The Beginning of it all. The seed that planted the tree.
Alrighty everyone this is going to be a fairly long story so find a place to get comfy, have a cup of tea or coffee and we can get to it!
Keep in mind this is about Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. Hormonal symptoms of this chronic illness are not easy to share so please don’t be an asshole. This is a sensitive topic for me and I’m choosing to share it with readers so those who are experiencing symptoms and/or who have been diagnosed with PCOS understand they aren't alone, and they don’t think they are crazy.
June-July 2016 was a memorable summer. I was 16 at the time and it was the summer transitioning from sophomore to Junior year. The summer prior, my family and I hosted a French exchange student through a program partnership between these Foreign exchange students and my school. While we hosted her, we became close. So much so she suggested I visit her the next summer and so I did! I stayed with her and her family for a month in the south of France. During my first week, I ended up getting my period. Little did I know that would be the last period I’d have on my own (without medical intervention) for the next few years.
I come back from my trip in late July and still hadn’t had my period for the month. It was normal for me to have a period once every two months vs. every month pretty much since I started my period so I didn’t too much of it. Then August came…then September..and then early October…I had just turned 17. By then I realized I hadn’t had my period since June which was worrisome. I was experiencing odd symptoms like losing hair on top of my head and started seeing some darker hair on the side of my face that was beyond peach fuzz. I also gained 30-40 pounds in 3 months
Both of my parents were concerned, so they both joined me on a trip to a gynecologist to get everything figured out. I was then diagnosed with PCOS considering all my symptoms and was also told that my chances of having children on my own were very low and probably won’t be able to have them. In 2009, knowledge of PCOS was VERY minimal and Doctors today still have a difficult time understanding it so the approach to getting diagnosed varies. For some, it takes between 2-3 doc visits to get a diagnosis and they don’t necessarily treat it as a whole - depending on your symptoms they compartmentalize the treatments. For example out of all my of symptoms the gynecologist only knew how to get my periods back. I was put on hormone therapy for 11 days and then that would Kick start my period. I was then to let my period go on for 7 days then start on Birth Control to continue regularity.
Birth Control was absolutely brutal. It made me gain even more weight, I was retaining water, it made me moody, I was getting more acne and it just overall made me feel worse than better. Waking up in the morning was a nightmare because the minute I’d sit up, I’d get nauseous. Every morning was a constant battle and I would vomit…it was like having morning sickness for two months. I was late for school. I would barely sleep. I just felt horrible all the time. I eventually spoke with my gynecologist and told her I couldn’t do it anymore and needed something different. She put me on Loestrin FE and there was a massive difference with the morning sickness. Everything else stayed the same, but for the first time in months, I didn’t dread waking up in the morning.
I stayed on Birth Control until the summer of 2012. I remember the moment I woke one day in May and thought, I’m going to have my next period and won’t start the Birth Control again after. I remember very clearly speaking to my mom about it, telling her this was what I felt would be one of the best decisions I will make ( and it was ) - I was so sure of it even before knowing the outcome. It was this intuitive feeling that almost felt like my body was speaking to me, telling me to stop with the Birth Control. I listened and it was again, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
October of 2012 I started having more symptoms (not related to stopping Birth Control) of Ovarian cancer and so I got screened for Ovarian Cancer and it all came clean thankfully, however, I was told to get Blood Work done to get a fuller picture of everything. I was referred to an endocrinologist after to go through the results of my labs and was told that I was pre-diabetic, my testosterone levels were over the roof for a woman(they were in the ’80s) and my hormones were not stable. I have then prescribed a Type 2 diabetic medication called Metformin. Another nightmare.
Women with PCOS are insulin resistant (if they don’t have their endocrine system in order) and that is essentially a step away from being full-blown diabetic. The reason why PCOS can cause diabetes is that once your hormones are compromised, so is your endocrine system. When looking at a healthy person, the process looks something like this; they will eat their food and when that food is processed, insulin is produced. Once the insulin is produced, the body has one or two options: A) Convert Insulin to Energy (this is what healthy people do) or B) Convert Insulin to Fat. Insulin resistance is when the body doesn’t know how to convert the insulin to energy. Its default is to store fat which is why women with PCOS gain weight very easily.
It’s hard to fight a war inside your body, one that you know nothing about if you haven’t been diagnosed or properly educated by the doctor that diagnosed you. All the information I am sharing here is information I learned on my own. My doctors never shared any of this with me.
My endocrinologist said to take this medication and it will help me lose weight and get me back to healthier A1C levels. I was prescribed 850mg tablets to take 1 pill, 3 times a day totaling 2550mg of this medication per day. I was told to start slowly. She didn’t say how…she just said start slowly. To me, this meant, Day 1: take 1 pill. Day 2: take 2 pills. Day 3 and all days moving forward take 3 pills. 1 in the morning, afternoon, and night. This medication took over my life - even more than the birth control because at least with the birth control the sickness was in the morning, then it would subside. With Metformin it was all the time, every day and it put me in the hospital. This medication is notorious for causing Lactic Acidosis which means that there are fatal amounts of Lactic Acid in the bloodstream. I barely had a social life. I was living in my bathroom and to put it bluntly it was coming out of both ends. My doctor was right, it would help me lose weight because I couldn’t keep anything down.
