Hormones are tough man, and I have been hearing more and more about them over the last several years. SO, I’ve decided to take a leap of faith and tell you what I have been experiencing the last 2 years in the hopes that you will find a tribe, see a light at the end of the tunnel, and maybe feel the hope you’re searching for.
Let’s start at the start……
I won’t take you WAY back, but I will tell you that hormone imbalances of ANY kind do not come on overnight. They creep in slowly and most of the time we don’t even notice.
I have had my fair share of hormone issues as a woman. Some came on naturally and others I may have inadvertently caused. I have had 2 healthy pregnancies that resulted in my 2 beautiful children, and I have had 1 terribly hard pregnancy that resulted in a late term loss. My hormones took a dive then and unknown to me, never fully recovered.
Let’s talk 2 years ago…
I was working at a large gym with the atmosphere of a resort. Although the resort feel was in place for the members, a place like this can often be a large stress pocket for employees. Couple that with the fact that I wasn’t feeling all that great when I took the job, and I set myself up for pure disaster.
Symptoms began to appear that were odd, but not life threatening.
I had trouble sleeping, especially staying asleep.
I was MOODY……what felt like all the time.
My periods became erratic (though I never skipped them because that just never happens to me).
I got sick anytime somebody breathed on me.
I was fatigued to the point of nearly falling asleep at the wheel driving home….at 3 in the afternoon.
I couldn’t recover from workouts.
I felt stiff and began to lose flexibility.
My sex drive went to ZERO.
My weightlifting (I was training for a power lifting meet at the time) suffered and every workout I had to lift less and less.
I felt like I was drowning; at home, at work, in relationships, and as a functioning member of society.
Depression and anxiety hit me HARD.
I was gaining weight....like crazy. I gained upwards of 40 pounds (some was muscle, but still!) in about a year.
I would wake in the middle of the night with panic attacks but not know why.
I felt like I was going crazy.
I would forget things I knew, including words I used ALL THE TIME.
That’s a lot to take in, but you have been nodding along saying, “Yep, me too”.
If that’s you, there is hope!
The turning point actually came as I was nearly in tears in my boss’s office one day during a performance meeting. My boss was an RD and our meetings had turned into sessions with her on how to get my health back on track. She suggested a hormone test to look into my cortisol.
Cortisol is a stress hormone, it is NOT a bad guy, but it can cause disruptions.
I picked a day and spit into tiny vials and sent my spit to a lab.
A couple of weeks later I was on the phone with one of our corporate dieticians as she explained to me that my cortisol patterns were all over the place (explaining the chronic fatigue coupled with panic attacks) and, more than that, my DHEA was non-existent.
What is DHEA?
It’s a precursor to testosterone, meaning that if you aren’t making that you’re probably aren’t making test.
SO, I asked around for a hormone specialist and was referred to a doc by a client of mine who had gone through something similar.
The first session was fine enough. She explained the blood work being drawn and the intervention of pellet therapy should my blood work prove I needed it. I was back in the office a week later with a testosterone reading of less than 10…..which she said basically meant I had none. She also wanted to put me on NatureThroid due to a low functioning thyroid.
So, I started treatment.
The first few months were OK, but I still struggled with a lot of symptoms. So every time I went back, she would pump me up with some more testosterone (I use BioTe for hormone replacement therapy). She also kept lowering my calories because I was still gaining weight.
A year into treatment my symptoms were worse than ever and I started to carry a tire of weight around my midsection. I’m a trainer ya’ll! So, this affected my self esteem, and depression and anxiety rooted in way deep at this point.
Science Point: If you keep pumping MORE testosterone than the human body needs, it will convert it to estrogen in order to survive…..hence my weight gain and further descent into hormone hell.
SO, I quit.
I mean, like I quit.
My husband and I decided that the stress was too much on me at that point. I quit my job, quit my hormone replacement, quit EVERYTHING.
Can we talk about if it gets better?
I wish I had known a few things before I got started, and yes, I am going through therapy and now and it’s going much better (I’ll get deeper into that next week).
For now, what can YOU do if you nodded YES to almost all of the symptoms above?
FIRST: Seek out a doctor who will listen and treat you as an INDIVIDUAL.
SECOND: Make sure you get the right tests. You want the whole run of your hormones tested, not just TSH and sex hormones…..there’s a lot more and we will discuss them soon.
THIRD: Enlist the help of a professional. Since going through all of this I have studied interventions that WORK and found out even the people with the best intentions were dead wrong when it came to my specific hormones. So, I got certified and seek to help those struggling through this.
FOURTH: Prepare yourself. If your hormones are the problem, you will need to take 50 steps back before you can even think about taking a single step forward. Take a deep breath; it will be worth it in the end.
How can you start TODAY?
Sign up for the MINDFUL MOVEMENT CHALLENGE.
It’s a free challenge filled with gentle, mindful movement that will help balance hormones and give you a steady foundation from where you can grow everything else.
I promise to give you the rest of my struggle story next week AND some tips on what you can do to help yourself. For now, does any of this resonate with you? Were you nodding your head in agreement or thinking, “Thank goodness I’m not crazy!”? If so, please set up a consult with me so we can discuss your options and help you feel better sooner.
Until next time, stay healthy and stay with the good fight,
Michelle
The post Hormones: My Story (part 1) appeared first on Michelle C Fitness.