It's been a crazy month! I just returned from Oakland where I met with lactation consultants in the Kaiser Health system, hopefully strengthening the ties we have with this specialty important to PCOS. Many women with PCOS who finally conceive learn that their next challenge is successful breastfeeding. So we need to have strong communication between specialties to be sure each of us in your life at different times provides consistent and useful information. Yesterday was an excellent start in that direction.
Next week I am off to work with the Minnesota team, and we'll be brainstorming what can be done for women in their 'hoods.
Before I go, I will be doing my monthly Tempe Whole Foods inCYST class, please, if you are in Phoenix, Chandler, Gilbert, Ahwatukee, and have a couple of hours to spare, come attend! It's a whole lot more information than you're likely to get if you spend that copayment money on someone who has not been trained in your specific diagnosis.
At the end of the month, Ellen Reiss Goldfarb will be hosting her second inCYST Saturday Seminar. Her last one was wonderful and it really is a must-attend for any LA woman who wants the best, most practical information on PCOS.
All information on classes and events can be found at www.afterthediet.com/inCYST.htm
Oh! And the photo? It doesn't have a whole lot to do with PCOS, except maybe that I took a stress management break and visited the California Academy of Sciences with a good friend Sue and her husband Ernie. Sometimes when you think you've got more on your plate than you can handle…the absolute best thing you can do is step off the treadmill and do something completely different. It gives your brain a rest and an opportunity to derive a plan without your anxiety interfering with the process. That's what I did with my friends, just took a break and enjoyed learning about jellyfish and fish eating snakes and chameleons and albino alligators. The jellyfish were very mesmerizing and relaxing to watch, I decided they are kind of like nature's lava lamps.
The clarity that resulted from the time off will definitely benefit all of you. I hope you have opportunities to do the same when your PCOS seems like it's taken a life of its own. Things will get better!
I've been chatting with several of our network members the last few weeks about some really fun things they've been doing in the activity department. I'm hoping talking about my own activity this past week will encourage them to get something posted! (You guys know who you are…)
My car needed a major repair that resulted in my being without (gasoline-powered) transportation for a couple of days. And, the garage that did the work was about 10 miles away. I could have used the bus, and actually did for a major trip, but since the weather was so nice, I thought I would get out and enjoy it.
So…when I took the car to the garage, I packed my rollerblades and skated home. I checked out the route, and it turned out, the garage was just a couple blocks away from my favorite greenbelt; therefore, half of my trip was already familiar. Just a few different turns toward home, and voila! I had my workout in.
I used to cross country ski a lot when I lived in Colorado, and picked up rollerblading when I moved to California and didn't have such great access to snow. It is so fun! I actually had to check my heart rate when I first started because I didn't believe it was actually going anywhere.
Something I really love about rollerblading is the workout it gives my backside. Everytime you push off and lift your boot, it's like lifting a weight. One of those weights that really isn't fun to do in the gym, but you don't notice when you're skating.
I also love the meditative rhythm rollerblading creates. There is something about the back and forth repetition that calms the chaos in my head and allows my more creative thinking to predominate.
By the time I got home…I had a bunch of new ideas for my work, I was relaxed, and later on that night I fell right asleep.
I'm looking forward to what other network members share. It's not about how often you are in the gym, really, it's how much you move your body in general. They've got some great ideas!
Sasha Ottey of PCOS Challenge posted this video on Facebook yesterday. It shows what happens to a man who accepted the challenge of trying to live without all of his electronic connections for a week. He didn't make it…and his reaction was pretty extreme.
I love how these techno tools, if used properly, can help to make life easier. I wouldn't be able to do what I do for a living without the Internet.
However…
…I have observed over time, that people seem to be more electronically connected than they are in real time.
I live near an intersection in Phoenix where a lot of law offices are clustered. It's not uncommon, on a sunny day, to see groups of attorneys on the corner, waiting for the green light to cross, all looking at their Blackberries and iPhones instead of up at the people next to them. They usually seem to be completely oblivious to their surroundings.
I am disturbed at the number of people I see on the canal (even the mountain trail) where I run, and at the gym where I lift, talking on their cell phones while they exercise. They cannot put their toys down for even a half hour to enjoy their workout.
I am learning to love the power of Twitter, as it is helping me to reach women I would not otherwise know, who can benefit from the wisdom of our network members.
However…
…I am noticing a troubling trend, that people seem to be more interested in telling people what they are doing, instead of just doing it! If you're sitting in a meeting, and you're telling people you're sitting in a meeting, you're not really paying attention to the speaker who has taken time to prepare the presentation you're supposed to be listening to. You're either participating in the meeting or you're Twittering/Facebooking about it…you cannot effectively simultaneously do both.
What does that have to do with PCOS, your weight, your health?
One of the most important tools you have to fight and manage PCOS…is your brain.
Your brain is an incredible tool. More powerful than any Internet service provider, communication tool, website. It receives and transmits billions and billions of pieces of information every day: the temperature outside, your mood, your fatigue level, your blood sugar, your hunger level, etc. 24/7, whether or not you consciously think about it.
When things are out of balance, your brain is programmed to let you know. It will tell you if you need to pee, eat, address a conflict, seek companionship, whatever it needs in order to stay in balance.
There is one important caveat. You have to be available to listen to what your brain is saying in order to take the action you need to. If you're jamming your life with toys that fill up your brain's time with information you don't really need (like what your Twitter buddy in Outer Mongolia had for lunch or what the results of your"where you should live" Facebook quiz are)…you're not making time to listen to the REALLY important messages--Are you tired? Hungry? Angry? Anxious? Lonely?
Those messages don't go away just because you ignore them. They pile up in your inbox and keep sending you message alerts until you open them. Kind of like that annoying little red box that pops up on Facebook until you check to see what it wants you to know.
The Perfect Storm often comes during the evening hours, when things finally start to quiet down, and all the messages we've put on the back burner all day long start popping up. If we've ignored hunger…we can binge. If we've ignored anger…we might not sleep well, which we pay the price for the next day. If we're lonely, and were too busy with electronic friends to do something social in real time…we can eat or drink alcohol to self-medicate.
We often don't like the messages that our brain sends us, so it's easy to fill our lives with Tweets and quizzes and status reports to ignore them. But it's only when we listen to them that we have a shot at being healthy.
I like to recommend yoga to clients as a stress management activity. Early into making that recommendation, my clients would routinely come back and complain that they hated it. I couldn't understand it, until I started asking why. Often they would complain that it made them feel"tired" (which I learned later was actually relaxed but it had been so long since they'd felt that way they couldn't recognize it).
What happens when you're new to yoga is that it tends to slow your body down very quickly. But if you're not working on the"head" part of yoga, you can find yourself in the corpse position, with a racing head, throwing all of your unpleasant thoughts and feelings back atcha, and you can't run away from them because your body is too relaxed to do its dysfunctional thang.
Many people give up on yoga at this stage because they simply cannot tolerate the reality of how they feel when they listen to their brain's truthful feedback.
I quickly learned to tell my clients experimenting with yoga there was a"Five Session Rule". They were not allowed to tell me they hated it until they'd been to five sessions. They don't tell me that anymore. They get hooked on the feeling.
