As I said at the beginning of the year, I had an appointment at a hormone specialist practice in February. I had no idea really what I was getting into but I had certain symptoms that were troubling. One was an increasingly high pulse rate, up to 130 at times and averaging 100, a very low blood pressure and increasing fatigue.

I have written an article about this for the site for women who are interested in all the details -here- but this is a short version for the blog. I think many of us with bone problems also have hormone issues so this may be a wake-up call for many women.

It turns out that the Armour thyroid I was taking for my hypothyroid condition was not working correctly. T3 is like the gas in our engines, we can’t live well without it. But in me the Armour was making Reverse T3 as well as T3, and the Reverse T3 was blocking the receptors on my cells so the real T3 couldn’t get in. When the tests came back I was found to have Hashimoto’s disease, which is a non-functioning thyroid. This is an auto-immune disease like the diabetes 1.5 and apparently auto-immune diseases trigger more of the same. My adrenal system is also under attack. The rest of my hormones; estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and aldosterone were very low.

According to the book I recommended, ‘The Hormone Solution’, you can’t try to fix one part of the endocrine system without testing everything and covering all that you need. It just makes everything worse. Unfortunately most doctors are not very well-versed in bio-identical hormones and just want to give you Synthroid for the thyroid and then anti-depressants if you insist on returning with more symptoms.

So I trotted off to Holtorf Medical in LA because they were the closest ones on the list I found from the website linked somehow to the book. They were very expensive but I figured I would get my problem straightened out and it would be worth it.  I have to say I was extremely underwhelmed by the service I got for my money. More on that in the article.

Anyway, I was prescribed various hormones and sent off with instructions to come back in 2 months. The doc did say it would take 6 weeks for the Reverse T3 to work it’s way out of my body but she didn’t warn me that my life might fall apart in the meantime. That first two weeks were a nightmare. I forgot my social security number at one point, and another time I drove 50 miles to deliver something and found out I had forgotten to load part of it.

They call that brain fog and I’d never had that before. I hated it! It was zombie time.
Then I was so tired that I could barely keep the business going. I stopped doing anything but the essentials. Now I’m coming back to life I realize that my internal life stopped also. I didn’t talk to Source or my angels, didn’t even think of them for the most part. It was a very odd experience and I’m actually glad I went through it just so I can really appreciate the rich life I have now my hormones are all coming back online.

I’m just beginning to recover now, it’s four weeks since I started the drugs and it can be a tricky thing to figure out how much of everything you need to make everything work for you. But it really is something you have to figure out for yourself. There is a list of under and over symptoms for every hormone in the book and you have to try and get yourself in that sweet spot that would be different for everyone. No doctor can do that for you.

Once again I have come to realize that we have to take charge of our own health. Do the research and then follow the steps. I’ve read so much about the endocrine system now that I know a lot more than the nurse practitioner that I see. And, once again, the bio-identicals are new endocrinology and still not accepted by mainstream medicine. They give you the same hormones you would be making yourself, in the same quantities, if you were strong and healthy. This is nothing like HRT, which has been proven to be dangerous.

So, I’ll keep you posted. I’m sorry this took so long. I actually have some bone news to blog as well but it may take a few more good days for that.

Onward and upward,

Pam

Well, it’s been just over two months since I started the homeopathic solutions for my low thyroid and adrenals. I am amazed at the progress I have made. I will definitely not take any thyroid medication or cortisol now.

My temperature chart shows steady progress, a big difference at first and now slowing down but still improving. I originally had temps that occasionally went as low as 95. My chart before I started the homeopathics for the month I was on Armour thyroid went up and down between 96.8 and 97.8. This was taking temps twice a day, not on a schedule but just when I remembered to do it.

Now my chart shows less daily bouncing around and ranges between 97.6 and 98.3. This indicates that my hormonal system is in recovery.

You can get an explanation and a sample chart from drrind.com.

But what is truly amazing is how much it has changed how I feel. I really hadn’t noticed how restricted my life had become. It was so gradual it felt normal and, when I did notice, I put it down to age. But I started doing projects around the house again for the first  time in 5 years. I used to be the project queen. I was always remodeling or changing something. Suddenly I found myself doing that again! I love it.

And my poor garden had been just hanging in there for years. Now I am back out there every day and it looks a picture, people stop to admire it. I finally have energy for other things than my business and my computer.

