My doctor appointment yesterday in Austin was FINALLY the answer I've been looking for, for TEN years!!!!!! For 10 years I've suffered from insomnia, lack of energy, unexplained weight gain even though I exercise like crazy and eat healthy, thinning hair, fogginess/hard to remember things, painful periods that put me in my bed for a week, feeling of depression, anxiety, decreased libido and the list goes on & on. Doctor's would do yearly blood work along with my physical and tell me everything came back in the "normal" range. I was prescribed anti-depressants and/or anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills, birth control, etc. I was always told the way I was feeling was "normal" or to get used to it since I was getting older! I would tell the doctor I wasn't taking synthetic drugs unless I absolutely had too. I kept telling them I didn't care what the tests said, that I knew my body and something was wrong and there had to be an another answer. I was so tired of being handed a "band-aid". (just wanting to prescribe something to fix the issue at hand but never get down to the root of the problem.)
We are certainly blessed to have conventional doctors, however Pharmaceutical companies have been lining the doctors pockets for years hence, I believe, the lack of doctors willingness to prescribe safer (non synthetic) prescriptions. Many conventional doctors ignore the effectiveness of "bio identical's".
Fast Forward to my doctor appointment yesterday in Austin. (http://www.austinbioidenticaldoctor.com/)
There are only 30 "Board Certified" doctors in the United States that deal w/ Bio Identical Hormone balancing. (There are 28+ years of scientific research w/ 100's of studies in the US and Europe that have demonstrated that bio identical hormones are equally or more effective than synthetics and safer.) This gentleman has an office in Austin and Dallas (this was my first visit). I walked out of the office feeling validated...FINALLY. My blood work showed that again I came back in the "normal" range BUT because he tests for things that the average doctor doesn't, he was able to find what is wrong.
I in fact, suffer from hypothyroidism. My body is not producing nearly enough Progesterone. My body isn't producing enough testosterone. My body isn't absorbing Vitamins D (strange since I'm always in the sun), 3 of the 6 cortisol levels are extremely low, 2 of my 3 DHEAS's are low, I'm border line diabetic because of all the chemical imbalances. Thankfully once these are balanced I won't have to worry about the diabetes either. (I'm betting a conventional doctor would have looked at my insulin issue and never have researched the root of the problem and this vicious cycle would have just continued. They would have just said I had diabetes and prescribed something. Again, a "band-aid" approach.) I have an iron deficiency. My serotonin is extremely low and my adrenals are shot. (I think I got everything in here that's wrong with me. WOW, I'm FALLING APART. Good thing I still have my sense of humor.) Crazy how hormones play such a huge roll in our body and next to nothing is known throughout the medical profession. (I'm actually quite angry when I think about it, as TEN years have passed with much frustration on my part.) Thankfully my Melaleuca Vitamins have kept me dragging along. Without them, I wouldn't have even been dragging. Scary thought.
Positive side to all of this, I'm now on the path to wellness. A compounding pharmacy out of Utah is drop shipping my prescriptions to me early this next week (Progesterone, Testosterone, thyroid) along with my other supplements I picked up yesterday. (I"ll gladly take anything that's prescribed from this doctor since it's not synthetic.) Of course a conventional doctor would want to prescribe Synthroid (the possible side effects are almost as worse as the hypothyroidism, is ineffective with the weight gain and can cause serious or life threatening toxicity). Hmmm, I wonder how long studies were actually done on this synthetic drug.
(BTW, until 9 years ago women going to conventional doctors were prescribed the FDA approved synthetic hormone Premarin, derived from the urine of pregnant horses; Provera, a synthetic progestin; or Prempro, a combo of the two. Premarin was the bestselling drug in the US in 2001, generating $2 billion a year. In 1994 a study led by the National Institutes of Health called the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was started w/ the hope of establishing that Premarin and Provera would, beyond relieving menopause symptoms, protect aging women from heart attacks, strokes, osteoporosis and cancer. On July 9, 2002, however WHI came to an abrupt halt. The study proved unequivocally that the drugs were unsafe and significant factors in increasing the risk of heart attacks, strokes and breast cancer in the more than 16,000 women studied. This led doctors to take millions of women off Premarin, Prempro and Provera overnight. Predictably, these women started to feel horrible in the aftermath of the drugs' sudden withdrawal, and their physicians told them there were no alternatives. Instead they prescribed antidepressants or birth controls pills with shoddy results. One year after the disaster, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology developed new guidelines that encouraged physicians to prescribe the same drugs in lower doses for shorter periods of time. Yet, and this is the key, the safety of this "low dose option" was NEVER proven scientifically.)
I of course wanted to know when I'd feel better and no longer be fat. :-) I was told this was a common question and of course they couldn't pin point a date as we each heal at a different speed. However, in 3 months I should notice a change, 6 months I should see a significant change.In a year I'll be a brand new woman!!
In 3 months I'll go back in for another blood work up to gage where I'm at. I will re-visit blood work every 3 months the first year and hopefully only have to visit once a year thereafter.
High five to walking the natural path and finding the answer!! :-)
Looking forward to a year from now.
