The Hemp Connection [Search results for attitude] 

Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force. -Tom Blandi

I have a friend who likes to say “I (heart) my attitude problem” – she loves her attitude problem, she’s proud of it, she parades it in front of anyone who will listen. She’s got a bad attitude, and she doesn’t want to fix it – and that’s one form of attempting to control. She alienates a whole lot of people with her bad attitude, thereby proving to herself repeatedly that she’s unlovable and unacceptable. Maybe you have that kind of twist on control issues, or maybe yours looks more like this:

• “Don’t worry; I’ve got it handled.”

• “If I follow this specific diet and exercise plan, I will lose weight, and everything will be okay.”

• “If I can schedule it, I can plan for it.”

• “I’ve mapped it, scheduled it, programmed it, imagined it, and now it’s going to happen exactly that way.”

• “Sure, I can do all of this by tomorrow.”

• “If I could figure out what to do to prevent him/her/it from acting that way, I wouldn’t be suffering.”
How often have you said one or more of the above, all the while thinking distressing secret thoughts that go more like this:

• “I’m a liar, liar, pants on fire – but maybe I won’t get busted – this time.”

• “What am I thinking?! This is insane!”

• “If I talk enough, or move fast enough, no one will notice that this is a disaster spinning out of control.”

• “Who am I kidding? I can’t even control what I put in mouth for 24 hours, let alone anything else.”

We all have illusions of control, to varying degree. That’s fine – sometimes it’s even protective. But the problems occur when you don’t realize your illusion of control is actually an illusion, you believe your own phony story about precisely how in charge you are, or you slip over to the opposite side, believe you have no control over anything at all, and stop taking charge of what you can control.

Awesomely enough, however, your attitude IS within your control. You cannot control the weather, your mother, most of your hormonal fluctuations, or the state of the economy. You can’t even control the emotions that flow through you. But you can control your response to those emotions (getting stuck in them vs. letting them flow freely), your attitude towards life in general (pessimism vs. optimism), a goodly number of the people you hang out with, the influences you expose yourself to, and a host of other things. How about focusing your energy on the few things you truly can control?

Gretchen Kubacky, Psy.D. is a Health Psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles, California. 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 Gretchen@drhousemd.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @askdrhousemd.

I don't know if it's because so many women with PCOS are struggling with weight, or if it's the attitude that health practitioners often have toward people working on weight issues (negative and judgmental), or what, but I meet and hear from many women who overlook activity possibilities that don't involve pushing yourself, in a very punitive way, to the point where exercise is painful and lacking in pleasure.

The Biggest Loser certainly doesn't help that mentality. If I have to see one more person pushed to the point of vomiting by a verbally abusive trainer who justifies that attitude by saying"This is what they come here for," I think I'll vomit myself.

But I digress.

Exercise should be challenging, and sometimes you'll feel sore, but it shouldn't feel like punishment.

One of the exercises I love to recommend is yoga. There are many reasons why yoga is helpful to PCOS.
1. It increases flexibility. If you haven't exercised much in awhile, your flexibility has likely diminished, and you're more prone to injury. The last thing you need, when you're just starting to take care of yourself, is to knock yourself out of commission with that!
2. Yoga can help to alleviate depression. And in turn, when you're less depressed, you are less likely to crave sugar, or to binge.
3. Yoga is good for improving circulation to your internal organs, including the reproductive ones.
4. It helps to release that pain-causing lactic acid I wrote about yesterday.
5. It helps to increase range of motion and fluidity in joints.
6. It helps you to improve your posture and stand taller, which can help you to have a longer, leaner look.
7. It reduces stress hormone levels.
8. It improves focus and concentration.
9. It can reduce cholesterol.
10. It can reduce symptoms of asthma, back pain, and arthritis, other inflammatory conditions often found in women with PCOS.

I'll be writing about various aspects of yoga throughout the week. But for now, just consider that even though cardiovascular exercise and strength training are important, you don't have to kill yourself with those, and exercises that don't emphasize those have benefit, too!

One of the hardest things for any of us to do – except maybe Olympic athletes – is to maintain a
consistent exercise schedule. I don’t have to convince you of the importance of exercise, so what I want
to talk about is shifting your mentality.

If you approach exercise with a negative attitude, thinking “this is terrible, I hate it, I’m going to be
miserable,” then you will have a lousy experience. If you say, “I’m going off to the torture chamber”
when you’re heading out to the gym, you’re setting yourself up to suffer. If you think you can’t succeed
at a sport because you were always picked last for team sports in grammar school, you won’t even try.
And without trying, where do you end up? Precisely where you are, which isn’t necessarily a good place!

Yes, exercise involves discomfort, pushing your limits, and taking risks. It involves heat, sweat, and
sometimes actual pain (hopefully not too much, as this is an indicator that your body has been pushed too
far). It may involve wearing more revealing clothing in public than you’d normally choose. It may mean
being the slowest one in the class, or being the one who carries around a nerdy little notebook with tips,
schedules, and drawings of how to do exercises. It quite possibly involves getting out of your cozy bed at
the crack of dawn, instead of sleeping in. None of this is comfortable.

