Archive for research
This is how I feel now…
I have noticed the longer I go without the pill, the less & less sleep I get. I kind of feel like a zombie. I feel like my body is edgy & buzzing all the time because I’m not getting rest. And I’m starting to put 2 and 2 together.
For the final 6 months or so that I was at college I was going nuts because I wasn’t sleeping. Ironically, I had been on the shot for 2 years prior for the final 6 months I wasn’t on it because I saw an endocrinologist who told me to get off of it because it was bad for your bones. I have to admit I never put 2 and 2 together that being off hormones takes away my sleep until now. And now I want to know why. Because really I couldn’t live like this.
So my temper is bad, I can’t sleep, I get super hungry, I gain weight and feel edgy/dizzy etc. Ironically my blood sugar doesn’t seem as bad. I can tolerate a wider variety of foods but when the sugar starts going down a few hours later and I get hungry, I’m more ravenous and desperate. The same things that happen when I am off that beta blocker. I started thinking what do these 2 drugs have in common? What part of the body would they affect or slow down? Of course the thyroid would be one part, but there’s nothing that can be done about that so it doesn’t really matter. The only other part I can think of is the adrenals. I’ve thought of going back into my dr. and explaining what I’ve noticed but I think it could be a big waste of time.
Afterall, as soon as I get my closing $ and that birth control pill in my hot little hand it will be in my mouth so I can sleep again. I can’t wait 6 weeks for them to order some test a you have to get an injection in the hospital to get some result (and that’s assuming that they would even want to do the test). So this is upsetting because I’m realizing that I may never really know what’s going on. It’s complicated. But then again I need to start sleeping good again, immediately.
There’s a reason why I’m wondering about all of this. A few months ago I saw a show on tv about a woman who was diagnosed with PCOS but really had something called Non-Classical Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. Basically it’s an adrenal problem that causes all the same symptoms, even the polycystic ovaries. But I’ve never been tested for it and I don’t think most people diagnosed with PCOS are tested for it either.
Over the summer I did an open house for an OBGYN. Ironically she had a book laying out about PCOS. My open house was slow so I picked up the book and thumbed through it- looking for any mention of this other problem. And I found it. It said that in order to be diagnosed with PCOS, a dr. is first supposed to test for the NCAH and rule it out. But I don’t think this is being done for most people. Quite upsetting.
Frustrated
So I went back to my dr. today since she had taunted me in the past by mentioning doing a “permanent solution” for the Graves. But this time she just acted like there’s nothing that can/will be done. As long as the labs are normal nothing. It doesn’t matter if you have the eye disease, a goiter & the symptoms.
Of course I got really upset and explained that I see this as an autoimmune disease with antibodies that are making me sick and I could care less where my labs fall, I’m sick of dealing with it. So she’s doing the bloodwork again. Whatever. And she basically said the antibodies will kill the gland off over time. Who cares? Why should I have to wait as my gland slowly dies off and fights back over and over?
She then once again mentioned that I might have another autoimmune disease too like Sjogren’s. Which she had mentioned last time. And I asked her if she had done any tests for it because last time she said she would. But last time my ANA was retested and was no longer positive so she said they didn’t do further tests since it would be rare to have it without the ANA. The ANA are the lupus antibodies but they’re present in other diseases. I’ve always thought that could be a possibility but even when my ANA was really high and I was carted off to a specialist it still wasn’t high enough to be lupus. And when further testing was done at that point it didn’t show signs of specific other diseases. So I’m beyond fed up. I don’t understand why this is a disease that is written off. Like you’re supposed to just live with it.
Even if I had another disease too, some of the symptoms of Graves are too specific to blame on a second disease on the side. Getting overheated, red face, anger. Blah, blah, blah. And since I told her my eyes have been gritty and hurting lately she just talked about eye drops. This recommendation NEVER sits well with me. It doesn’t provide much relief. I have only found eye pain relief from taking BUGLEWEED. My experience has been that you have to go against the antibodies, not pour drops in your eyes and expect them to feel fine.
Maybe I will have to try to scrape together $ and go back to acupuncture, it sounds like it may be my only option. I might go to a guy my massage therapist friend knows since he’s way cheaper. In a way, I wanted to see from this appt whether to try to get help from western medicine and now I’m like, well I guess I got an answer on that one. I do’n't know how to change this into a disease that drs actually care about and will do research & case studies to be able to treat a plethora of different cases. Because no 2 people with 1 disease will be completely alike.
the latest
well, I still can’t seem to get caught up on my bills, even since I’ve started working full-time again. I’ve been toying with the idea of going with a less expensive acupuncturist since my Massage Therapist friend knows of one. I feel bad even thinking that though since I really like my acupuncturist and feel like we have a rapor and I want to be loyal. Plus, she worked at a hospital in China. But money is an ongoing problem with me, so we’ll see. I would at least find out if the same herbal formulas are available at a different place before I would try a new place out.
