About My Health Journey and Wrecked Hormones

There’s a problem in our world. The more I speak out about my own health journey, the more people message me saying they are dealing with the same issues. WHY are there so many issues and seemingly NO answers. After years and years of researching, dumping thousands of dollars into functional med and going to doctor after doctor with no answers other than “unexplained,” I think the real answer comes down to whacked out HORMONES. I’m no doctor, I’m no medical professional, neither am I a nutritionist. I’m just a weary mom trying to get my health back in order once and for all after so many years with NO HELP except from people who are getting canceled on the internet, and IT IS frustrating!

Are you there too? If you’re like me you’ve tried everything!

There’s a problem in our world. The more I speak out about my own health journey, the more people message me saying they are dealing with the same issues. WHY are there so many issues and seemingly NO answers. After years and years of researching, dumping thousands of dollars into functional med and going to doctor after doctor with no answers other than “unexplained,” I think the real answer comes down to whacked out HORMONES. I’m no doctor, I’m no medical professional, neither am I a nutritionist. I’m just a weary mom trying to get my health back in order once and for all after so many years with NO HELP except from people who are getting canceled on the internet, and IT IS frustrating!

Are you there too? If you’re like me you’ve tried everything!

My story in a {large} nutshell

I’ve spent the last several years with these symptoms: 10 years infertility, 15+ years of chronic constipation, 5+ years of hair loss, heart palpitations, gerd, dizziness, weight gain and can’t lose no matter what I do (particularly after Covid), seasons of anxiety and depression, extreme fatigue and no energy, irregular periods, low libido and not so pleasant PMS…and super weird…a body odor of copper. (So weird!)

TMI? Maybe, but I want you to understand where I’m coming from. I’m not dying. I’m not hospitalized, but something is definitely not right.

Once I started experiencing symptoms like this, I was sure I had Hashimoto’s which runs in the family. At that point I didn’t know to ask for a full thyroid panel. My gynecologist referred me to a fertility specialist, and I started seeing him and asked about getting tested for Hashimoto’s which came back negative. Of course, they just ran the simple test, not a full panel.

We did everything to get pregnant up to giving myself shots in the stomach which I wasn’t really interested in doing, especially with a pre-schooler in tow. I left that doctor with a diagnosis of “Unexplainable Secondary Infertility,” and he gave me a 4% chance of getting pregnant. Where he got that number, I have no blessed idea. But I can assure you, I left that doctor frustrated to no end. I remember very distinctly this last visit sitting in the doctor’s office listening to him talk because at that very moment, my MIL was in the hospital dying of ovarian cancer. It was 2018. She died a week later.

From there, I learned I needed to fend for myself maybe with a more natural approach, but I needed some help and direction in the natural world, so off to a wholistic nutritionist I went. It seemed to be a good choice until I was thrown ten different supplements to take to handle each issue individually. Nothing worked, and I really felt like I wasted a lot of my husband’s hard earned money! Little did I know how often that feeling would visit me over the next several years trying to get better.

I needed help! I started looking into functional med. Maybe this would be my answer! I did some research into them and boy! This would be expensive!!! They want the big bucks and BUMMER…insurance didn’t cover! But the reviews were fantastic. It would be worth it if it actually worked. I was put on an intense diet and again, thrown a bunch of expensive supplements, which didn’t seem to do anything for me. All kinds of blood tests were run. Some answers? Maybe, but the answers didn’t help. I now had new diagnoses which didn’t help anything—dysbiosis, auto-immune response that didn’t have a specific name, SIBO, candida overgrowth along with many other issues with my gut. Again, thousands of dollars down the drain and still not feeling better.

Notice no one had addressed hormones yet.

Again, I was left floundering on my own. After more research, someone pointed me to metabolic eating. Interesting! People claimed to heal everything from PCOS to bowel issues. I was game! Give me all the butter, fat, milk, meat and potatoes. Eat every few hours! This was something I could do!

Initially, I had great success with this as far as bowel movements. I had never been more regular in my life, but the weight gain…I wasn’t happy with. One metabolic nutritionist I was listening to said she gained a pound a week for a whole year until she leveled out after that. I’m sorry. As much as I don’t want to be stressed or worried about what I look like, I was not ok with gaining 52 pounds. However, I decided to keep it up and see if I would gain or maybe level out early…

Then we went on vacation. (It’s 2021 by this point.)

Every single vacation I ever go on with any sort of rules, I always derail…and by derail, I mean in a HUGE way! I’m completely gone, and it will be a long time before I can get myself back together…if at all. In this particular case, it was “if at all.” I was never able to get myself back together after this. Was there any healing lifestyle that I could do without derailing on a vacation? So far, no.

From there, things began to deteriorate quickly. By the fall of 2022, I was really struggling with anxiety and depression. I was exhausted all the time. I felt like I needed a nap every single hour of the day. The constipation was terrible, hair loss terrible. What was going on with my body?

(I will add that through all of these years I have been gluten free and mostly eating healthy because that’s what the doctor told me to do, so I think it’s important to note, that nutritionally, I was in a pretty good place, but it wasn’t doing anything for whatever was going on inside of my body.)

I got to the point where I really needed to find some help again. I prayed and prayed for God to lead me to a doctor who would actually help me instead of having me go down rabbit holes and play guessing games! I did an internet search and found a doctor on the other side of the country who seemed like a good fit. Once again, he was expensive, and insurance wouldn’t cover. And once again, in a desperate need of help, money didn’t matter. I NEED TO GET BETTER!

While I was waiting for my initial consultation with him, I did an HTMA test (hair analysis). That came back showing that most of my minerals were extremely depleted…except for copper. That was at 450%!!!!!!!! (That’s where that copper smell was coming from!)

