them. I have noticed that medically, we tend to treat each symptom as if it is it's own problem. But I am beginning to wonder if all of the symptoms and struggles I have been having all go together with one culprit at the head: my health. Not just physical fitness and nutrition, but also my mental and emotional health, my social health, my spiritual health, etc. I am noticing that just like my hormones are out of balance, my life seems out of balance also. I don't think that my faith will cure me alone, I don't think friendship and support will cure me alone, I don't think medication will cure me alone, and I don't think a change in diet will cure me alone. Granted, I have a lot of sorting to do in my life to make sure I balance it all, and I may find it doesn't have as big of a difference as I think it does now but I am willing to try.

So that is where I am right now in this journey. There are many different roads I can take, and I am working on figuring out which one. I wish I could take all of them at once if it was possible, but I'd probably end up worse off than I am! Right now I am willing to try birth control (Tri-Sprintec is the one I will be taking), but I do not want to have to take it for the rest of my life. I mentioned in my about me section that my plan is to lose weight and change my lifestyle by being more active, finding new activities I enjoy, and eating better. I am hoping the birth control will help in that process, along with some supplements I am trying (D-chiro-inositol and Vitex--which I just read may partially reverse what birth control is doing... so we'll see).

Welcome to Our War

PCOS has been like a war for me. Some battles I have won, and I have lost a lot.
The hardest part for me was being at the beginning of the road, looking down it, and wondering how in the world I was going to get started on what needed to happen.

I had just returned from serving a mission for the LDS church, where I had gained 50 pounds. When I got home, I stopped eating sugar, white flour, white rice, and white pasta. I started running every day, and I wasn't seeing a difference in my weight. At all. That's when I first suspected that something was wrong.
My doctor first put me on Sprintec - a birth control - and within a few weeks I had dropped around 20 pounds! Even one of the techs at the hospital was amazed! But after that initial weight loss, I was back to fighting for every pound to come off, I think I was able to get about five more off, but it was a long, hard road.

The biggest difference came when my sister started the Medifast diet, and  lost a lot of weight. I decided to try it, a year after my diagnosis. Within two weeks of being on the diet, I'd lost 15 more pounds! Through running every day, I have been able to maintain most of the weight loss. Throughout the diet, my energy levels went up a lot, I was able to sleep better, and I felt a little less crazy.

My biggest problem was, that despite the weight loss, I still had teenage acne, facial hair, and no energy.  I did a lot a of research and came across the supplement D-chiro inositol. It was expensive for how much it suggested taking every day, but I was willing to do whatever it took. The only difference I noticed was a pain in my bladder area that was persistent. My energy level never changed, and I was always exhausted. I did some more research and came across another inositol - myo-inositol. From what I read, it was supposedly the better choice for treating PCOS symptoms. So, I ordered a bottle, which happened to  be A LOT cheaper than the D-chiro! Again, I didn't really notice a difference, but I have never tried to become pregnant through any of this, nor have I had my hormone levels monitored, so I can't really say for sure that it didn't make a difference, but I never noticed one.

I decided that I needed to see a different doctor, a young gynecologist that knew more about PCOS, (my previous doctor had gone to medical school many, many years ago, and didn't really know a lot about it). After talking about a few things, mostly how "I don't look like the typical woman with PCOS." So why was I having so many problems? She prescribed Gianvi, a new birth control, telling me that it would help the symptoms better than my other birth control. Soon after, I decided to make an appointment with a dermatologist, who has put my on another oral medication, and a couple of topical medications. I have also had a few laser hair removal sessions done, but those are expensive and I had to travel a couple of hours. My sister owned the Remington home laser thing, and she let me borrow it, I bought some cartridges, and it has actually worked pretty well!... When I remember to use it!

My current medications have helped a lot! My acne is TONS better, my awkward hair growth has diminished, and I don't feel crazy, at all. I still struggle with sleeping and energy, but I haven't been concentrating on my diet lately, so there is always room for improvement there! Hopefully this blog journey will help a lot with that. Also, just a note, when I turned 26 and got kicked off my parents insurance, and before I got my own, I started taking Sprintec again because it is A LOT cheaper, but it made me INSANE and super depressed. I am back on Gianvi, and a lot happier! You just have to find what works for you.

Feel free to ask me any questions about anything! You can comment below, or you are even welcome to email.