But if you approach exercise with a positive attitude, and look for the fun, you’ll improve the outcome
of your experience. For example, by changing your self-talk from [insert whatever negative thing you
usually say to yourself] to “I love how strong I am,” or “it’s amazing that I’m this flexible at this age,”
or “I love the way the breeze feels on my face when I’m bicycling outdoors,” you’ll also feel better
about what you accomplished. Other positives you might focus on include: the social aspect of gym
time or walking with friends, getting some Vitamin D if you exercise outside, improving your strength
or dexterity, or the fact that you’ve actually managed to put together a cute and coordinated outfit at 6:00
a.m. You get the general idea.

Quantity does matter, so you can say you went to the gym, but if all you do is ten minutes on the bicycle,
let’s be honest, you’re not really working out. No one else may know, but you’ll know, and that’s not
going to feel good later. Focus on quantity, as in, total number of workouts, or time spent exercising.
Keep a record, electronically or on paper, and note that little jump in self-approval when you’ve been
consistent. Even when the quality is lacking, if the quality doesn’t really impact the outcome (i.e., you
shouldn’t overdo it on weights, when your body’s crying out for mercy, or you shouldn’t keep walking if
you have a documented injury), keep going. And if you’re not in the mood to get out and walk (walking
being a great blood sugar regulator for us insulin resistant types), and you’re just going to slog along
instead of pumping out the power-walk you think you SHOULD be doing, then get out there and just
walk anyway. It matters, and it counts towards the achievement of the over-arching goal of getting some
meaningful exercise to fit into your life. Plus, if you’re suffering from depression, exercise helps to
improve it!

Also important to actually getting yourself motivated to exercise regularly is choosing what you love. If
you love it, you’re more likely to stick to it. You may need to try different things (surfing? Aerial yoga?
Pilates? Unicycling?), and, in the process, you may discover some hidden talents, even in your 30s, 40s,
and beyond. Try something new. Do the thing you never got to do. So what if your first ballet lesson is
at age 35? It’s good for your brain too, to experience the novelty.

On the flip side, give up what you hate, no matter what anyone else says about how good it is for
you. Although I thought my personal trainer was quite good, and I enjoy him as a person, I was pretty
miserable every time I went. I finally gave it up, because it was causing a negative mindset about
training. Every week, I dreaded going. Now I happily lift weights on my own.

Plan exercise into your vacations. Choose hotels with pools and gyms. Go to areas with great natural
beauty that will inspire you to get out, walk around, hike, rent a bike, etc. Remember that PCOS doesn’t
take a vacation, and neither should you – exercise should be a daily part of your life, for life.

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
AskDrGretchen@gmail.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @askdrhousemd.

Why is it that we have a need to wear on our sleeves how little we sleep, as if it's a badge of honor?

People who don't sleep are physically hurting themselves in ways that diet and exercise can't always repair.

The large and famous nurses' study showed that women working night shifts had a greater incidence of breast cancer than those working during the day.

Accumulating research is connecting poor sleep with weight gain, insulin resistance, and diabetes.

What is it about sleep that is so crucial?

Melatonin. It's our body's most powerful antioxidant. It literally acts like a scrubbing bubble when we sleep, scouring that inflammatory damage from a day's worth of living, thinking, and stressing, leaving the brain and nervous system clean and ready to go the next day.

When we cut ourselves short on sleep, we don't give melatonin a chance to do its job.

We age ourselves much more quickly than we do when sleep is something we prioritize.

First thing you need to do to change things, is change your attitude about sleep.

You are not a better person because you deprive yourself of it.

You can't make up for what you lost during the week, over the weekend. Once it's lost, it's lost.

You may not be able to overcome the damaging effects of too little sleep with better eating and more exercise. In fact, it may be harder to achieve this while sleep deprived, because you are more likely to accelerate aging even more with the caffeine and sugar you're using to get through the day.

Want to get your weight under control? Reduce your cancer risk? Improve your fertility?

Sleep. It's that simple.

Since vitamin D deficiency has been identified with a long list of health issues, including PCOS, I've been hearing readers, clients, colleagues, and friends talk about loading up on this nutrient with supplements. They're going about it in a not-so-scientific fashion, and I've wondered if that wasn't going to introduce a whole new spectrum of health issues.

A friend and colleague recently mentioned that she had just had a cholesterol test taken, and the LDL (bad cholesterol) reading had increased since her previous test. One of the changes she could identify was between the two tests, she had started to supplement with vitamin D.

I did a pretty thorough search both on the Internet and Pub Med to see if this was a common problem and didn't find anything. I then went to a listserve of about 1,000 nutrition colleagues to see if they'd seen it. Turns out, a few of them had also seen their cholesterols increase with vitamin D supplementation.