I still don’t sleep much during the workweek. I am not a morning person, nor do I ever really want to be one. I have to be at work at 7:55 and I usually get there at 7:58 which is already a problem. I’m hoping I can save up money and jump into real estate full-time at some point, but I don’t know how soon that could happen. Things keep coming up. At least with real estate there are no rules about what time you have to get there or anything like that. (Well, at my company there aren’t).
I went running in the woods at that park earlier this week. I figured out which way to go so that I wouldn’t have to really do any uphills. So I did the whole loop and it probably wasn’t too far but I felt proud of myself. But for me running in the woods is way easier than on the roads. I still hope to do a 5k at some point but feel no immediacy about when. Since I felt bad that one week when I ran 2 days in a row, I’m not pushing myself at all. Once a week or so is fine by me. A girl I work with is going to walk a 5k in a month or so and her saying that got me thinking about it more. So who knows. But my muscles have been hurting a lot lately. Not because I did anything. Just because I guess it’s a part of the Graves. My dr. had suspected fibromyalgia at one point because I have Lupus antibodies and I had a high sed rate once. I’ve been sent to rheumatologists twice and they just said it was the Graves that causes those labs. I do think I have some kind of chronic inflammatory issue going on from the Graves and the achiness has been bothering me lately and freaking me out, considering that I’m in my twenties. It makes we worried about what it might feel like when I’m actually old. But I do still have hope that things will come together one way or another. I feel like I have new weapons by looking outside the box.
I also came across an interesting tidbit online yesterday about PCOS. If you go to the wikipedia page on it, at the bottom there was information about a supplement that supposedly treats all of the problems by fixing a missing link in the insulin process. It looks like there are actual published studies on this substance and it really does work, the problem is that it is pretty much impossible to get in the U.S. But I guess there is a similar supplement available. I may try it at some point, because I am getting more and more fed up with the PCOS options that are out there. I always think,”Who has the money to take Metformin and end up in the hospital all the time from the side effects?” Not I said the little red hen, Not I.
I also always feel the weight of that stigma, where they say that people with blood sugar problems/diabetes got it because they gained weight and didn’t take care of themselves. I constantly see this message all over magazines and the media and it makes me mad and I feel the unfairness of my situation. I loved working out and suddenly had to stop from being so weak from the Graves/blood sugar problems that came on at the same time. I hate the diabetes stigma, I think it’s an unfair message to be propogating. Instead, we should talk more about having a food supply that is closer to Canadas. Take out the MSG from our Campbells soup, our chips, our sausage and everything else. Take out the corn syrup, the excessive salt, the preservatives. I think it’s not that people don’t try, it’s that in America our food supply is basically tainted.
Prime example. My mom had a Curves magazine and I was reading it. They were saying not to eat corn syrup – it makes you fat. Well, well, well – and what do we have in Curves cereal which claims to make you thin? …..Corn Syrup!!!!
Extremely Interesting PCOS/Acupuncture study
A Swedish/Italian controlled study from the Biology of Reproduction Journal, (date): involved inducing a state of poly cystic ovaries in rats, with injections of estradiol valerate. Increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system resulted, followed by increased concentrations of nerve growth factor in ovaries, and the adrenal glands. Within 60 days the rats developed polycystic ovariess. The control group received no therapy and maintained features of PCOS. Those treated with acupuncture showed a reduction in the hyperactivity of the ovarian peripheral sympathetic nerve fibers, reduction of the increased nerve growth factor concentrations within the ovaries to normal and reduced the weight of the poly cystic ovaries. This group of doctors then set out with the aim of reproducing similar results in women with PCOS. The study concluded, “We have shown that repeated electroacupuncture treatments restore regular ovulations in the anovulatory women with PCOS. In addition, acupuncture influenced neruoendocrine and endocrine parameters indicative of PCOS, such as LH/FSH ratios, mean testosterone concentrations, and beta-endorphin concentrations, which reduced significantly.”
This study illustrates the hormonal origin of this disease process, and the fact that it can be induced artificially. The induction of this hormonal trauma produces a physiologic state of stress which raises the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, producing a disease syndrome. Acupuncture treatments were effective at resolving this pathologic process because it reduces the level of hypersympathetic nervous system response, relaxing the whole neuroendocrine system.
Source: http://www.easternharmonyclinic.com/medart/marl06.html
Prevention Article
I found an article about acupuncture that was published in Prevention. There are grammar mistakes on this website but I thought it did a good job of explaining things for people who don’t understand it.