If what comes up when you listen is too much to bear, a trained counselor (such as Stacy Korfist in our network) can be invaluable in helping you sort through the discomfort and figuring out what to do about it.
For those clients who are not at a point where an hour of direct communication with their brain is tolerable, I challenge them to start with five minutes of"disconnect". It's not really disconnecting, it's setting aside the barriers to TRULY connecting. Just long enough to think about how you're feeling. Away from the phone, the office, the Blackberry, the iPhone…just to see what comes up.
Once they've accomplished that, five becomes ten. Some people get into the challenge so much they…imagine this…don't read their e-mail or check their iPhone messages for an entire weekend!
Just think about it. Are you living a"virtual life", connected to"virtual friends" and"virtual activities"…or are you living a real-time life, with an occasional jaunt into the virtual world for a bit of fun?
I'll appreciate your feedback here, on Twitter, and on Facebook later on. But I've planned my day so I can quit work early and go for a long walk on the canal to enjoy the spring flowers. I hope you have some real-time connectivity planned in your day, too!
As luck would have it, just as I was about to give up on having a topic to write about, my friends at the coffeehouse where I am working today started talking about rock climbing. And there I had it, something fun to talk about.: )
Many moons ago in graduate school, my friend Julie, an avid climber who had trekked Nepal and slept dangling off of Half Dome, invited me to spend an afternoon with her at the Boulder Flatirons. They're not big or tall, and I figured, as many other sports as I'd tried and done well with, this would be easy.
Not!
Who knew a piece of rock could be so challenging? We went up to the top, tied ourselves in, and I learned to belay…which for those of you not familiar with it, is kind of like what Batman likes to do down the side of buildings. It was fun, once I learned to trust that Julie had tied us in safely enough that nothing I did was going to result in my crashing to earth.
At one point I lost my footing, and found myself dangling about 50 feet above solid ground. I panicked, and Julie called from above,"It's ok, Mon, you're safe. Relax and enjoy the beautiful view!"
"Are you freaking kidding? I'm flailing on a rock and you want me to enjoy it?"
She let me hang long enough to have no other option. I like to call it my lesson in extreme mindfulness, which I use to this day. Even in the most stressful of moments, and as I have learned, especially in the most stressful of moments, when mindfulness is the hardest thing to achieve, it is the most important thing to achieve.
After I calmed down, and looked around, Julie was right. There WAS a beautiful view to be enjoyed. Of course there was. That is why we went to the rock in the first place! How many times do we get so caught up in where we are going…that we forget to appreciate the view and the lessons to be learned right where we are?
We eventually got down to the ground, and Julie said,"Now, back up!" And we had to climb back up the same rock we'd just sported down.
Much harder than the Batman thing.
And so we started back up. That was an exercise in strength (fingertip strength too, not just the big guys!), flexibility, trust, and endurance. It was also a great exercise in strategic thinking, for in rock climbing, you have to be thinking about two, three, four moves up the rock, not just what you're doing in the moment. How many times do you get so stressed that you only think about the current moment, only to act impulsively in a way that sets you up for trouble two, three, four moments in the future?
About halfway up the rock I got stuck. Nowhere, absolutely nowhere that I looked, did I see a crack, crevice, ledge, anything finger or toe friendly that I could use to advance myself. Julie, the most amazingly patient teacher for an exercise like this, reminded me that I had the safety of the rope which allowed me to swing a bit off my current position. She encouraged me to try moving just a half inch to the right.
And there it was, a half inch away, a half dozen new possibilities of working up the rock miraculously waiting for me to discover.
How many times have you been so invested in things having to be one way, the way you want them to be, that you shut yourself out of a host of other ways to get to the same place?
And of course, the feeling of accomplishment upon arriving at the top is one that no one should be denied.
There is physical benefit to rock climbing, but what I love about it, is the mental training. It is a great exercise in mindfulness, trust, problem solving, intentional choices, all the skills you need to work yourself out of some of the situations and behaviors that keep you stuck where you don't want to be.
I encourage you, regardless of your size or current physical condition, if there is a climbing course or indoor climbing wall near you, to get out and try it.
It could open up a world of new ways of thinking and acting that you never considered…some of which could be life changing.
So let's say you've landed on this website because you were doing a Google search at 3:30 in the morning.
Or because you're home from work and can't slow your head down enough to relax and enjoy a leisure activity…so you're surfing the Internet to distract yourself.
What's going on?
It could be a lot of things.
1. If your hormones are out of balance, as with PCOS, you may have excess levels of stress hormones such as cortisol that rise more easily than average, and take longer to normalize after a stressful day.
2. If you didn't sleep well last night and used caffeine and sugar to get through your day, you may be experiencing the aftermath of that.
3. If you over-exercised too late in the day, because it's only large amounts of exercise that help to calm your mind, it may have stressed you more than it relaxed you.
4. You may have a mood disorder (anxiety, bipolar disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder).
How to know which is which? If you've made major changes in your lifestyle, corrected nutrition choices, worked to prioritize sleep, etc., and your head simply won't slow down, that's a huge red flag that something important lies beneath those behaviors. In fact, the imbalances you adopted, from eating sugar to drinking alcohol to relax, to marathon exercise sessions, may have helped you to"medicate" something more important going on in your nervous system.
Mood disorders are important not to ignore. They can be degenerative, which means, left unchecked, they can prematurely age the brain and nervous system. Your new lifestyle choices are incredibly important in slowing that process down, but you may find that additional help, such as a medication, can be tremendously useful as far as finally bringing you back into balance.
If you feel as though I'm describing you, you may be interested in another blog I write, about nutritional aspects of psychotropic medications. It goes into more detail about this specific topic, and I do post a lot of information about nutrition for brain and nervous system health.
Awhile ago I made an informal (that is, never scientifically tested) questionnaire. It's not intended to diagnose, but rather to get you thinking about what kinds of thinking patterns may be underlying how often and how intensely you experience stress. You may be blaming your racing head on your stress, but it may be that your racing head attracts you to situations and relationships that are stressful.
There is no right or wrong way to answer these questions. But do consider, the more"yes" responses you give yourself, and the less your answers change in response to reasonable changes in diet, activity, sleep, and stress management, the more important it is to consider that you may have a mood disorder.
Are You A High energy Thinker? (Copyright 2000, www.afterthediet.com)
1. I am easily flustered.
2. I am easily drawn into a conflict.
3. I am very organized, and when my routine is disrupted, it can ruin my day.
4. I have a hard time with change, I would rather control thngs than let them take their natural course.
5. I can become so attached to a person, idea, or situation that I lose sight of the"big picture" perspective.
6. Staying focused on a task is a challenge; I am easily distracted/bored.
7. I can become obsessed with an activity. I ccan lose track of time because I get so absorbed.
8. People tell me I overanalyze things.
9. Peole tell me I am an adrenaline junkie.
10. I am a perfectionist.
11. I am very sensitive to criticism.
12. I worry a lot.
13. I procrastinate/can't finish projects I start.
14. I feel like I sabotage myself.
15. I have a way of saying or doing impulsive things that undermine relationships or which hurt my credibility.
16. I toss and turn a lot before falling asleep.
17. I can do a lot of things at once; in fact, it's easier thann doing one thing at a time.
18. I feel driven by some sort of internal machine.
This is actually a post from Ellen Goldfarb, who you can hear on Internet radio tomorrow (see previous post). I am pasting her link on my blog roll for anyone who wishes to continue to follow her. She'll be here…and there!