There is a tendency with nutrition, to adopt an"if a little is good, a whole lot is better" attitude. Unfortunately, imbalance in either direction, be it deficiency or excess, can be problematic.

The old recommendations for vitamin D were 200 IU per day. All of a sudden, a website popped up recommending 5000 IU per day. I couldn't find any research to support this magnificent dosage leap. I would have thought, given that magnitude, that some kind of dosing study that had ruled out that 500, 1500, 2000 IU were not sufficient. But no, the recommendations simply jumped without explanation.

And every time I tried to find out what the basis for this jump was, I kept being referred back to the website making the recommendation.

My points are:

1. Know your vitamin D and your cholesterol levels.
2. Start out with 200 IU or even 400 IU per day and see how that affects both your vitamin D levels and your cholesterol levels.
3. Consider that the reason vitamin D levels may be deficient is more complex than the simple fact that dietary vitamin D is low…did you know that many of the same health issues associated with vitamin D deficiency are also related to omega 3 fatty deficiency as well as omega 6 fatty acid excess? Most nutritional problems, if they are related to imbalance, cannot be corrected with a supplement. The overall balance of the diet needs to be considered in the plan of correction.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know our comrades in the gay community have taken some major hits in past weeks. Many of my Facebook friends posted the video by Ellen DeGeneres. One asked,"What are YOU going to do?"

Later that day, I was spending the evening with friends. The theme of conversation turned to bad doctor experiences. Luisa, a lesbian woman with PCOS, shared that during an appointment she had made for her annual gynecological physical, her physician told her she didn't need to have these physicals, because she was not having sex with men.

There is concrete evidence that lesbian women have a higher incidence of PCOS, and therefore a GREATER need to be in more frequent with reproductive specialists. Whether or not they are in a relationship, and whoever that relationship may be with. If my friend had been heterosexual, and not in a relationship, I'm willing to bet that is not the advice she would have received from that physician.

I was floored, but I was grateful for the inspiration. What I was going to DO, as my Facebook friend encouraged us to think about, was use this blog advocate for equal access to quality healthcare for homosexuals.

Over the years, I've witnessed attitudes and heard comments that should never have existed.

In my last job, at an eating disorder treatment center, my supervisor pulled me aside after a meeting and asked me what I thought about the possibility that a treatment center for men would be added to our organization. I thought it was a great idea. At the time, there really was no place for men with eating disorders to go.

She acted surprised."But you know what that means, don't you?"

"Um…that men who couldn't get help before can be helped?"

She hesitated."Well, yeah, but…"

I was in the dark."But…?"

"We'll have to start treating gays."

I didn't work long for that company. I couldn't work in a place where an attitude prevailed, that some people are more deserving of help than others.

Now I am realizing that not only do I have an obligation to not work for an employer who would foster such attitudes, I need to speak out to my fellow healthcare professionals and not request, but demand, that you treat all of your patients with equal respect and offer them equality of service, regardless of their religious, political, cultural, or gender orientation.

If we were in a pathology lab, and I asked you to pick out the Republican spleen, or the Methodist pineal gland, or the Icelandic aorta, or the lesbian wisdom tooth…you couldn't do it. Because on the inside, we are all alike.

If I asked you, however, to point out the PCOS liver (likely to be fatty), or ovary (containing cysts), you would be able to do so, in a moment. THAT is what we were trained to do. Help our patients with the things that may not be working so well, while being blind to what kind of packaging they come in. As helping professionals, we don't have the luxury of categorizing our patients in ways that give us reasons not to care. We do our work because we DO care.

One of my very first inCYST success stories was actually a lesbian couple. A young woman helped me to organize a class, and I noticed that she was more engaged and took more notes than anyone else who attended. I stayed after class and learned that she and her partner had been, unsuccessfully, trying to conceive. She realized in the class she had many of the symptoms of PCOS, but no one had ever worked her up for it.

We had a most enlightening discussion about what it is like to be lesbian and to be seeking reproductive services. About how much thought this couple put into who they would even trust to ask for help. About how it felt to sit in the waiting room of the doctor and know that the couple across the way is looking at you the way they are for reasons that aren't so compassionate.

It opened my eyes to how much, as a Caucasian, heterosexual, Christian woman, I take for granted when I pick up the phone and make a physician appointment. I simply pick up the phone, set the date, show up, and get what I came for. I don't have to research who to go to, emotionally gear up, deal with bizarre responses, or leave without what I came for because someone thought I didn't need or deserve it.

PCOS sort of followed me, it wasn't the other way around. But now that it has become my life's work, I want every woman who knows about inCYST to understand, and trust, that no matter who you are, where you came from, how different your life may be from mine, that there is information and support for you here. You are special, and you are important, and if the information we have is pertinent to your situation, it is our honor to use it to create a healthy path for your journey through life.
Agrawal R, Sharma S, Bekir J, Conway G, Bailey J, Balen AH, Prelevic G. Prevalence of polycystic ovaries and polycystic ovary syndrome in lesbian women compared with heterosexual women. Fertil Steril. 2004 Nov;82(5):1352-7.