So if you are feeling less than your best and think your hormones may be out of whack, I really recommend that you buy the book, "Revitalizing Your Hormones" by Theresa Dale. That’s where I began. Just to think I almost went on pills for life. That’s nuts. There is no pill that can do what your own body can do. No pill that can fine-tune your dose for your particular body in each moment. The small bottles of the three hormonal balance homeopathics will last me for the full three months. I think I will probably take them once a year to keep tuned up.

I hope this helps someone,
Pam

Well, I’ve been on the track of information and research about my hormonal system for a while now. I took the saliva test through Canary Club and found that my dhea was very low, my estradiol was too high and cortisol was low in the mornings when it needs to be higher. I am at Stage 5 for Adrenal exhaustion, with Stage 1 where you are so wired you can’t sleep, and stage 7 where you can barely get out of bed.

I read more excellent books; ‘Mastering your Life’ by Dr Poesnecker had the clearest explanation of the levels of Adrenal exhaustion so you can see where you have been - and where you are headed if you don’t make some changes.

‘Hypothyroidism Type 2′ by Dr Mark Starr, was a revelation. He connects almost all of the chronic diseases to low thyroid problems, including diabetes and heart disease. A huge amount of information is in this book. He feels that there are two reasons for the epidemic in low thyroid in this country right now. One is the advent of antibiotics. The infectious diseases that would have killed off people with low thyroid in the past are no longer a problem, so women are passing on their low-thyroid conditions to their children. It’s the opposite of natural selection.

The other reason is the clear toxicity that we are living in every day of our lives since the chemical age. The amount of toxins in every body tested now is phenomenal. Thousands of chemicals that didn’t exist one hundred years ago are stored in our bodies. Since our bodies don’t know how to handle them and can’t get rid of them easily, they are stored in the fat cells or wherever our body decides to put them to try and keep them as safe as possible. 

Dr Starr had the good fortune to study with the doctors who pioneered the research on the hormonal system before they died and he had a personal interest because of his own family’s hypo-thyroid conditions.

So, the solutions that all these doctors have for the problems of disturbed hormones vary slightly, depending on whether or not they are allopathic or naturopathic doctors. The naturopaths recommend taking glandular extracts like the Armour for thyroid, and other glandulars for the adrenals. Actually most of the allopathic doctors suggest that you try those first also. But then they recommend very small doses of cortisol if the glandulars are not enough to remove symptoms.

I was worried about taking the cortisol, and even the Armour, because they are hard to get off once you start, and the idea of taking them for life is not appealing. So then my daughter sent me Dr Theresa Dale’s book, ‘Revitalize your Hormones’. She is a naturopath and a homeopathic doctor, and she claims to have healed thousands of people of their hormonal problems with the homeopathic remedies that she has designed. Her book is fascinating and intriguing. I have been taking the adrenal supplements for a month now and not felt any different and I have been helped by over-the-counter homeopathic remedies in the past, so I figured it was definitely worth a try.

You can talk to Dr Dale on the phone and she will look at your saliva test results and recommend which of her remedies to take. Read the book first! So I spoke with her last week and got my 6 remedies yesterday. Today I will begin my trial. The really good things about homeopathics is that you don’t have to take them for long and they can do no harm. I will stop taking the glandulars and just take the remedies and see what happens. Dr Dale believes that her remedies encourage your own glands to recover, which of course, is way better than your mind trying to figure out how to dose your glands. She has even helped women who have had hysterectomies get their glands working again.

I’m very hopeful about this. In the meantime I am also being extremely kind to myself, taking my life as lightly as possible, using meditation, exercise and many mind techniques to stay calm and balanced. You have to get rid of the obvious stressors in your life at the same time as you work on healing the glands. I’ll do a post on that later.

So, send me your blessings, and I’ll keep you posted. The really funny thing is that, ever since I started on the track of balanced hormones, women have been calling to buy vests who have exactly the same problem. Mostly they have been given Synthroid, which doesn’t work, or been told that their thyroid tests show them to be well - when their symptoms are still very obvious. 99% of doctors are not as informed as I have become in one month of study on these issues. An unfortunate truth is that doctors no longer have time to listen to your symptoms or your stories, they have become test-readers and put the results of the tests in greater importance than the way you feel. And quite frankly, many doctors feel too overwhelmed to even try something as complicated as balancing hormones.