So, I got married at a later age than most, 38 and knew that I wanted to have a family and so did my husband. We succesfully got pregnant on our own a year and a half after we got married however, sadly this ended in a miscarriage in the 10th week, when I went to the doctor there was no heartbeat. I had no idea. It was what they call a missed AB and so I had to get a DNC procedure. They asked if I wanted to have the tissue examined by a lab to see what had gone wrong, I told them yes. The determined that the cause of the miscarriage was due to a chromosome issue and they said most likely had to do with my age. My husband and I were devastated! were we too late, he was 44 and I almost 40 and we had no children yet! what were our options? We then spent and enormous amount of money doing IVF, we did one round in which we made 3 healthy embroyos and inserted them but …alas… nothing! what were we to do? I then started to think about adoption, but in the meantime, in the back of my mind I thought to myself, there must be something else I can do Being a Dietitian, I started to research more about hormones, fertility and nutrition I began to find an number of correlations between certain dietary patterns, sleep and exercise and fertility I began to make changed in all of these areas and encouraged myhusband to do the same We then took a trip to Hawaii and relaxed to get our minds off things Right before I was to begin another round of fertility injections, we found out that I was pregnant(on my own) and we immediately stopped the injections Now I am a nervous wreck again thinking something bad was going to happen and the first trimester was hell just waiting it out, but fortunately everything went fine, we had a CVS done and they said we were going to have a healthy baby girl! I have birth to Arianna Belle on Sept 19th 2006, 4 months later, I was naturally pregnant again with my second healthy daugher Lauren Ivy who was born on October 10th 2007 These pregancies were both concieved naturally and both children are very healthy and doing great! I really believe that if you make lifestyle changes, it can really effect your body and outcome I now have expanded my private practice to support and help women who struggle with infertility and PCOS in addition to my specialty of treating Eating Disorders My goal is to get as many women pregnant as I can with good nutrition and healthy lifetstyle practices for more information about me, contact my website at www.ellenreissgoldfarb.com I would love to hear from you:)
Sunday Sarah Jones videotaped a Yoga for PCOS class for us to test out the camera, setting, and format. Our good friend Deborah helped us out. As we were relaxing afterward, Deborah took a few minutes to share her PCOS story.
I hope you find it inspiring and can feel a connection!
Deborah has been working at the PCOS thing for a few years now. She takes huge leaps forward, takes breaks, sometimes gets pulled into old choices…but her net movement is always forward. That's what change is about.
Our yoga series will be available to Institute members soon. if you would like to be notified notified when they are available…please leave a note here or email me at marika@google.com
I have having fun learning how to use an iPad this week. The first night I had it, I was up pretty late installing apps and learning to navigate the system, which is new for me.
I also spent much of the night tossing and turning in bed, too wired tomrelax and fall asleep. I've written about this before, but since I have now experienced the phenomenon myself thought I'd pass along a little reminder.
IPads, because of how they are lit, interfere with melatonin production and they interfere with sleep. Be judicious with how you use them!
I made a conscious effort last night to turn mine off at about 7:30 and it made a huge difference.
This could be a bit of a drag for those of you who love to read in bed, but consider the ever-strengthening relationship between sleep and insulin function. the less you sleep the more likely it is that you will be insulin resistant.
For those of you sending me late night emails…I check time stamps and I will be calling you out! It's NEVER so important that you have to write me at 3 am!
The good news here is that I learn to navigate this gadget I'll surely be thinking of ways to use it to your benefit. During daylight hours, of course. Stay tuned!
If you've ever heard me speak about PCOS, you know I make a big point about a very positive thing I've noticed about women who have the diagnosis…they're all very creative.
I don't have PCOS, but I am a creative type, and I often see much of myself in the women my work has brought into my life.
I have a small business, and the thought processes and anxieties I see cysters experience and share, feel very similar to what my personal endeavor brings into my own head.
**I don't have any guarantee that I have a paycheck. It can be very easy to focus on the outcome--sales and event registrations--to the point where it's challenging to take action in ways that can make that happen.
**When I need to focus on an important task, my brain has a way of wanting to embrace anything, anything at all…but the thing I need to do.
**I have a short attention span, I'm a better"ideas" person than I am a person who can follow through on those ideas.
I have to work hard, some days, extremely hard, at not letting those tendencies get in the way of my own success! Mindfulness exercises are one of the most important things I do to quiet my mind and channel all of my energy in the direction it needs to go.
One of the problems I see with a lot of mindfulness writing with regard to health, is that it tends to focus on mindfulness surrounding food. It ignores the fact that people who have trouble with food-based mindfulness, have trouble with mindfulness in all aspects of their lives. And so if you jump into working on mindfulness, and you try to attack the most difficult place to be mindful, in the presence of food…chances are you're not going to succeed with it. And then, you're at risk of jumping to the conclusion that you're a failure with food.
I thought I'd share one of my favorite personal mindfulness exercises. I do this when I catch myself doing any of the above. I challenge you to try it. It might help you to understand the struggles you're having with food and exercise choices, are about the way your brain processes ALL information, not just the PCOS stuff. If you can step outside of that very narrow food/exercise world and start to understand that this is just how you think, you may be less likely to negatively judge yourself, maybe even laugh at yourself, and start to attack the problem from some completely different angles.
What I do, is grab my camera and go for a walk. On that walk, I give myself a photography assignment. My favorite one, is to pick a letter of the alphabet and see how many examples of that letter I see in the world around me. Today I worked on the letter A.
Here are some of the things my brain did while I was trying to do this assignment. Does any of it sound familiar in your own thinking?: )
1. In the beginning of the exercise, my A's were very concrete and obvious. I was very rigid and structured with how I proceeded. They became a little more abstract as the walk went along.
2. I was looking for A's in everything! And I couldn't find them. Eventually I got bored with that, stopped paying attention to the exercise, and suddenly A's were coming at me from everywhere.
3. I saw a great M, and a really cool S, and my right (that is, obsessive) brain wanted me to take the photos and save them for future M and S days. My left brain took over and only allowed me to take photos of A's, I reminded myself that this exercise was about reducing destractibility, and there would be plenty of M's and S's on the days I did that exercise.
4. I became more relaxed as I focused my brain on something new and different, and allowed the other pervasive thoughts about my business to fade into the background. And in the process, as I came to the end of my walk, I had a bunch of great photos, some new business ideas that somehow just appeared, and better insight into barriers my thinking style creates for me. I was reminded, once again, that just because I'm not consciously obsessing about a problem, doesn't mean my brain isn't working on it. In fact, it tends to work more creatively when I don't try to force it to do its job.
If you're working on New Year's resolutions, consider your own thinking style. Consider how it works against you, and in what circumstances it works with the best of focus. It could be the creative in you, that's bringing out both. Work to enhance the one, and decrease the influence of the other. In doing so, successful change may be closer and more real than you perceive.
