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
Update on 5/2015
I am rereading all the old posts to see if they need to be axed and I’m leaving this one in so you can try it for yourself but it the homeopathic remedies did not work for me.