What is hopelessness? Simply, it is a loss of hope and optimism, and a failure of belief that the future will be brighter and better. Hopelessness takes your energy and trashes it. It contributes to and even defines depression to a great extent. When you’re feeling hopeless, that’s often a point at which you give up trying to do anything, and it all gets worse. Sound familiar?

Life in general is pretty stressful. We’ve all got a giant list of “shoulds” in our heads already, about family, romantic partners, children, work, religious and social commitments, and a myriad of other things. We’ve got bedrooms to paint, dinners to make, children to shuttle around, bosses to satisfy, cars to wash, craft projects to complete, vacations to plan, and chin hairs to pluck! My goodness, we are busy! The list is endless.

Add PCOS to all of that, with the reminders about proper eating, exercise, supplementation, fertility enhancement techniques, stress reduction, and everything else, and you’ve got a big old heap of overwhelm festering in your brain. That’s your brain, by the way, that’s already over-taxed by the hormonal imbalances caused by PCOS – so it’s a double whammy. You may already be feeling sluggish and lethargic mentally, and now there’s even more you’re supposed to read, understand, absorb, interpret, and apply. And it’s feeling like you can’t possibly master this condition, or ever really have a perfect plan (or even a half-way decent plan that’s effective) for managing it.

I want you to know that PCOS doesn’t just feel overwhelming, stressful, and depressing – it actually is overwhelming, stressful, and depressing. It’s entirely normal to get overwhelmed by it, be angry at it, ignore it, hate it and everything associated with it, and just want to wake up and find that it’s disappeared. It’s also normal to be bored, irritated, and not want to cope at all. And it’s normal to struggle with it, find some peace and balance, and then struggle some more.

In the struggle, you may find a place to focus on that actually has some positive aspects to it, and that will allow you to shift your attitude, and shift out of hopelessness. Your mind is a powerful thing, and a source for positive thoughts as well as negative ones. It’s pretty clear that focusing on negative thoughts produces more negative thinking – but the same is true of positive thoughts. That’s why it’s often recommended to focus on what’s good in your life, as a way of starting the shift toward the positive. In support of that concept, next week’s “Mental Health Monday” post will be about the upside of PCOS.

Gretchen Kubacky, Psy.D. is a Health Psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles, California. 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 invite her to speak at your event, please visit her website at http://www.drhousemd.com/, or e-mail her at Gretchen@drhousemd.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @askdrhousemd

Something pretty exciting is happening at inCYST. We've been quietly building a private discussion group for paid members of inCYST, where we talk in more depth about issues important to PCOS. It turns out, those who have been willing to invest in themselves (it's a $25 yearly membership), are quite a motivated and positive group. They've been very encouraging toward each other, sharing ideas for food, fitness, asking questions based on reading they have done independently…it's quite a different group compared to many that exist on the Internet.

As this group of positive, action-oriented women has grown, I've shifted the public Facebook group, approaching 2000 members, toward being a more generic forum, more focused on motivation. We realize one of the biggest barriers to PCOS success is depression, anxiety, and lack of motivation. Unless those are directly addressed, it really doesn't matter what kind of diet, exercise, supplement, or medical information is provided.

Yesterday, the women in the private group, on their own, came forward and asserted their need to not be around the defeatist attitude they had encountered in other online groups, as they felt it held them back from their own progress. The confidence they demonstrated was exciting to see (you can see it on our Facebook page if you want).

I've since named them the Kick Butt Cysters, because that's what they are doing. Kicking PCOS in the butt!

If you're someone who's been feeling dragged down from being surrounded by people who are not at least as equally motivated as you to make changes, you may want to consider joining the group. For that $25 membership you also get our webinar on our nutrition philosophy.

I'll give you a heads up right now, I've given the KBC's (Kick Butt Cysters) the go-ahead to call out anyone who they feel is not up to speed with them. They have no obligation to invest in anyone who is not investing in herself. So it's not a good idea to join if you think somehow you'll magically absorb PCOS success simply by hanging out with motivated people but don't intend to do anything yourself. The KBC's mean business and you had better as well if you want to be in their group.

If it sounds like something you could benefit from, simply send me $25 via Paypal to germandesertgirl@yahoo.com. I'll get you set up.

I think you might find, it feels pretty good to kick some PCOS butt. Hope to hear from you!

So you've been told you need to clean up your nutrition act, and you've stopped eating the Fritos. You've decided to stop being the reason the stock price of your local fast food restaurant has weathered the Wall Street willies. Your salad dressing shelf in your refrigerator is now half of what's in your refrigerator.

Still no luck.

Hey, isn't eating better supposed to be the answer?

Depends on how you define eating better.

I'm noticing with my inCYST classes that a disproportionate percentage of women coming for information have adopted vegetarian practices. And I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't part of the problem.

