A holistic approach.

 

 :: photo credit here :: 

I'm one of those people who looks healthy, but on the inside not so much. Apparently, my insides are all out of wack and my body has had enough.

For years I have been trying to lose weight. I have proof of it here and here and here. But no matter how hard I worked out, how much sugar I stopped eating, I could never lose any weight. And then there were the headaches. A few years ago I started having horrible, migraine worthy, headaches that were making me miserable. Are still making me miserable.

My "regular" doctors were no help. The answers that I received were to work harder and to see a neurologist for the headaches. A neurologist? That advice was neither reasonable or helpful. I was frustrated and beginning to feel like this was simply my life. I had started resigning myself to the fact that this was how it was going to be for me. But one of my best friends snapped me out of all that crazy talk.

My friend Amy, one of the smartest, prettiest, healthiest, all around best people I know, recommended that I find a holistic doctor. She had started going to one several years ago and it changed her life. She reminded me that God had given me this precious gift--a body to take care of--and I needed to do whatever it took to take care of myself. So I started to search for a new doctor. I live in Southern California. Finding a holistic doctor shouldn't be hard.

So yesterday I went to see my new naturopathic doctor. I was a little nervous. I had no idea what to expect. I'm all about being as natural as possible. Whole foods and yoga and healthy choices, yeah, I'm all about it. But would this lady end up wanting to do some kind of weird voodoo treatment that involved chanting and drinking some kind of weird, homemade brown stuff out of Bell jars?

Not even close.

I liked her right away. She spent a lot of time just listening to me. Typed out everything I said with a keyboard in her lap while never taking her eyes off of me. I've never had a doctor listen that closely before so it was a little strange at first. But I could tell that she was working on putting a puzzle together about what was going on with me.

I told her that my main symptoms--in a nutshell--are an inability to lose weight no matter what I do and horrible headaches 2-3 times a week. She asked me a ton a questions based on what I was saying. Told her about a menstrual problem in 2009 (non-stop bleeding) that led to a D&C and Ablation and because of that I no longer have a period. Told her about my occasional "funks" and my low energy levels. Told her about my stresses with motherhood, a wife that travels, and regular life crap.

And then I held my breath, praying that she wasn't going to tell me that I needed to work out harder and see a neurologist.

She didn't diagnosis me in a traditional sense, but explained everything that she thinks is going on. Right away she said she wanted to run all of the blood work for the hormone tests that my OBGYN didn't do when I was having my bleeding issues. So I have to get my regular doctor to order those labs for me. She actually wants to try and bring back my period. I thought that I had just gotten lucky not having one anymore, that I had one some kind of great female lottery, but she said that not having one has most likely effected my estrogen levels (hopefully the blood work will show that.) Basically it's like I'm in early menopause which she said isn't good at all for someone so young (loved it when she said that) because it will be bad in the long run for my bones and heart. She put me on an herb, Maca, to help bring back my period.

She also thinks I have issues with my adrenals (adrenal fatigue), that I'm hypoglycemic (big, huge problems with stabilizing my blood sugar) which is causing all of my headache issues and that I possibly have a thyroid problem. Wow. I didn't realize that I was such a mess! All of this, along with the hormones and stress, are all related, all connected. They feed off of each other like the perfect storm. They effect my my metabolism, cortisol levels, and my weighty issues. When she was explaining it all to me I had my own little light bulb moment. The moment was that someone cared enough to put all of my symptoms togehter, to make sense of them all, and offer me a way to get better.

She wants to detox my liver, which is necessary for the blood sugar to stabilize. This is a huge part of my getting healthy again. She has put me on the Paleo Diet--70% veggies and a few grains, 10-15% protein, and 10-15% good fats. No processed anything, no sugar, no caffeine except for in teas if possible. I have to make a smoothie every morning with a protein powder called Vital Clear (for liver detox), spinach or kale, red cabbage, beets, a good fat, and any other veggies I want to put in there. Can also put cinnamon, water, an one fruit like a pear or mango if I want (uh, yeah, I'll probably want.) I also have to put 2 supplements--turmeric and resveratrol--in my smoothie. Basically, this will be my "medicine" every morning that I have to take, along with the Maca. I have to do this for 2-3 months, which is usually the amount of time that it takes your liver to detox.