Last night I was watching"The Biggest Loser" while taking down my Christmas decorations. It's not that I agree with everything the show says or does…but it helps me to understand where the people I work with get their ideas about nutrition and exercise.
Anyway…the first pair to be removed from the competition was a father and daughter team. The father was not too motivated to participate in the competition, much to the frustration of his daughter. Adding to this woman's frustration was the fact that, despite her being in the gym and working at least twice as hard as her father, she lost only 1/3 of the weight.
And every season it seems to be just like that. The women who work the hardest see the least weight loss. And every time I see some woman removed from the show for her low weight loss…I want to throw something at my television and scream,"DUH…insulin resistance!!!"
A few years ago I participated in a local TV station's version of this program. Four teams of two screened videos in order to choose the people who would be competing under our guidance. The trainer I was teamed with actually turned to me in the middle of watching a video of a woman with a PCOS-type body and said…"I hate working with this type of person" I asked why, and he responded,"Because it takes them forever to lose weight."
If you happen to be one of these people who would be kicked off of national TV for not losing weight quickly enough, or if your doctor rolls her eyes when you mention that you're eating less and exercising more with no results…take heart.
It's not that you can't lose weight and get into shape, it's more that the ways we tend to believe it needs to be done in our culture are working against the hormone profile your body has drifted into when it was not getting the right mix of good nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and relaxation.
If you watch to the end of the show, these women always do lose weight, it just takes longer for their body to respond to the new way of doing things.
So don't take these messages or slow weight loss as signs that you're destined to have the body you currently have. Just remember that your body is one that responds better to consistency and diligence and slow changes better than it does to quick fixes.
It’s normal to have some anxiety from time to time. Everyone experiences anxiety as a normal reaction to threatening, dangerous, uncertain, or important situations. When you’re taking a test, going on a trip, or meeting your prospective in-laws for the first time, you’re going to have anxiety. Psychologists classify anxiety as normal or pathological. Normal anxiety can enhance your function, motivation, and productivity, such as the person who works well under pressure.
But there’s a larger problem called Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and it affects an estimated five to seven million Americans. People with GAD experience pathological anxiety, which is excessive, chronic, and typically interferes with their ability to function in normal daily activities. GAD patients are about 60%women/40% men, and women with PCOS are affected by anxiety disorders more often than other people, just as we’re more affected by depressive disorders.
There are biological and environmental risk factors for GAD, which include the following:
• Genetics (Research has shown a 20% risk for GAD in blood relatives of people with the disorder and a 10% risk among relatives of people with depression.)
• Sleep deprivation, sleep inconsistency
Stress in the following areas can intensify symptoms:
• Financial concerns
• Health
• Relationships
• School problems
• Work problems
Symptoms include trembling, general nervousness or tension, shortness of breath, diarrhea, hot flashes, feeling worried or agitated, trouble falling asleep, poor concentration, tingling, sweating, rapid heartbeat, frequent urination, and dizziness. A panic attack, which is an extreme manifestation of anxiety, may feel like a heart attack, and sends many patients to the emergency room. If you’re having these types of symptoms, you should definitely make sure you’ve seen a physician to rule out medical conditions.
This type of anxiety is obviously more severe than normal anxiety, and can even be quite disabling. There might be a tendency to expect the worst without clear evidence, with particular worries about health, finances, job, and family. Individuals often can’t relax, sleep or concentrate on the task at hand. This disorder affects the quality of work and home life. You may know that your worry is excessive, but don’t feel like you can do anything about it. There are also some cultural issues — many people in the United States who are diagnosed with GAD claim to have been nervous or anxious their whole lives. Eastern societies, on the other hand, perceive and treat anxiety differently, as something associated with pain. So anxiety may be seen as normal in one setting, and pathological in another setting.
GAD is associated with irregular levels of neurotransmitters in the brain. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that carry signals across nerve endings. Neurotransmitters that seem to involve anxiety include norepinephrine, GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), and serotonin. Anxiety may result in part from defects in serotonin neurotransmission, and drugs that augment this activity may be useful in the treatment of anxiety disorders. However, many therapists believe that GAD is a behavioral condition and should not be treated with medication. Further, some believe GAD is more closely related to depression than to anxiety. I tend to believe that there’s a spectrum, and usually, if you’ve got depression, you’ve got some anxiety, and vice versa. There also seems to be a correlation between GAD and other psychiatric disorders, including depression, phobia disorder, and panic disorder. Anxiety is a risk factor for sleep disorders such as insomnia.
If you have numerous symptoms of anxiety, it’s important to be evaluated by a mental health professional who can help you identify the causes of your anxiety, and teach you ways to manage your anxiety. Many forms of therapy are effective, and I see great results in my anxiety clients who practice yoga or meditation (or both!). If that’s not enough, you can be evaluated by a psychiatrist and try some of the highly effective anxiety-reduction medications.
Gretchen Kubacky, Psy.D. is a Health Psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles, California. She has completed the inCYST training. She specializes in counseling women and couples who are coping with infertility, PCOS, and related endocrine disorders and chronic illnesses.
If you would like to learn more about Dr. HOUSE or her practice, or obtain referrals in the Los Angeles area, please visit her website at www.drhousemd.com, or e-mail her at AskDrHouseMD@gmail.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @askdrhousemd.
Earlier this week I interviewed Rebecca Fritz of Phoenix' SuTRA Midtown Yoga Studio about the benefits of yoga for reproductive health.
Despite a growing body of research supporting the idea that yoga has powerful effects on fertility, depression, strength, and overall well-being, I still find many women I talk to, resistant to becoming involved.
One of the biggest barriers, especially for women with PCOS, if there is a weight issue, is the fear of not being able to assume the positions in the class. It's important to understand that there is no right or wrong way to do yoga. However you are able to do yoga, on any particular day, is perfectly fine. I have yet to attend a yoga class in which the instructor hasn't provided options for the varying levels of experience in the class. In fact, in a class I attended a few weeks ago, the instructor gave us permission to assume whatever position we wanted to if the one he was recommending simply didn't work. The most important thing about yoga--is that you try. There's no way you can achieve the benefit if you don't.
Secondly, many women I work with have a tendency to spend much of the day avoiding how they truly feel about what is happening in their lives. Since the process of yoga tends to slow the body down much more quickly than it slows down the head, if this is what you've been doing, it can feel v-e-e-e-r-r-y uncomfortable to essentially be pinned to the mat out of sheer relaxation, while your head is still going a million miles an hour, and for once, fully aware of uncomfortable thoughts and emotions you'd otherwise be avoiding.
But that's the point of yoga, to become aware, acknowledge, and nonjudgmentally, choose to accept. With practice, your head will also slow down. I've learned not to accept the belief that"yoga isn't for me" from someone who has only participated once. You really do have to attend, I'd say, at least five times, to start to achieve and understand its benefit.
Finally, there are so many types of yoga and so many instructors, it is important to find a class, a studio, a style, and an instructor that you feel comfortable with. If something in your environment isn't right, it will be hard to focus on yourself.
Rebecca shared that SuTRA Midtown offers a yoga tasting package, which allows you to try as many classes and instructors as you wish within a two week period. It's a great way to give yourself a chance to experience the benefits and find a schedule that works for you in every single way. If you're in Phoenix, perhaps this could be your way to start the New Year off in a self-nurturing fashion. Or, perhaps you can ask around your own local studios to find a similar offer.