No, the problem isn't that you're vegetarian. It's how you're defining vegetarian, and it's how you go about being one that matters. Here are my simple rules for being the healthiest (potentially fertile) vegetarian you can be.

1. Define your vegetarianism by what you DO eat.

Most people I know who become vegetarian after eating meat, define that practice in terms of what they DON'T eat. They DON'T do red meat. They DON'T do dairy. They DON'T do fish. DON'T, DON'T, DON'T.

Therein lies the problem.

A most important rule of nutrition is, when you eliminate an entire category of food, for whatever reason, be it meat or wheat, you are also eliminating crucial nutrients that this category contains.

My definition of vegetarian is someone who meets all of their complete nutritional needs without using animal products.

Do you know what fertility-related nutrients you're likely short on if all you've done is cut out meat? If not, read on!

2. Zap yourself with zinc!

Zinc is needed for oodles of reactions that keep your body running, from your brain to your ovaries. Are you eating whole grains? Beans? Pumpkin and sunflower seeds? Nuts? Oops…go get your shopping list, right now, and put them down!

3. Forgetting folate can be fatal

You likely know about this nutrient since there has been so much publicity about its role in pregnancy. Put spinach on your sandwich instead of lettuce…make sure your morning cereal is fortified…eat more beans and split peas…and become savvy with sunflower seeds!

4. Cultivate a copper attitude

It's not as famous as folate, but it still is important to remember. Outside of red meat, its vegan sources are rather random: molasses, green olives, cocoa, nuts, avocadoes, black pepper, sunflower seeds…hopefully at least one of these sounds tasty!

5. Try to remember tryptophan

Tryptophan is a building block for serotonin, one of the major neurotransmitters regulating the brain's hormone center. For vegetarians, there are still a lot of options even if you're not using dairy products or eating turkey. Does your pantry have…cocoa, mangoes, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, oats, dates, chickpeas, peanuts, bananas, and sunflower seeds? It needs to.

6. Allow for algae

If you're vegan, chances are you're not getting enough DHA and EPA, the omega-3 fatty acids primarily found in fish. Become friendly with an ingredient known as Life's DHA, a marine algae source of DHA (unfortunately not EPA), that is being added to vegan-friendly foods. The link I'm providing gets you to the most recent list of foods containing this ingredient that you may want to become proficient at finding.

7. Not all vegan products are created equally healthy. Be sure if you've gone vegan, that you are aware of oils that can interfere with healthy balance. These oils are all vegan, but tend to be pro-inflammatory: safflower, sunflower, soybean, corn, cottonseed, sesame. (Remember my"S and C" rule from previous posts. If you're eating absolutely no meat at all, but you're eating a salad doused with soybean oil-based dressing…that could be a problem. Become familiar with brands that are made with olive or canola oils, or learn to make vinaigrettes. (Canola is the"C" oil exception, by the way.

8. Be happy without hydrogenated.

Hydrogenated = trans fat. Enough said.

9. Forget the fructose…high fructose corn syrup, that is.

It's been connected to insulin resistance in more than one study. And despite what marketers would really like you to believe, more than one nutrition expert does not endorse its use.

10. Be pro-protein

This is the most obvious one…know your complementary proteins and be sure your diet includes them. One caveat…soy may be hard on your thyroid function and is not a good choice if you have a family history of breast cancer. Be sure you are reading labels, as soy is a filler in many, many foods.

I like to look for patterns that make nutrition recommendations easy to recommend. In this post, it didn't work out that way. A lot of these foods are random. If I'm not giving you ideas that seem easy to work into your food plan…think of consulting with one of our experts! That's what we excel at, and that's what we're waiting to help you with.

After all, you became vegan to be healthy, let's work together to do it correctly.

So by now I'm sure you've heard the news about the new mammography recommendations. I wasn't on the panel and I'm not a breast cancer specialist, but I do have some thoughts pertaining to what these findings and the potential implications mean, to women reading this blog.

It's a mixed bag.

1. First of all, it's not the scientists, it's not the government, and it's not your doctor who is in charge of your health. YOU are in charge of your health. If you're using this situation as an excuse to be paralyzed about self-care, you've been defeated and you've turned your health over to someone else.

2. Keep in mind, many women with PCOS have high estrogen levels, meaning they have extra estrogen that can find its way to estrogen-sensitive tissues and cause problems such as cancer. You are potentially an at-risk population that needs earlier mammograms than the average American woman. It is important when discussing your personal need for earlier mammograms, that this health issue be included in the decision making. If your physician does not acknowledge or understand the relationship between PCOS and cancer, it is your right to find a physician who does.
Sticking with the same physician and allowing that attitude to guide your health choices is turning your health fate over to someone who doesn't deserve it.

3. The good news is, women with PCOS are already used to advocating for themselves so doing so with the mammogram issue is not something they're likely unaccustomed to doing. Be assertive!