After my first consultation, I was excited! This doctor was different! He was doing things differently! I had reason to hope! After several initial blood tests, I got some more answers! I had major issues with my blood sugar…in fact, I had hypoglycemia. My body would also go crazy under the slightest amount of stress. (even if I didn’t necessarily FEEL stressed.) And my body also couldn’t break down and eliminate properly which was why I had issues with the copper. This was all new information! And I felt it was good to know! We now had several problems to address.

Immediately he put me on another intense diet that I wasn’t too thrilled about, and I was to eat every 1-2 hours in the beginning. However, this new diet along with the amount of times I needed to eat in a day was stressful in and of itself, and after learning that stress was such a health trigger for me, the diet…or maybe the amount of times I had to eat in a day, was actually beginning to become a huge detriment. I worked with this doctor for several months. I did see a little teeny bit of improvement, but nothing to write home about. At least I wasn’t so tired all day long. I felt ok in the mornings, but around 1:00 I was so tired I couldn’t function and wasn’t very pleasant to be around. My husband finally convinced me to start taking a daily nap, and that actually really helped me get through the latter half of the day.

This doctor also threw a bunch of supplements at me with no change other than my Vitamin D levels. I asked about doing a hormone analysis. I knew intuitively that my root issues were my hormones and didn’t understand why every person I talked to WOULD NOT address them. Thankfully, he agreed and when the test results came back, it showed everything was low. My DHEA in particular was spectacularly low. He immediately wanted to put me on a DHEA supplements, but did not want to put me on hormone replacement therapy. He was hoping the DHEA supplements would pull up the other hormone numbers.

(Also important to note, during this time was when I really started to steadily gain weight despite being on a particularly strict diet with little carbs which was so, so confusing to me! How could you possibly gain weight when you are eating so extremely healthy and exercising daily?!)

Both the doctor and I had high hopes about the DHEA. I was so excited, and took the tablets faithfully a couple times a day. We were watching my energy levels closely. Nothing changed. I was still dreadfully tired, and my hair started falling out even worse than it already was! (Come to find out, hair loss was one of the side effects of taking this supplement!!!!)

After 8 months with this doctor, it was time to continue on with my own research once again. I was definitely in a better place than when I first started working with him, and if I need to go back to a doctor again, I would definitely choose him over any of the others I saw.

I knew hormones were the answer, I just wasn’t sure where to start.

In the summer of 2023, I stumbled across a lady on YouTube of all places—Barbara O’Neill. She had been censored quite harshly due to the information she was spreading…which tells me it must be right. Ha! (For real though, isn’t that so sad!) To top it off, she was a Christian (SDA), so her lessons are coming from a Christian worldview, which I so appreciated! In all of her talks she often references a wise Creator. This is what our healthcare system needs! She had a video (actual several) explaining women’s hormones and how they should work in a healthy body and what to do if they weren’t working properly. I was all ears. TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO DO!!!!

She also mentioned a cream that went viral after some of her videos so it was really hard to get—Anna’s Wild Yam Cream. I immediately went and did the research, read the unbelievable reviews and was sold. I purchased the cream in July, but because it was backordered, I didn’t receive it until the end of October. (More on this cream in my next post.)

During the summer, I watched a good amount of her videos and learned all kinds of things about the importance of drinking our water with salt so that your body retains the water on a cellular level as well as the 8 laws of health including the importance of sunlight and exercise. I was failing miserably at sunlight and knew that was for sure something I needed to work on.

I felt like I might be getting somewhere with her information, but I was still frustrated at the weight that was steadily being put on as well as the lack of energy despite my food intake and intense exercise.

In early fall, I mentioned a study that had been done about weight gain and Covid on my Instagram account. I got an overwhelming response of people who had said they had gained anywhere from 15 to 40 pounds after having Covid, their hormones were a wreck, and the weight won’t budge. One person in particular reached out to me and asked if I had ever heard of Circadian Rhythm. She had issues after Covid and had great success in healing her hormones and losing weight after implementing this lifestyle.

I had never heard of it, and to be honest, it sounded a little weird. But she sweetly explained how much it had changed her life and sent me someone to check out on Instagram who taught about it.

And that right there, friend, is where my health takes a turn for the better!

A quick look at my symptoms at this point in my journey

The depression and anxiety were pretty much gone as soon as the weather turned warm. I could very possibly be dealing with winter blues, so this was for sure something I wanted to keep an eye out for with the next cold season coming on.

Heart palpitations and gerd were gone.

The dizziness or weird things I’ve got going on with my eyes from low blood sugar are fine when I eat enough food with plenty of protein, so I know how to manage that at least.

Obviously, I’m still dealing with infertility, and still can’t lose weight, although I haven’t gained any more (Hurrah!), my libido is still low and my periods and PMS are still not right.

Constipation is still an issue, but there is noticeable progress.

I quit the DHEA after I started losing so much hair with it, however I continued to still lose hair as before. I do wonder where all that hair comes from, because there is not much there to lose!

And the copper smell that was emitting out of my body is reduced, but not gone yet.

As you can see, a few symptoms are completely gone, and some are improved since the beginning of my journey!

What I’m focusing on now…hormones, hormones, hormones. If I can get those in a healthy place, that should take care of my lingering symptoms: low libido, periods, PMS, hair loss, energy and constipation.

But after the improvements in the last month, I feel incredibly hopeful!

More on Circadian Rhythm next week!

To Your Health!

Sarah

P. S. Be sure to read Part 2 HERE!!! You’re not going to want to miss this. I can’t believe how well I’ve been feeling after such a short amount of time!