Aligning my stars

Don’t worry I have calmed down since my last post…well sort of. I am still a little bummed out. While walking to my car yesterday (and feeling sorry myself yet again), I was trying to focus on something else when a couple appeared in front of me. They were running to their car and the woman was holding her bulging pregnant belly. Guess it was time for their baby to arrive….lucky ducks! That is what’s so freakin hard about not thinking about it. Pregnancy and motherhood is literally everywhere. The gym, the office, Starbucks even on E News. Does it seem like a lot of celebrities have been pregnant lately??? I mean come on, I can’t even get a little gossip in now without getting sad and usually that makes me feel better. Oh well, it will happen eventually I have to be strong and in the words of Gloria Gaynor “I will survive.” Just got to keep doing the things I am doing and be healthy and happy. Align the stars and wait to see what happens. Right now it feels like my stars are scattered everywhere. I am really busy at work so I haven’t had time to get the bills organized, the laundry is just piling up, we still haven’t found a new house, I have gained weight and top it off with the fact that I haven’t had a period since last November…like I said they are everywhere. I am working on this though. I have been taking a few minutes each day this week to get paperwork organized, I have been to the gym the past three days and even met with my trainer yesterday, my husband is handling the house situation and I continue to eat flaxseed, yams and soy everyday to help with the estrogen issue I currently am experiencing. On that note….

I have decided that I am going to focus on eating things that support both estrogen production and a healthy endocrine system. Like many southern gals, I prefer to do everything through food. I found a great article at http://www.ehow.com/how_4449618_diet-healthy-endocrine-system.html. It lists items you need to be sure and eat to support a healthy endocrine system. One suggestion is taking omega oil supplements which I was on way back when I was first diagnosed. Perhaps this is something I should look into taking again??? The article also suggests yoga for stress management and states that there are actually some yoga positions that stimulate hormonal balance. Also listed is garlic which I cook with all the time!

This article caused me to want to find what yoga poses I can be doing so I can be sure and do them once a day since I am obsessive….yes I know I have a problem. During my brief travel on the jam packed information highway this morning, I found another article discussing how different every infertility patient is, the reasons for hormonal imbalances and why they seem to be rapidly increasing and things we as women can do to reverse the imbalances. http://www.womenseducationcenter.com/health/natural-hormone-balance.html .

What Can Women Do to Be in Balance?

1. Put themselves first when it comes to health. When women are healthy, everyone who needs them benefits.

2. Walk, garden or relax in the sun for 20 minutes. This produces vitamin D for immunity and bone health and melatonin for sleep.

3. Get plenty of sleep. Cortisol from not sleeping and stress promote weight gain and depression.

4. Eat organic green vegetables and drink organic fresh squeezed juices which contain natural plant sterols. Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables are particularly helpful in balancing estrogen.

5. Cook in glass or stainless steel. Plastic can have an “estrogenic effect” on the body.

6. Increase exercise, which increases DHEA and other important hormones.

7. Increase weight-training exercises to help build bone mass and stimulate Human Growth Hormone that keeps us young with a positive attitude.

8. Take time to do yoga, meditation and other relaxation exercises which stimulate hormone functions, decrease anxiety and balance brain chemicals.

9. Read books on hormone balance by Johnathan Wright, MD, Uzzi Reiss, MD, or others.

10. Get saliva tested for hormone levels over a period of a month. This test examines your total cycle and is more relevant than a blood test.

11. Go to a health care practicioner who has a long history with hormone balancing. It is a very intricate science.

12. Take a good vitamin made from natural ingredients with antioxidants for food cell function, bone health and hundreds of other body functions.

13. Have fun and laugh. This simple and enjoyable part of life decreases the stress chemicals and helps build the immune system. The bottom line is there are alternatives to the dangerous synthetic hormones that have been prescribed for decades. There always have been. It is up to us to be proactive and seek the solutions that have been around for centuries.

Thought this was such a great article because it suggests we be proactive and not rely on doctors to figure out how to restore balance to our bodies. I wish someone would have given me this article a long time ago. I googled the authors suggested and have a few written by Dr. Uzzi Reiss in my Amazon shopping cart right now. When I go in next week for my gallbladder and thyroid test, I am going to ask about doing a saliva test throughout the month of October to see if anything fluctuates. I am doing most of the other things so I feel like I am on the right track.

A Pep Talk For All You Wonderful Women Out There.....

I promised some friends of mine a few weeks ago that I would stop the obsessive research on how to cure myself….I even made a bet with them and for the last two weeks I have stuck to it. This morning I woke up and checked my blackberry and saw I had my daily update for Team Inspire (RESOLVE). Usually I glance at the daily topics and move on but I went a little further this morning seeing that one of the topic discussions was one I know very well, POF. The person who started the discussion has been diagnosed for a long time and was searching for information on what her options could be.  Seeing this entry of course relit the spark to my need to do research and since then I have scouring through the pages of discussions on POF on the RESOLVE site. I have to say that after doing this, I feel very discouraged and sad. I wasn’t able to find a single story of someone with POF healing their body or conceiving on their own.  I know it may seem a little unrealistic of me, but I still believe I will eventually find out what is keeping my body from ovulating and have a child.  I believe that most of us women who have been diagnosed as POF represent a group where western medicine has just plain failed us.  Basically, there is something wrong with us and doctors don’t want to take the time to find out what it is so they give us the whole “you have premature menopause, but we don’t know why. Sometimes it just happens.” Sorry, I mean I am not a doctor but that explanation is just not acceptable to me especially when it is concerning a process that my body was built to carry out. If a body process has full on shut down, there is a reason for it and that should be a concern to a doctor. I believe that nutrition and lifestyle have a very large part in the growing epidemic of infertility. I also believe that if the same doctors who typically throw aside their patients after their POF diagnosis would just recommend less stress, some yoga and a healthier diet that many of the “infertile” patients would find their problems might be solved.  I also have to say that even after being diagnosed as having “POF” for almost a year and a half, I am still not exactly sure what that means. For the first year, I was told by several doctors that it means I have no eggs and no chances of conceiving. For the past six months, I have been seeing an OBGYN who specializes in working with women with POF who says that I do have eggs just not the hormones to get my body to go through a complete cycle.  I have also read a few books in the past six months that back up my most recent doctor’s opinion on the matter.  Regardless, maybe doctors should figure out exactly what it means to diagnose patients with POF before sending women into the gloom of an infertility diagnosis. I have seen many positive changes in my body over the past year and a half. I went from having flattened ovaries with no eggs and very low hormones to having round ovaries with standing follicles and good levels of hormones. I was able to keep myself from having to go on HRT and have had a few cycles. All of which I was told would not be possible in the first year and a half. Through research of my own, I have had tests run as I see fit to be able to rule possible causes of this problem out and am positive I will eventually find the problem. I believe that my celiacs disease caused some damage and have been on a strict gluten free diet for almost two months.  I am currently looking into thyroid and gallbladder possibilities as thyroid disease runs in my family and I took Yasmin for almost 6 years…for those of you who haven’t heard…the makers of Yasmin & Yaz are in the middle of  lawsuits from women who took their products and suffered severe side effects one of them being gall bladder disease.  All I am saying is to you wonderful women out there who have been diagnosed with POF or any other fertility problem don’t give up. Do some research, change your diet and find a doctor that is up on the topic. Our bodies were made to reproduce and drive men crazy.  Our body wouldn’t shut this process down unless there was a reason for it!!!