4. The bad news is, women with weight issues tend to avoid doctor visits because they don't want to be chided about losing weight. If you don't go to the doctor, all of the above don't even matter. Find a physician who will treat you respectfully…AND MAKE A COMMITMENT TO REGULAR PHYSICALS.

5. Remember, getting a mammogram is not the only thing you can do to reduce your risk of breast cancer. Breast self-exams are very important. Women with poor body image are not the best at conducting breast self-exams. If you're having trouble with the idea of looking at and feeling your breasts, the consequences could be as serious as not getting that mammogram. Ask for support.

6. A local television station sends out a monthly self-exam reminder, which I'll forward to all of you as well. If that helps you to remember to do them, then it's our pleasure to be a part of that. Here is information on how to perform a breast self exam.

7. All of the dietary recommendations you see here are made taking into consideration the implications for risk of other diseases, including cancer. Taking care of yourself in ways that benefit your PCOS, also reduce your risk of breast cancer. So eat well, be active, manage your stress…and get some sleep!

Remember, your health is YOURS. Not the government's, not your doctor's, not your insurance company's. Care for it like it's your most valuable possession. Because it is.

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.

If you’ve been busy learning and applying various techniques to improve your health, you’ve probably heard of “Meatless Monday,” the idea of substituting a healthy vegetarian meal one day per week in order to beef up (no pun intended!) your vegetable consumption and lessen your dependence on meat. It’s a great idea, relatively easy to implement, and, over time, contributes to an overall pattern of good eating.

This “Mental Health Monday” column is also a good habit. Reading it is a way of bring attention (mindfulness) to the practices inherent in creating and maintaining good mental health. I often talk about ways to make small changes in attitude, behavior, or thought patterns. From a mental health perspective, what I like about Meatless Monday is the way it breaks down an overwhelming task (eating healthier) into a small, actionable, and rewarding step. If you implement Meatless Monday, it means you’re really thinking about what you eat. You’re taking time and energy to explore and experiment. You eat the food and realize that you don’t need meat to feel complete or satisfied. Or maybe you make a bad choice (pasta, pasta, pasta!), and realize that your needs call for more protein – but maybe it doesn’t have to come from meat.

Mental health is like this. You can’t take a huge, amorphous goal (say, “feel happier”) and just say, “that’s what I want – where is it?!” It’s a process, a project, a series of steps and experiments. There is a need for assessment, evaluation, and revision. Over time, you learn what’s missing in your upbringing, your thought patterns, and your ways of relating. Or you learn that there’s something you do quite often that is off-putting or unproductive in your relationships. You implement homework assignments from your therapist, read self-help books and do the exercises, and practice affirmations and positive self-talk. At some point, you begin to notice that things are improving. The process gets easier. You don’t have to consciously think really hard about how to have a productive talk with your boyfriend, set a boundary with your overbearing mother, or express your anger productively. You’re better. You’re happier. You’re healthier. And it all started with a small experiment, such as:

• Meatless Monday
• Not saying negative things about yourself, privately or in public.
• Joining a therapy group.
• Going to the gym just once a week.
• Adding Vitamin D3 supplements.
• Eliminating gossip.

In and of itself, one action is not enough. Cumulatively though, as you slowly implement mentally and/or physically healthy choices, the impact is there. What are you going to start doing to get happier and healthier today?

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.

I know, I know, that includes a lot of foods. I promise after the holidays, I'll get back to information about specific foods. But it being the holidays, and the relationships we have with food during the holidays not always being healthy, I wanted to digress today.

Part of the reason I want to digress is because I've had some wonderful food experiences this week. Monday a friend and her husband invited people over for a Caribbean holiday dinner. From the mango-cucumber-avocado salad with the peanut butter chutney dressing to the platanos to the almond paste…it was fabulous! And most of all, the conversation around the table was a wonderful way to spend a blustery winter evening.

Last night Ivonne, who sometimes posts on this blog, asked me to meet her and her fiance so she could share some gingerbread (made with stout) that she loves to make over the holidays. Again, we spent a couple of hours chatting and laughing in the coffeeshop of a local Barnes and Noble and just enjoyed the company. And, I had a delicious yet unconventional treat for breakfast this morning!

These are not foods I normally eat, but Christmas is not a normal time of year. The important thing is not what I ate. It was how what I ate blended into the rest of my life. I am still working out, but I'm not adding an extra hour to make up for the extra calories. I am still enjoying the food, but I'm not starving myself in between to"account" for the goodies. And, I haven't thrown up my hands in defeat and started eating and drinking everything in sight with a"What's the use, I've blown it?" kind of attitude.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that when your life is balanced, that is, you're eating a variety of foods in moderation, you're physically active, you're getting enough sleep, and you're managing your stress, an occasional Caribbean meal or gingerbread breakfast, in the long run, shows up as a slight blip on the screen, but it doesn't send off the warning bells. But, only if you TREAT it as a blip on the screen.