I go back to see her at the end of August. By that time I will have my blood work back and have a liver that is partially detoxed and I should be feeling the positive effects of it. Adjusting to this new diet won't be an easy change, but honestly it's the way all of us should be eating anyway! But the bad thing is that I forgot to ask her about alcohol. I'm assuming that it's a no because of the sugars. I've gotta add a lot more protein to my diet and be better about what kinds of snacks I eat, always putting fruit with a protein, fat or veggie. I shouldn't eat fruit alone because of the blood sugar spike it causes for me.

That's probably a lot more info than you, my kind reader, ever wanted to know about me, but writing this helped me process a lot of the info. I desperately want to be faithful to this and stick with it. I really believe that if I can do this that I will feel like the way God intended me to feel.

To be continued...

I'm still here. All of me...plus some.

:: photo credit jena liebig ::

You know how anorexics walk around believing they are fat when in truth they are very, very skinny? I have the opposite problem. I walk around thinking that I look just fine and then I see a picture of myself and realize that some 40-year-old fat woman has taken over my body without asking my permission!

So I'm off today. Off to the doctor. I'm wishing that it was a plastic surgeon so he/she could replace this irritable fat woman with a much more desirable version of myself, but no. I'm actually going to see a naturopathic doctor to look me over from head-to-toe. I'm tired of working out and getting nowhere. I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of constantly waking up with a headache ("It's not a tumor!") So as a 40th birthday treat to myself, I'm going to find out what's wrong with me.

The Golfer offered to tell me what was wrong with me for free. Yeah, he's hysterical.

I'm just hoping that this doctor doesn't tell me that this cranky 40-year-old fat woman has permanently taken over my body and I should just learn to meditate and get over it. Cuz that would really suck.

(P.S. I had no intention of anyone ever seeing the above picture. Sure, it's great of the boys. They look quite sweet actually. But there's this fat woman in between them and she's really starting to piss me off.)
  

File Under: Wish I Had Said It

paying attention part 11: so what would happen without medication?

I never planned on medicating my children. When I nursed them as babies and daydreamed about all of the wonderful milestones that lay ahead, learning how to successfully swallow their daily ADD medication wasn't one of them. So in April, almost two years after his initial ADD diagnosis, I decided to try something. I decided to take Bentley off his medication. I didn't tell anyone. I didn't even think that much about it. One morning Bentley looked at me and said, "I don't want to take my medication anymore." And without much thought I simply said, "Okay."

It wasn't hard because I had become more and more unhappy with medicating our son. I was tired of him being in such a bad mood every afternoon. He would get into the car after school agitated and irritable. It's hard enough being a preteen, and it's even harder being a preteen with medication making it worse. And that was what it seemed to be doing; making things worse.

When your child is diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, you know that one of the first decisions that you are going to have to make is whether or not to medicate your child. Soon after Bentley's diagnosis I joined several parent chat rooms on reputable ADD/ADHD websites. I needed to hear what other parents thought. I needed to read about their concerns, their fears, their worries about medicating their children. The Golfer and I struggled with what to do: weighing the side effects and the negatives with the benefits and the positives. Finally we landed on the best decision we could given what we believed and what we had quickly learned. Isn't that what we do as parents? Try to make the best decision we can in the moment based on the information we have at the time?

Three different types of medications and one antidepressant later, we were no longer sure if our original decision was the best decision. So, like I said, I sent him to school without medication to see what would happen. I didn't worry. I knew that even if it was for only one day there wouldn't be any permanent damage done. He could always hop back onto the pill popping wagon if he needed to. If all hell broke loose, I had a cabinet full of meds to solve the problem.

He got into the car that afternoon...different. He was happy. He talked about having a good day at school. He laughed and smiled and acted like a normal 11-year-old. I pulled his papers out of his bag. Everything looked normal. No bad grades. No notes from the teachers. I checked my email. Nothing from the school. He had made it through the day without medication and all was good.

So we tried it the next day. And the next. And the day after that. He was happy. He was eating. He was sleeping. He was still making good grades. He talked about friends. He played on the soccer team. He took his standardized test. He finished the school year with straight A's and a special award in Spanish. (Hola!) All without medication. And he was fine. He was better than fine. He was...normal.

What did this all mean then? Did his ADD suddenly disappear? Had we dreamed the last two years? Was he misdiagnosed? Unfortunately, no. His ADD symptoms were all still there. He was still distracted. He still had trouble focusing. He was still messy and had horrible handwriting. There was no question that he still had ADD, but he seemed to be coping successfully. Without medication.

And then we found out something. We found out that the Golfer might have ADD too.

Stay tuned...