You have to give yoga a chance to work before you write it off. Most importantly, you have to DO it. I'm willing to bet that once you start, you'll wonder why it took so long.
I've never experienced infertility. I was overweight as a child/teen, but I've been the same weight for most of my adult life. I'm relatively healthy. I'm not saying this to intimidate anyone, but rather to share an insecurity I've had about what I do for a living.
I always wonder how in the world women who have those issues can even find me relevant and helpful if I've never had to experience them?
The last two months have presented me with a situation that, even though it may not be apparent on the outside, has very much changed me on the inside. I've learned a lot about control, gratitude, and what is truly important in life.
And I feel like this journey, challenging as it is, is molding me into someone better equipped to help the people who come to inCYST for help.
Regular readers of the blog will remember that I wrote about my sick kitty in October. I thought I was dealing with a simple urine crystal issue that a diet change would fix. I'm a dietitian, I know how to change diets. This was simple, or so I thought.
Well, Rodeo simply never recovered from the crystal incident. He would not eat. He became lethargic. About a month after the vet visit, I noticed, he just wasn't breathing well. Being the data fiend that I am, I started monitoring his respirations. They seemed stable, so I figured maybe he was allergic to the new diet he'd been prescribed for his urine crystals. I changed back to the old diet and waited to see if he responded.
Then he crashed. I got the last appointment on a Friday evening with his vet, and learned that he was dealing with one of four potential diagnoses. One was a fungal infection (no problem), one of those was a 100% fatal virus (that would require euthanasia), one was cancer (fatal over time), one was heart disease (manageable but life-shortening).
I had to wait almost a week for the pathology report to come back, and to get an appointment for an ultrasound with a cardiologist. (Yes, my cat has more specialists in his Rolodex than I do at this point).
The good news is, it's not the fatal virus, and it's not cancer, but it is heart disease, and it's a serious problem. There is no cure, but there is a lot I can do to manage the situation.
Sound familiar?
I told the vet,"If you can give me heart disease, I'll take heart disease. I can do that." Two sentences I never, ever envisioned coming out of my mouth at any point in my life.
I can tell you this. I have a reputation for being pretty even-keeled in even the most adversarial of situations. During my eating disorder treatment center gig, it was not uncommon for cans of Ensure to be flung my way after a tough counseling session. Nothing phases me after that!
But the night I came home from the vet with a couple of medications and no idea what was happening, I laid on my bed and cried my heart out. I didn't even notice that Rodeo had jumped up on the bed. He felt like crap, and he was sitting there trying to take care of me. I realized, of my two kitties, he is the one most affected by my emotions. And here he was, more concerned about me than about the X-ray, the aspiration, and all the poking and prodding he'd been through.
That was reality check #1. I knew I needed to allow myself to feel what I was feeling, but I needed to learn how to do it in a way that didn't turn itself back on the problem in a negative way.
As I imagine has happened with many of you, my life changed in a mere instant. I became hyper aware of respiratory rates, fluid intake, food intake, urine output, medication times…my life was filled with new details I had no choice but to learn to live with.
Even though I run a business, it's the holidays, and I had committed to coordinating vendors for a huge market here in Phoenix. Even though my five major plans for December revenue pretty much collapsed within days of getting the kitty diagnosis. Somehow, I had to figure out how to make it all work.
This is where I started thinking of all of you. How many of you readers are busy, successful women, juggling a million different responsibilities, happily living out your lives…when you're told you have to start monitoring what you eat, when you eat it, when you ovulate, when you menstruate, what your blood glucose number is…and on top of it all, every expert on the planet expects you to figure out when to work out, to plan the perfect meal combination, each and every meal, to buy the supplements, and on top of it, manage your anxiety, frustration, and anger over the situation?
Do these health professionals even have a clue? Did I ever have a clue with any of my clients I thought I was helping with inCYST? That's what's been going on in my head in the two months since Rodeo's diagnosis.
Reality check #2 for me was realizing what I was doing any time I had a free moment, especially during the week when I didn't know what I was dealing with. I found myself surfing the Internet, Googling symptoms, reading everything I could find about lymphoma and cardiomyopathy, looking for the worst in kitty, looking for anyone, anyone at all, who could tell me that there was a supplement or pill I could give him that would just make this all go away.
That behavior is known as magical thinking. It is a very common thing to do when faced with a situation that leaves you feeling cornered. Getting older. Cancer. Weight that won't come off. Infertility. It's about trying to find something, anything at all, that can give you the illusion that you're in control of something. Note that I used the word illusion. You're really not in control. You've transferred your need to be in control of outcome to a concrete, more manageable option. That's all. The only thing magical thinking succeeds at, is allowing us to avoid the pain of a situation. In many cases, it keeps us distracted from constructive and helpful things we can be doing.
So…knowing from working with all of you that this is what I was doing, I told Rodeo's vet what I do for a living, that I'm a real biochem nerd, and that I was probably dealing with my stress by reading waaay too much about cardiomyopathy. I told him at any time I was becoming annoying and intefering with his treatment plan and Rodeo's progress, he had permission to put me in my place. We negotiated a few things I wanted to try, one we're using, most we're not.
And I am adhering completely to what the doctor ordered. Even if it means staying up past my bedtime to get a med in, even if it means passing on a social invitation if it interferes with the treatment plan, even if it means using money I wanted to spend on something else to buy medication. The vet is not cheap. But he's incredibly smart. If kitty is going to get better, I can't be bargaining with him because of the inconvenience the instructions impose on my life as I wish it was.
Reality check #3 has been about how much control issues can be triggered when life throws a curve ball. We can do everything exactly perfectly. And Rodeo has a bad day. Or Rodeo can go dumpster diving, eat a fish head, throw it up, and be perfectly fine. At least for a day. How Rodeo feels today, is not at all about what I did for him this morning. It is about the consistency of what we do over time.
Oh, I'm so embarrassed to even be saying this, but this simple reality took me awhile to"get". I wanted him to always breathe perfectly. To eat when I gave him the food. To love the deli turkey. It doesn't happen that way. Some days he eats like he's the size of Zenyatta, other days, nothing strikes his fancy. I have had to learn to roll with it, and to not view one incident as failure, but as a challenge to figure out what another option might be.
On the days when things don't go as planned, I have to adjust my life. Yesterday morning, for example, meds did not go in at 8 am as scheduled. I spent 4 hours getting them in, but realizing that the four hours it took to make that happen was four hours I'd planned to spend making my contribution for a holiday potluck I was to attend tonight…I made the choice to cancel my attendance, focus on medication, and spend the evening tonight taking care of myself here at home.
Reality check #4. You know what happened when I stopped stressing about how I was going to do both the medications and the potluck and OMG what happens if I'm at the potluck and he bottoms out?!?!?! Rodeo settled in to one of the absolute best respiratory patterns and ate better for me than he did all week. I suspect he picked up on my more relaxed demeanor and was able to put energy into himself that he was putting into me. Some of the things I am inadvertently doing affect kitty as much, if not more, than the things I am supposed to be doing.