There's no need to punish yourself with extra exercise, starvation, guilt, whatever, because you took the time to enjoy the food that accompanied the festivities. Holidays are not an excuse to eat, and they're not a reason to punish yourself. They're about family, friends, reflection, and celebration.

I sure hope you've got Ivonnes, Gerdas, Joses, and family in your life to help you partake in the fun! (I'll talk about comfort food next week after my family celebration.)

This week continues our discussion about PCOS and the grief process, through the DABDA (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) model. Depression is so common among PCOS patients that I write about it quite often. It’s important for you to remain conscious of the clues that you may have depression. Many, if not most of my PCOS patients have some form of depression.

When we’re talking about depression in the context of death and dying, it looks like it does in PCOS too. If you’re suffering from depression, PCOS-related or not, it might look like:

• Sleeping too much or not enough
• Eating too much or not nearly enough
• Being irritable, snappish, and short-tempered
• Feeling suicidal
• Feeling hopeless about your future
• Feeling helpless to do anything to make things better
• Having an overall gloomy, pessimistic perspective on life

It is certainly easy to feel down when you think about the fact that PCOS is so challenging, misunderstood, and often misdiagnosed, and mistreated. It is one of those conditions that benefit less from standard medical treatment and more from diet, exercise, and good self-care. It comes with embarrassing physical symptoms that are time-consuming and costly to manage. There’s not a lot of research being focused on the condition. All of that is definitely overwhelming.

Not to mention, the hormonal imbalance inherent to PCOS can cause depression, even if you manage to maintain a positive attitude, take good care of yourself, and have a good support system. Sometimes, depression invades your mind and soul, because your body’s overwhelmed your coping mechanisms. Depression is best-treated by a professional therapist, sometimes with the assistance of a medical doctor known as a psychiatrist (a specialist in psychotropic medications – medications for mental health conditions).

Next week, we’ll talk about the final stage of the DABDA process – acceptance.

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.

Thought I would bring a psychotherapist's perspective to treating PCOS. In the past few months I have attended three scientific conferences and one practitioners conference on PCOS. The one unanimous and certain recommendation from every one of them was 'lifestyle, lifestyle, lifestyle'. But what does that mean? Does it mean eat less and exercise more? Does it mean feel shame when you indulge in holiday egg nog this season? No. Lifestyle to me means just that…style your life. Make changes to honor your life and take care of your chronic condition. Attached is an outline I wrote to help me explain and promote 'Lifestyle' to my clients.

Treating PCOS: Lifestyle for Success A Psychotherapist's Approach Stacy Korfist, LMFT
L is for the lifestyle change that is critical to make. No more diets, no more ‘someday’. Lifestyle change obviously includes nutrition and exercise, but it also includes stress management, adopting a new way of living, a new way of coping and a new way of playing that is essential.

I is for Identity. This is your sense of self; your self esteem. This includes facing anxiety and depression. Setting appropriate boundaries helps you to claim yourself. I is also for Integrity. No more broken promises to yourself or others. They only lead to self deprecation and more shame and depression. Be a person of your word.

F is Food & Feelings. Eat when you are hungry; stop when you are full. Understand the thoughts and ideas which fuel eating behaviors. Learn all you can about insulin resistance. Don’t be fooled into another diet that is too difficult to sustain. See a dietitian that knows about polycystic ovarian syndrome.

E is the Education and knowledge that you must obtain in order to take care of yourself. PCOS is a chronic condition, not one that requires only medication. YOU must be your own case manager. PCOS involves almost every organ in your body. Learn about lab work and what your results mean. Don’t assume your treatment team is aware of your ‘whole self’. Trust yourself. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Remember, PCOS is a syndrome, a squirrely disorder which pops up in many places.

S is for Support and Healthy Environment. Surround yourself with encouraging people and rid yourself of as much conflict and chronic stress as possible. Pay a little more for organic food and avoid false estrogens in plastics and cleaning products.

T is Teamwork. You can’t do this alone. Ask for help, make plans ahead and let others help you. Being strongly-weak will get you so much farther than being weakly-strong. Assess your treatment team. Are you being seen by too many providers; broken up into too many pieces? Are you taking too many medications?

Y is for YES! Yes is the attitude to have. In order to avoid deprivation backlash, it’s important to focus on what you can have versus what you cannot have. Live with full passion. Y is also for Yesterday. Let go of yesterday and focus on today and tomorrow. Having a positive future-focus will help achieve successful endeavors.

L is for Lower Threshold, not lower calories. Although weight loss is important for some, reducing calories too much can prove counter-productive. People with PCOS can have a lower threshold for oxidative stress. It doesn’t take as much to put the body in stress mode. Exercising too much or restricting too little are stressful on the body. When you do this, you often experience backlash and yo-yo weight gain.