I called an on-call nurse at our local hospital to see if these side effects warranted a hospital visit. Because I knew that these side effects were expected, I figured there shouldn’t be much to worry about but my parents were worried so I made the call... the nurse told me it would be best to get to the hospital to get checked out because she feared that I was experiencing Lactic Acidosis. The ER doctor asked how much of the medication I was taking. I told him everything and he looked at me and said that it was surprising my endocrinologist never went over it all with me. Starting slow means taking 1 pill for about 2-3 weeks and then increase to 1.5 pills for another week or two then 2 pills and so on until I got to 3 a day. My blood sugar was super low which explains the vomiting, the chills, the weakness.
I had a follow-up visit with my endocrinologist who was very aware of my ER visits since putting me on this medication. She told she couldn’t believe how bad I was reacting. The word for Word: “none of my other patients have this much trouble with the medication” And I said, “Yeah probably because I am pre-diabetic. I’m not diabetic and taking a type 2 diabetic medication.”. She said ok let’s try with one and see what happens and so I did. One was the only amount I could tolerate. Anything more, it would get me sick. I hated taking the medication. By late 2013, I had done my due diligence to try so I can look back and say that I tried with everything I had and it didn’t work. I told my endocrinologist and she kept pushing it on me despite a desperate plea to stop.
I got so sick and tired of being tired, and not have answers. I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2009, at this point it’s late 2013 and no one has gotten me better. I took a good look at myself and told my self “If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself” and so I researched everything I could about PCOS, the hormone fluctuations, how each hormone worked on its own, in sync with others and how they worked against each other. I learned what Insulin resistance meant and pre-type 2 diabetes. I also learned that Insulin Resistant meant Carbohydrate Intolerant. I researched to eat clean and how to exercise. 2 days a week wasn’t cutting it. I then started a plan to eat clean, organic food, starting to exercise every other day, drink plenty of water, and how to supplement myself properly. I also got rid of all of my medication.
Late December/ Early January I started the process slowly. For 3 weeks it’s giving up bread, potatoes, pasta, dessert, fruit even… for three weeks. I didn’t work out for those 3 weeks. Just changed how I ate because I knew implementing so many changes quickly was not the healthiest way to set myself up for success. the last week of the 3 weeks I started implementing supplements to help with deficiencies I had. I was severely deficient in Vitamin D, I needed Myo-Inositol and more supplements I’ll mention in another post specifically about Supplements. Then I started to work out 4 days a week. Every other day. Because I lived in the city in my dorm for University, I stopped taking the school’s shuttle to class. I’d walk to class, then class to the gym then gym to home. This helped to keep me moving throughout the day. Food for Breakfast was eggs, avocado, and whole-grain toast with coffee in the morning then for lunch it would be chicken, avocado, cherry tomato, olive oil, and 1 pita bread and had the same thing after the gym for dinner. Snacks were Almond Butter, or if I was craving something sweet, it would be strawberries and blueberries. And nightly I’d have a Healing Hot Cocoa. It was Almond Milk, Cocoa Powder, a dash of Allspice, Cinnamon, and Vanilla Extract. Cinnamon is really good to keep Blood sugar level without spiking so everything I ate had a purpose.
2 months go by and I got my period for the first time on my own without medication since that summer in France. This was the most encouraging this to happen because this just motivated me, even more, to keep going and to stay on track. 8 months go by and it is August of 2014. I visit my Endocrinologist and we go over lab results I had done a few days before. I walked into her office and she had these models of fat - what 10 pounds of fat look like, or what 5 pounds like. She had an equivalent of 30 pounds of fat models on her desk. She told me to look at the fat molds and then she told me that’s how much fat I lost. Then we went over my numbers and I had completely reversed my pre-type 2 diabetic diagnoses, lowered my testosterone levels by 40 points, and leveled out my hormones. It’s 2021 and have had my period every month for 7 days since.
Autoimmune conditions are no one size fits all nor are the same over the years. What I mean is, the condition changes as we get older. Some get better, some get worse and what worked 6 years ago might not work today. Conditions are constantly evolving as we evolve, age, and grow. And sometimes when you have one condition, you are at risk for others and develop them over time. This can be discouraging, but at the same time, healing holistically will help keep things manageable - so much so you forget you have anything going on.
On the site Ill dive deeper into everything I mentioned here and more - I’ll talk about how I got my hair to grow back, I’ll talk about how I reversed my Pre-diabetes in more detail (such as meals, exercises, etc), supplements I take, other issues I have and how it’s connected to PCOS, how I treat those. I will also dive into being intentional about what we put on our body, the products we buy and those affect us.
But most importantly I talk about moderation. Everything in moderation. I find that even after we’ve found stability in our health, we maintain that strict outlook on what to eat or drink, and honestly, screw that. I’ll talk about how to find moderation and doing it healthily. If we plan on living for 60 more years, a few bowls of pasta or a few slices pizzas isn’t going to kill you. I promise you. Especially made the way I make them!
I’m so excited to share all this information with you all and looking forward to helping at least just ONE person. Then this would have all been worth it. :)