Reality check #5. I sometimes find myself getting annoyed at people complaining about things that now seem minor in the big scheme of things. All these people complaining about having to much to do for Christmas? In my eyes they are lucky they are able to participate. I have to remind myself, their situations are different and even though I might envy them, in their own scenarios are lessons from the Universe in action that may not include a cat. Still working on that one.
There are many early Christmas gifts this situation has brought me.
First of all, I have kitty happily sleeping on the bed today. He doesn't fit into a stocking and probably wouldn't consent to it if he did…but he's here compliments of two of Santa's finest elves…er…angels in elves' clothing, Dr. Oyan and Dr. Paige.
Secondly, my priorities, as healthy as I thought they were, needed some addressing. I have been able to let go of situations that I simply have no time to accommodate. I have more time to myself, since I'm home more, and that has given me quiet time to think about what inCYST will be for all of you in 2011. I hope you like the inspirations you'll see in the next 12 months.
Thirdly, I feel like I have a much better idea of what it is that you all need from inCYST in the first place. I am still at a disadvantage for not having experience every single thing you all have exactly as you have, but I have been humbled, I'm dealing with a challenge, and it cause me to consider every inCYST choice I make in an entirely different fashion. Humility is never a bad thing on which to base intention.
Fourthly, I've learned that it's not always bad if success has to be redefined. Of course I'd love it if there was a cure for cardiomyopathy. But there isn't. I can be angry about it, not follow the vet's instructions because I managed to find an obscure website on the Internet that contradicted them, turn to supplements which would put more control in my hands than his, or do nothing and hope the Calgon cardiomyopathy fairy will just swoop in and whisk us away to Kitty Tahiti.
None of that is going to happen. I got over it, decided to listen to the vet, and to redefine success as staying informed, being proactive and communicative with new information, and to the best of my ability, prioritize my life so that I can enact the recommendations I've been provided with. It's slowly turning things around. Not curing them. But, gratefully, allowing kitty to breathe. Oxygen in heart cells…is a lot more important than a complete and total cure. We have learned to think simply.
Finally, I still don't know what it is like to be infertile, not be able to lose weight, or live with insulin resistance. But at least I am more aware of how important it is to always remember that no matter who are you are, when you look to inCYST for help, guidance, support, inspiration, your story, especially the part we don't know about, or cannot immediately relate to, is important to consider in everything we say and do.
I hope all of you are enjoying your holiday season, whatever customs you practice.
One last thing. To all of my friends who are tired of hearing me talk endlessly about the cat, now that he's stabilizing I can get back to the gym and put the stress there. I appreciate all of your ears and support.
I asked our team for some ideas for holiday gifts that promote healthy mind, body, and spirit. If your loved one is asking for ideas, or if you're shopping for someone who is trying to make changes that benefit their health, hope these wonderful inCYSTers provide you with some inspiration! Julie Dillon, RD, Julie Dillon Consulting, Greensboro, NC
--cooking classes/lessons --magic wand (I purchased a cheap one and my clients and I often laugh about it yet it also stimulates great discussions) --yoga gift certificate --pretty journal (there are some amazing leather bound ones that make great gifts) --comedy club tickets because laughing brings the blood sugar down and it's great stress relief;-)
Hana Feeney, MS, RD, CSSD,Nourishing Results, Tucson, AZ
Healthy cooking magazine subscriptions, such as Eating Well A food scale, I like the ones with nutrition information for those who are into numbers Portion plates Spice and herb blends Specialty teas Massages Acupuncture treatments A CSA share A community garden plot Gift cards to running, cycling or other fitness related stores Gift cards to natural grocery stores Pedometers, I’m checking a new one out that has multiple features called Striiv Healthy cookbooks
I just had a patient tell me she wanted to give her mother a gift certificate for acupuncture as a stocking stuffer. I told her I have gift certificates, but to also consider an acupuncture face lift. Many acupuncturists (myself included) do facial rejuvenation treatments.
Danielle Omar, MS, RD, Food Confidence, Fairfax, VA
My Busy Woman's Guide to Stress Free Grocery Shopping is a great gift! It's on sale this month, too!: -)
Sarah Jones, RYT I offer discounted private yoga lessons.
Meri Raffetto, RD, Real Living Nutrition, Temecula, CA My recently released book, The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook for Dummies, is available at amazon.com
Susan Van Dyke, MD,Van Dyke Laser and Skin, Paradise Valley, AZ
Give the gift of:
Purity Freedom from age spots and lines with Fraxel Dual (Susan Van Dyke, MD)
Self esteem Beautiful skin with Vivite Skin Care (Heather Anderson, RN) Sexiness Smooth legs without shaving with LightSheer Duet (Tina Villalobos, MA, Back Office Coordinator)
Youthfulness Facial volume in the right places with Sculptra Aesthetic (Sherry Rodgers, Office Manager)
Confidence Fuller, seamless skin with TNS Recovery: the collagen stimulator (Cameron Vessey, Aesth and Laser Tech)
Clarity Gorgeous Glow with Clear + Brilliant (Traci Lee, Front Office Coordinator)
Serenity Relaxed frown muscles with Botox or Dysport (Jessica McCarthy, MA)
Knowledge A VDLS seminar (and it is free!) (DeAnne Dunn, Aesth and Laser Tech)
Generosity VDLS gift certificates for everyone’s favorite products and procedures (Diane Davies, Front Office)
The entire Van Dyke Laser & Skin team wishes you a glorious holiday season!!!
Monika Woolsey, MS, RDIncyst, Phoenix, AZ and Santa Monica, CA
As for me? I second all and I hope my gift buyers are reading this! One suggestion I do have for Phoenix readers, is a gift certificate to Chow Locally. It's a twist on the farmer's market concept, you can create your grocery box online and pick it up at one of three metro locations. For anyone who loves the farmer's market but whose weekends are filled with other"to-do's", it's a great option.
Many thanks to all of our readers, network members, and fans for making this such a hugely successful year for inCYST! We are so looking forward to even bigger and better things in 2012.
If you're in the Phoenix area and you want to come, please do! I'm focusing on holiday eating, which can be stressful if you don't know what your good options are. My goal is to get you excited about what fits into the program!
We'll be at the Tempe Whole Foods, Rural and Baseline Road, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. We meet in the eating area by the checkout lines.
Cost is $15. You can bring a check or cash, or register online: http://yhst-34497545168533.stores.yahoo.net/
If you're in LA, please email me or call me for Wednesday's details. marika@google.com or 623.486.0737
Hope Thanksgiving was fun and relaxing for all of you!
I've mentioned before that receiving any kind of medical diagnosis that can leave you backed into a corner, with no place to go, is one of life's most extreme stresses. If you're someone who is used to being in control, losing that control can throw you into a complete tailspin. That is when you are most likely to be susceptible to something called"magical thinking". This type of behavior is something you engage in to allow yourself to feel as if you you have more control over a situation than you actually have. Some examples in recent months that I've personally experienced:
-- A gentleman I really wanted to do business with because I liked his product, started to panic because sales of that product were not matching his projections. I started receiving e-mails from him about all kinds of interesting"effects" he was personally noticing that he attributed to the special powers of his product. I mentioned to him once that if his observations were true, science would validate them. He told me he didn't have time to wait for science. Can you hear the desperation and wishful thinking that was interfering with his overall long-term success? I felt sad, because his product was good, but he was gradually burning business bridges before he could get the sales he wanted and should have had.