E is for Energy and Experiential Therapies. Learn mindfulness skills. Occupy your body. Achieve mind-body congruity. Change requires an awakening. We awaken in movement, awaken in relationship and awaken in journaling and art. This allows us to be with ourselves, in our own space. It teaches us self monitoring and self regulation, which slows down reactivity.

Stacy Korfist, LMFT
Redondo Beach, California
(310) 720-6443
info@pcosnetwork.com

There’s been a great deal of attention lately to the practice of “positive psychology,” which focuses on optimism, gratitude, and creating hopefulness. Some of us are optimists by nature, while some are pessimists. Either can be learned, and there are some advantages to each approach. Personally, I veer toward the optimistic side, which informs my clinical practice. Quite often, when people seek therapy, they are feeling hopeless, helpless, and not even remotely optimistic. They’re depressed, anxious, and out of sorts. If they’ve got PCOS, there’s a good chance that their moods are more easily affected by stress than those of other folks. They don’t know how to handle what’s going on in their lives effectively. The smallest stressors send them out of synch. If they are, by nature, the pessimistic type, they often feel validated in their suffering. They believe that they deserve to feel bad, that life isn’t fair, and that there’s very little that can be done to improve things. And yet, they show up. I see the act of showing up as an act of bravery, and the indicator that there is some hope to be found, even if it’s hidden away. What I look for is the tiniest hint – a mere pinprick of light in an otherwise bleak landscape – that indicates a positive potential lies inside my client. It may take some digging, and perhaps some persuading and negotiating, but if we can find just the tiniest thing to be positive or hopeful about, it is encouraging, and it’s something we can build on in their therapy. Sometimes I have to plant a few seeds and it takes a very long time for those seeds to germinate. In the therapy, I keep watering the seeds, fertilizing them, and cultivating the ground until it’s fertile enough to support their growth. Sometimes, the ground is weak, under-nourished, or even toxic from years of damaging abuse, violence, depression, and unhealthy relationships. That may mean that I need to hold hope for the client until she can hold it for herself. My relentless optimism, a double-edged sword (because sometimes I mainly see the good where there is a great deal of bad) is a tool here. Clients occasionally wonder, given what they present to me, how I could possibly find a bright spot in any of it. I’m not sure precisely how I do it, but I guess that it comes from having an intention of finding hope, and a keen eye for the openings. Years of practice tells me that it works. When you’re frustrated to the ends of the earth and back, and you really can’t believe that anything will ever change, and you’ve got a list of dark, negative things that you’re focusing on, you’ll continue to identify with the pessimistic aspects of yourself. But if you can find that one tiny seed, and focus on it every day, it will begin to grow. Your mood and attitude are like the sunshine that every garden plot needs. Remember though that darkness is a necessary part of the germination process. The sun doesn’t have to shine on a seedling all day long to make it do its thing. You don’t either. 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.

What really stood out for me in this episode was the positive attitude of both trainers. I know I was critical of Jillian a few weeks back, but she was different in this episode. She was still tough, and she still used strong language, but the language came from a perspective of empowerment, not abuse.

So many people are where they are when they have weight problems, because they either have low self-esteem, or because self-esteem plummeted as weight inched up. It simply isn't productive to inflict shaming language on someone who already feels poorly about himself/herself. It's not going to motivate them!

But if you use empowering language, inspiring language, words that help someone believe that they can, rather than why and how they're going to be punished when they don't…well, if you have a chance to watch the episode and watch how the players respond, you will see what I mean.

This whole thing we do as humans, shaming and blaming and hurting when things don't exactly go our way…it doesn't work in the world of weight loss, it doesn't work on the job, it doesn't work in any social situation I can think of.

I would love it if this show, as popular as it is, prescribed to that theory and used its two prominent members as examples of how to positively portray all emotions positively. Life will never be without frustration, anger, or hurt. But we can all, myself included, do a better job of expressing those feelings so they don't have to become another person's burden.

My attitude is that you can get hit by a bus tomorrow and had a death sentence without knowing. Every day should be lead in a way to promote your health and overall well-being. I love me no matter the fact I'll never be a size 16, let alone the median size of 8, but I'm going to enjoy my life and not look at PCOS as an illness, just part of who I am and live life as healthy and active as possible. Positive action brings out positive results.

If you're lean and you have PCOS, take a few moments to listen to our interview with Haviland Stillwell, an actress/singer who lives with the syndrome. I think you'll find her attitude inspiring.

Haviland mentioned a friend, comedienne Stacy Citron, another woman with PCOS, who is currently appearing on the show Thintervention. I've linked to both here for anyone who might want more information.

A huge thanks to Chef Jon from Green Mountain at Fox Run Resort for introducing us to the food he creates for the resort guests. If you like what he said about food, and health, we'd love to have you join us for PCOS week this coming November! For more information on some of his delicious recipes, join their Facebook group and head to the discussion tab. For some of their thoughts on living well, be sure to subscribe to their blog.

Next week we'll be discussing fish-friendly eating with Chef Nancy Banner from The Holistic Kitchen.