Our bodies are miracles, and they were designed for self-healing, if we can only get out of the way.

Blessings, Pam

I had a routine test a few months ago that showed my thyroid gland to be underproducing hormones. I asked for the natural remedy, which is Armour Thyroid pills, and thought this would be something quick and easy to fix. What an optimist!

The more research I do on the topic, the more I realize that almost all of the women that I know have some degree of hormonal imbalance. Very often, when you are hypothyroid, your adrenal glands are also exhausted. The description of adrenal exhaustion is like deja vu - I’ve been there so often during my life. Fatique, cold hands and feet, brain fog, anxiety and a short fuse are just a few of the long list of symptoms. I’m sure every woman can find herself peeking back from the list.

I got a enormous amount of useful information from a site called http://stopthethyroidmadness.com. It was on a doctor’s site that they recommended, http://drrind.com, that I found a questionnaire that revealed my problem to be more adrenal than thyroid. My own doctor did not make any connection between the thyroid and adrenal glands.

Dr Rind also has a temperature chart that you can keep for a while to show how out of balance your hormonal system is. Take your temperature three times a day and average the results and then chart it. If your problem is mostly thyroid you will have low but pretty even temperatures. But if your problem is primarily with the adrenal glands, your temps will go up and down like a yoyo. If you have problems with both glands your temps will be erratic and also stay much lower than normal.

So it turns out that if you take thyroid supplements or medication before you attend to the adrenal exhaustion, you can feel a lot worse. I had episodes of anxiety, heart racing, and deep, unaccountable sadness. It reminded me of the bad old days when I had pms.

The body needs cortisol, produced by the adrenals, to push the thyroid into the cells to do it’s work. Without a normal level of cortisol, which varies throughout the day, the thyroid supplement stays in the blood and can make you feel hyperthyroid. Your blood tests will now show that you have a well-functioning or over-functioning thyroid and your doctor may reduce or stop your medication.

The best book I read, of many, was Feeling Fat, Fuzzy and Frazzled by Richard and Karilee Shames. Dr Shames believes that our three most important hormonal systems are thyroid, adrenals and sex hormones and they all three have to be in balance for us to feel our best. He is a specialist in this field and says that most endocrinologists are pretty far behind on the new information so this may be another time when you will have to do some research yourself to get the best results.

Dr Shames recommends a newer test that takes samples of saliva throughout the day, four times, in order to measure the daily ups and downs of cortisol, as well as thyroid and sex hormones. He feels that this test is much more reliable than the blood tests commonly offered. It is a test that you can send for yourself and do at home through http://canaryclub.org. The lab is Diagnos-techs. I have sent my test in and I’m waiting for results. In the meantime I took myself off the Armour Thyroid and I am doing all I can to restore my adrenals. When they are improved I will resume the thyroid medication.

Whatever helps your adrenals will be good for your whole body. Some suggestions are reducing or removing anything in your life that sets your teeth on edge or makes your anxious. Or using mind programs that change your own reaction to whatever you can’t change. (I’ll do a post on this in more detail later.) Other things are resting when you are tired instead of having coffee or sugar to prod your poor tired mind and body back into action.

I really see this whole issue as a breakdown in the body from years of cultural abuse. We women are taking on more and more work than ever before, along with more worries about the future. Life is more stressful every year and toxins and problems are increasing so fast we can barely keep up. It seems to me to have roots in self-esteem and trust. I feel I have often been untrustworthy in taking care of myself. I wouldn’t treat anyone the way I often treat myself! I have often driven myself way past my limits. I’m better now, kinder to myself, but that took a long time to learn and my adrenals have not yet recovered.

This is just the beginning of a huge topic and I will keep you posted on what’s happening. It has to do with my primary interest in bones because the hormonal system regulates bone strength as well as so many other reactions in the body.

At the beginning of this year I asked to be shown where I could most clearly serve next - and then I was given this diagnosis. So I think I have given my body to science while I’m still in it :-). I intend to figure this out so that I can help others do the same. We are all different and we will have different solutions to bring ourselves back into balance - but balance is the true answer.

Please comment if you have any experience with this topic. I got a couple of emails of appreciation lately that encouraged me to keep on sharing although I hardly get any comments - except spam!

Blessings, Pam