--A young woman who had failed one IVF and was scheduled for another, afraid she'd lose that success too, wrote me asking to help her with a detox/cleanse, less than a week before her procedure. She wanted to rid her body of any negative influences that might work against her. We decided against the detox, and simply set up a very balanced eating/exercise/relaxation plan focusing on nurturing instead. (She's pregnant, BTW). I don't think she really wanted to detox, she really needed something constructive to do as an anxiety outlet, and to give her hope she wasn't going to fail again.
Supplements are the place where magical thinking really takes control. I watch women with PCOS throw the entire kitchen sink at a problem, without knowing exactly what kind of effect they're looking for, what dose, what brand, what kind of interactions their multiple supplements may have with each other…which ones duplicate the effects of others…all it seems to take is for one person out there to mention one supplement and the"wave" rolls across the PCOS blogs and Facebook pages. Because no one ever really took the time to figure out how to use the supplement in a scientific fashion, it doesn't work, women give up on it before it might have a chance to work, and they're off on a search for the next magical supplement.
We're starting to understand here at inCYST that there is more than one kind of PCOS. So if anyone is recommending any particular supplement, and it's a one-size-fits-all recommendation, they're either telling you what worked for them (which may not work for you), or they are throwing together a little bit of something from every study they could find, which makes their answer extremely expensive because half of what is in it, most women don't even need.
Just because you can buy supplements yourself over the counter, and dose them yourself, does not mean they're safe. If your physician is anti-supplement and you're not telling him/her about the supplements you're taking because you know s/he is against them, you could be negating the effects of both your medications and your supplements. There are ways to use both, but it's only going to work if whoever you are asking for help, is amenable to combining both approaches.
The supplement that currently seems to be the rage right now seems to be n-acetyl-cysteine, or NAC. I'm not sure where this wave got started. I'm not going into the nuts and bolts of the chemistry, you can find that elsewhere. But here are some things to consider.
1. NAC has also been shown to reduce the symptoms of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. I'm guessing that the subpopulation of women with PCOS who also have one of these diagnoses (and that's a pretty significant percentage of the PCOS population BTW), are the ones most likely to benefit from NAC. But since mood regulating medications are powerful, it's super important, if this is you, to let the prescribing physician of any mood stabilizers know so that you don't experience a dangerous adverse reaction between medication and supplement. And by all means, DO NOT stop taking medication for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder because you read what I just wrote!!!
2. NAC is also being considered as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, something I know is also very common with PCOS. If you're going to use a supplement, I'm more comfortable with your using myoinositol for this purpose, which has also been shown to help improve fertility rates. Again, please let your caregiver know what you're doing. One of our fans recently shared that she took a blog post regarding inositol to her physician, who now recommends it to his PCOS patients. In talking to your doctors, you have to potential to teach them important things. (That's why I reference posts, so your doctors can read the research themselves and know my thoughts are evidence-based.)
2. There is some evidence that large doses of NAC can increase the risk of pulmonary hypertension, a very dangerous condition. I can't stop you from taking this supplement, but I can encourage you, if you decide you want to use it, to do so in conjunction with a knowledgeable health professional who can help you to properly dose it.
3. In the most recent study I found regarding NAC compared to metformin/clomiphene, metformin/clomiphene was found to be superior. But if you remember, I wrote pretty extensively not too long ago about the peer-reviewed finding that metformin increased ovulation and pregnancy rates but not live births (thus increasing the miscarriage rate). Perhaps you should think a little bit about whether or not this is the path you wish to embark on, using a supplement that has not been proven to be as"effective" as a medication that hasn't even been proven to be effective.
4. One reason NAC is thought to be useful is that it protects against"glucose toxicity". Here's a thought — why not eat less glucose? Even if you choose myoinositol over NAC based on what you're reading, consider that your own inositol stores may have found themselves depleted in the first place from imbalanced eating. No way around it, supplements do not replace healthy choices. If you're going to experience the greatest benefit from a supplement, it needs to complement, not replace, better eating.
You're all grown women and you can make your own choices. I hate seeing you struggle with PCOS. But worse than that, I hate seeing you jump around from supplement to supplement without any kind of plan of action for how you're going to use it, how you're going to know if it's working, and how you're going to know if you need to not use it.
The people who benefit the most from magical thinking…are the ones who play on your anxiety and frustration and take your money, offering"solutions". Be a wise consumer. And remember, something you ALWAYS have control over…is healthier food choices, activity schedules, and stress management.
Berk M, Dean O, Cotton SM, Gama CS, Kapczinski F, Fernandes BS, Kohlmann K, Jeavons S, Hewitt K, Allwang C, Cobb H, Bush AI, Schapkaitz I, Dodd S, Malhi GS. The efficacy of N-acetylcysteine as an adjunctive treatment in bipolar depression: An open label trial. J Affect Disord. 2011 Jun 28. [Epub ahead of print]
Camfield DA, Sarris J, Berk M. Nutraceuticals in the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD): a review of mechanistic and clinical evidence. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2011 Jun 1;35(4):887-95. Epub 2011 Feb 23. Abu Hashim H, Anwar K, El-Fatah RA. N-acetyl cysteine plus clomiphene citrate versus metformin and clomiphene citrate in treatment of clomiphene-resistant polycystic ovary syndrome: a randomized controlled trial. J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2010 Nov;19(11):2043-8. Epub 2010 Oct 12.
Kaneto, H. Kajimoto, Y. Miyagawa, J. Matsuoka, T. Fujitani, Y. Umayahara, Y. Hanafusa, T. Matsuzawa, Y. et al. (1999). Beneficial effects of antioxidants in diabetes: possible protection of pancreatic beta-cells against glucose toxicity. Diabetes 48 (12): 2398–406.
I've been surrounded by sadness recently. Not the kind of sadness it's easy to be around. I've been in some situations with people (not clients, an important distinction), who just don't seem to be happy unless they are completely miserable. No matter what solution I propose to alleviate the problem they've identified and suggested I might have a solution for…a remarkable ability to cling to the misery rather than considering the solution has been the outcome of the effort.
I have found myself singing a song to myself, that comes from a variety show popular when I was a child:
I received an email this morning from a college friend, containing an article that actually scientifically studied this phenomenon, of why some people have good luck, while others seem to be overwhelmed and consumed with bad luck. I certainly do not wish to minimize anyone's misfortunes with regards to their PCOS. But I do hope to encourage at least some of you to challenge yourself to look at your own life's"magazine" with different lenses. Perhaps there are opportunities to be seen…if you're willing to look at things a bit differently.
The text to this article is provided below:
Be lucky — it's an easy skill to learn Those who think they're unlucky should change their outlook and discover how to generate good fortune
A decade ago, I set out to investigate luck. I wanted to examine the impact on people's lives of chance opportunities, lucky breaks and being in the right place at the right time. After many experiments, I believe that I now understand why some people are luckier than others and that it is possible to become luckier.
