Friday, June 18, 2010

Somethign new about PCOS- at least to me

Okay, I have to admit that nothing makes me feel more alive than when I am cracking some mental mystery. I can lose myself in it for months, and forget just about anything else in life in pursuit of it. If I find the right pathway, the right wording attached to an explanation that allows me to find the logical progression, I get hopelessly lost in learning all I can, and o reach a state of bliss. Such happened yesterday. After breakfast and 30 minutes peddaling i was prompted to pick up a book on energy medicine that i had bought and read over a year ago because something was telling me that there was something in there I needed. Once there I found a small little paragraph that shed a spotlight on one of the problems that women with PCOS face. It is a point in the hormonal cycle where things go haywire. The female hormonal cycle is not just a dance of estrogen and progesterone , but rather a complex interplay of 14 hormones. One of which is FSH- folicle stimulating hormone. One of the jobs of this munchkin is to increase the blood supply to the ovaries, making them move closer to the falopian tube in anticipation of ovulation. It then signals to a folicle to get this party started and produce this months pagent queen( an egg). This in turn makes the pageant queen ( egg) turn into corpus lutiem and begins to produce GABA, which affects our moods. If GABA is produced too quickly ( or too much in the case of PCOS women who have several agent queens attempting to get on stage at once and the stage collapses, so they become cysts instead of eggs, but still produce massive amounts of GABA together), it floods the adrenal glands ( which is command central for the hormone dance). The Adrenals literally freak out and begin to produce cortisol. Cortisol is kind of the General Patton of the hormone world. It runs through screaming "we are under attack ! This is not a drill ! " and the body tenses up, begins to store things in anticipation of having food supplies cut off and the body acts accordingly. It begins to store abdominal fat, around the middle like a spare tire. Estrogen makes women store fat in there hips, breasts and buttocks in preparation for carrying and nursing a child, but cortisol says forget about that - we are all gonna die !!!!!!!!!!! Cortisol yells violently at estrogen and it begins to sneak off and hide like an abused woman. For this reason , PCOS women were often out on birth control pills because it was believed that the root cause of all the problems was the fsh hormone. Since then the mindset is that the root is a metabolic disorder, but now some are begining to see that the root problem lies in an energetic weakness in the kidney meridian. Meridians are the channels through which our life energy or essence flows. In the west we almost never hear of these , let alone know how to help or heal them. In the east however, they are the focus of acupuncture, acupressure, qigong and other such practices.

All in all, it tells me that I am right on with the gut feeling that my reasons for this very long weight loss stall have more to do with a stuck energy problem than calories or movement. I want to learn more and work to re balance this.

5 comments:

WWSuzi said...

I always learn so much when i visit your blog! And it will be interesting to hear your journey to find the balance. Have a great weekend!!

Sally said...

Quite right. I was once heavily involved with the treatment of women with PCOS who were seeking help for infertility. PCOS is a metabolic disease very similar to the type of diabetes older overweight people can develop. You produce insulin but it doesn't do what it is meant do - so your sugar gets stored as fat because you dont use it efficiently. A lot of our ladies were put on Metformin which is a recognized treatment for both PCOS and diabetes.

Confusingly you can have PCOS - and have normal ovaries .You can have cysts on your ovaries but not have PCOS

Di said...

Sally- PCOS is a really complex issue. The think that hit me as new information was the GABA production. It was not talked about much before and within the last 5 years a lot of light has been shed on Adrenal Fatigue and it's hormonal make up. When the adrenals come into play things get really weird. One "weirdness" is that people with adrenal problems should NOT lower salt intake ( the adrenals NEED salt to function properly) , should spend more time in rest and gentle stretching type exercises and NEVER do things like cardio because it sends cortisol production through the roof and makes matters much worse.n short, the conventional rules of weight loss , for PCOS women, can make the condition ( and weight issue) worse For me . This bit of information changes everything abut the way I am going to go about my weight loss

Diane, Fit to the Finish said...

I've had friends with PCOS and they were constantly trying to find the balance of foods, exercise and life to make things easier for them.

Di said...

Diane, it can be really maddening. Some also have issues with fertility from this, facial hair , severe acne and so many other things. Others have almost no symptoms at all- it is a rather baffling condition !