To launch my study, I placed advertisements in national newspapers and magazines, asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me. Over the years, 400 extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research from all walks of life: the youngest is an 18-year-old student, the oldest an 84-year-old retired accountant.
Jessica, a 42-year-old forensic scientist, is typical of the lucky group. As she explained:"I have my dream job, two wonderful children and a great guy whom I love very much. It's amazing; when I look back at my life, I realise I have been lucky in just about every area."
In contrast, Carolyn, a 34-year-old care assistant, is typical of the unlucky group. She is accident-prone. In one week, she twisted her ankle in a pothole, injured her back in another fall and reversed her car into a tree during a driving lesson. She was also unlucky in love and felt she was always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Over the years, I interviewed these volunteers, asked them to complete diaries, questionnaires and intelligence tests, and invited them to participate in experiments. The findings have revealed that although unlucky people have almost no insight into the real causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their fortune.
Take the case of chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not. I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities.
I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message:"Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper." This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2 inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.
For fun, I placed a second large message halfway through the newspaper:"Stop counting. Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win £250." Again, the unlucky people missed the opportunity because they were still too busy looking for photographs.
Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people's ability to notice the unexpected. In one experiment, people were asked to watch a moving dot in the centre of a computer screen. Without warning, large dots would occasionally be flashed at the edges of the screen. Nearly all participants noticed these large dots.
The experiment was then repeated with a second group of people, who were offered a large financial reward for accurately watching the centre dot, creating more anxiety. They became focused on the centre dot and more than a third of them missed the large dots when they appeared on the screen. The harder they looked, the less they saw.
And so it is with luck — unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.
My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
I wondered whether these four principles could be used to increase the amount of good luck that people encounter in their lives. To find out, I created a"luck school" — a simple experiment that examined whether people's luck can be enhanced by getting them to think and behave like a lucky person.
I asked a group of lucky and unlucky volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck.
One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. While lucky people became luckier, the unlucky had become lucky. Take Carolyn, whom I introduced at the start of this article. After graduating from"luck school", she has passed her driving test after three years of trying, was no longer accident-prone and became more confident.
In the wake of these studies, I think there are three easy techniques that can help to maximise good fortune:
Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell — a reason to consider a decision carefully.
Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.
Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.
I'll keep this short. Did you notice how the participants were chided for not exercising enough on their road trip? And how even though they relaxed and had fun and did not kill themselves exercising, they lost more weight than the week before when exercise was their full time job?
That says something important. Exercise, regular exercise, promotes weight loss. But if you're taking a break and eating well, once in awhile, you can still lose weight.
The numbers will almost never exactly correlate.
I thought it was great that the contestants took some time to learn how to relax. And I was disappointed that none of the processing the trainers did about the trip discussed the positives of the trip. What was learned, what new habits were continued. They did make a good point, that you can exercise wherever you are, and the fact that there isn't a gym is no excuse to not be active.
But it seemed to me that not adopting a proactive approach, showing the participants how to do that, was a lost educational opportunity.
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a complicated, often frustrating condition that affects many women who are experiencing infertility, or may even be a primary cause of infertility. Symptoms typically include recurrent ovarian cysts, excess hair growth (or hair loss similar to male pattern baldness), acne, skin darkening, difficulty losing weight, and, of course, trouble getting pregnant. Often, the condition is not accurately diagnosed until failure to get pregnant results in referral to a reproductive endocrinologist, who has specialized training in PCOS and other endocrine disorders.
Any of these conditions taken singly are difficult to deal with – but the combination is often overwhelming for patients who have been diagnosed with PCOS. PCOS is particularly difficult because it’s under-diagnosed, so you may have years of vaguely troubling symptoms before the diagnosis is made and treatment begins. The physical side effects are unattractive and visible to the world — “I’m fat, pimply, and hairy,” as one of my clients stated tearfully. Friends and relatives may assume that you’re lazy or eat too much, and that’s why you aren’t losing weight. As a result, depression and low self-esteem are very common among women with PCOS.
I was diagnosed with PCOS in my early twenties, and, as both a patient and a professional, I have learned that there are many things you can do to improve the quality of your life and your health with PCOS. You can take control of your health and mood now by doing the following:
Get educated: Do some research on the web, ask your doctor a lot of questions, join a support group and use it, read the RESOLVE newsletter, and stay on top of developments in treatment.
Obtain skilled medical help: Although an internist or general practitioner may diagnose PCOS, it is more likely that a gynecologist, endocrinologist, or reproductive endocrinologist will do so. If you have PCOS, you will most likely want to have an endocrinologist who will prescribe appropriate medications, monitor you for the potential development Type II diabetes, and coordinate with your reproductive endocrinologist while you are trying to get pregnant. Because it is common to experience higher rates of thyroid disorder and heart disease when you have PCOS, it is a good idea to have frequent monitoring.
Your physician can also:
help you lose weight with the assistance of certain medications, and/or referral to a skilled dietician, who can teach you how to eat in a way that contributes to balancing your hormones and managing your symptoms;
refer you to a good dermatologist, who can help to control or eliminate skin conditions related to PCOS, such as skin darkening and acne, and even help with treatments for hair loss;
suggest a therapist or support group to help you cope with the stress of infertility, symptoms of depression, and frustration of dealing with a chronic disease;
Exercise: Yoga will resynchronize your brain, produce deep relaxation, reduce stress, and enhance your acceptance of your body, just as it is in the moment. The cross-lateral motion of walking is also highly effective in regulating PCOS-related insulin resistance, controlling weight – and, surprise! – resynchronizing your brain waves.
Look better so you feel better: In addition to seeking the help of a dermatologist for skin and hair conditions, you might want to actively manage excess hair growth cosmetically. There are many ways to do this, but electrolysis is the only method that has been proven permanent. A licensed electrologist will have a great deal of experience with PCOS patients. Your dermatologist can provide you with a reliable referral.
Although weight gain around the middle is frustrating and hard to overcome when you have PCOS, you can learn how to dress well, no matter your size or shape – and you deserve to do so! Seek out current fashions that are figure-friendly, and get help when you need it – if you’re just not good at putting outfits together, ask a friend who is good at it to go shopping with you, use the free services of a department store personal shopper, or spring for a stylist who will help you figure out what works on you.
Don’t forget your brain: Education is only one element of what your mind needs to effectively cope with the stress of PCOS. Sometimes friends, partners, and physicians aren’t quite enough to help you work through your anger, frustration, irritability, and sadness about having PCOS, not being able to get pregnant, or the difficulty you experience losing weight in spite eating well and exercising regularly. A licensed counselor or therapist can help you decrease stress, develop personalized coping methods, enhance your support group, and identify additional resources. Many therapists utilize mind/body methods that include meditation, guided visualization, mindfulness, and other ways of supplementing your good health practices.
By actively taking care of your physical and mental health and appearance, you can learn to feel better by knowing that you are doing the best you can with a challenging condition.
Dr. Gretchen Kubacky is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles. She specializes in counseling women and couples who are coping with infertility, PCOS, and related endocrine disorders. If you would like to learn more about Dr. HOUSE or her practice, please visit her website atwww.drhousemd.com, or e-mail her atGretchen@drhousemd.com.
Reprint permission granted by RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, 2009.www.resolve.org.
