The Hemp Connection [Search results for cortisol] 

Given the fact that so many people initially find this site when looking for dietary measures to increase their progesterone, I am always on the lookout for information on the topic.

This particular piece caught my eye because yesterday I included a reference in a presentation on eating disorders and PCOS, reporting that social phobias are more common in women with PCOS than they are in other women. It can be tempting to isolate if you feel your appearance is not acceptable. Paying more attention to your menstrual cycle and your lab tests than your spouse can so easily become what your PCOS is all about.

DON'T LET THIS DISEASE STEAL AWAY WHAT COULD BE ONE OF YOUR MOST IMPORTANT PIECES OF AMMUNITION!

Make time for friends, family, spouses…and on bad days, if all it can be is your dog…so be it.

Isolation is not the answer and it may be part of the problem.

Feeling Close To A Friend Increases Progesterone, Boosts Well-being And Reduces Anxiety And Stress

ScienceDaily (June 3, 2009) — Why does dishing with a girlfriend do wonders for a woman's mood?

A University of Michigan study has identified a likely reason: feeling emotionally close to a friend increases levels of the hormone progesterone, helping to boost well-being and reduce anxiety and stress.

"This study establishes progesterone as a likely part of the neuroendocrine basis of social bonding in humans," said U-M researcher Stephanie Brown, lead author of an article reporting the study findings, published in the current (June 2009) issue of the peer-reviewed journal Hormones and Behavior.

A sex hormone that fluctuates with the menstrual cycle, progesterone is also present in low levels in post-menopausal women and in men. Earlier research has shown that higher levels of progesterone increase the desire to bond with others, but the current study is the first to show that bonding with others increases levels of progesterone. The study also links these increases to a greater willingness to help other people, even at our own expense.

"It's important to find the links between biological mechanisms and human social behavior," said Brown, is a faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and an assistant professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School. She is also affiliated with the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Hospital."These links may help us understand why people in close relationships are happier, healthier, and live longer than those who are socially isolated."

Progesterone is much easier to measure than oxytocin, a hormone linked to trust, pair-bonding and maternal responsiveness in humans and other mammals. Oxytocin can only be measured through an invasive spinal tap or through expensive and complex brain imaging methods, such as positron emission tomography scans. Progesterone can be measured through simple saliva samples and may be related to oxytocin.

In the current study, Brown and colleagues examined the link between interpersonal closeness and salivary progesterone in 160 female college students.

At the start of the study, the researchers measured the levels of progesterone and of the stress hormone cortisol in the women's saliva, and obtained information about their menstrual cycles and whether they were using hormonal contraceptives or other hormonally active medications.

To control for daily variations in hormone levels, all the sessions were held between noon and 7 p.m.

The women were randomly assigned to partners and asked to perform either a task designed to elicit feelings of emotional closeness or a task that was emotionally neutral.

In the emotionally neutral task, the women proofread a botany manuscript together.

After completing the 20-minute tasks, the women played a computerized cooperative card game with their partners, and then had their progesterone and cortisol sampled again.

The progesterone levels of women who had engaged in the emotionally neutral tasks tended to decline, while the progesterone levels of women who engaged in the task designed to elicit closeness either remained the same or increased. The participants' cortisol levels did not change in a similar way.

Participants returned a week later, and played the computerized card game with their original partners again. Then researchers measured their progesterone and cortisol. Researchers also examined links between progesterone levels and how likely participants said they would be to risk their life for their partner.

"During the first phase of the study, we found no evidence of a relationship between progesterone and willingness to sacrifice," Brown said."But a week later, increased progesterone predicted an increased willingness to say you would risk your life to help your partner."

According to Brown, the findings are consistent with a new evolutionary theory of altruism which argues that the hormonal basis of social bonds enables people to suppress self-interest when necessary in order to promote the well-being of another person, as when taking care of children or helping ailing family members or friends.

The results also help explain why social contact has well-documented health benefits---a relationship first identified nearly 20 years ago by U-M sociologist James House.

"Many of the hormones involved in bonding and helping behavior lead to reductions in stress and anxiety in both humans and other animals. Now we see that higher levels of progesterone may be part of the underlying physiological basis for these effects," Brown said.

University of Michigan (2009, June 3). Feeling Close To A Friend Increases Progesterone, Boosts Well-being And Reduces Anxiety And Stress. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 5, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2009/06/090602171941.htm

Here's a great summary of the effects of a high-fat diet on your hormones. A diet containing greater than 35% of calories from fat, in overweight conditions, in this study, was found to:
--disrupt 24 hour rhythms of secretion of thyroid stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, testosterone, and to a small extent, progesterone.
--lower total levels of thyroid stimulating hormone and testosterone.
--increase cortisol levels and disrupt the normal 24 hour cycle of cortisol release.
--induce higher blood glucose in relationship to high cortisol levels.
--reduced the magnitude of melatonin release.

So if you've got thyroid problems, can't conceive, can't sleep, and/or feel anxious or overly stressed…or have unexplainable angry outbursts…

…maybe one of the very first and most important things you can do to start to feel better…

…is reduce the amount of fat in your diet. And when you DO choose to eat fat, be sure it's the kind you see consistently recommended in our blog--seafood, nuts, canola, avocado, flax, olives.

It's really pretty simple!

Cano P, Jiménez-Ortega V, Larrad A, Toso CF, Cardinali DP, Esquifino AI. Effect of a high-fat diet on 24-h pattern of circulating levels of prolactin, luteinizing hormone, testosterone, corticosterone, thyroid-stimulating hormone and glucose, and pineal melatonin content, in rats. Endocrine. 2008 Apr;33(2):118-25. Epub 2008 May 1.

If I could have a dollar for every time in 26 years I've heard a client…or friend…or relative…say they don't cry, or can't remember the last time they did…I'd have so much money, even in the midst of this financial crisis, I wouldn't have to write this blog to pay my mortgage.

We as a culture have this"thing" about tears. We're not supposed to have them, because if we do, we believe, we're weak in character.

Guess what? Tears are a very important part of our physiology. When analyzed, they are very high in cortisol, one of the stress hormones. Tears are the body's way of clearing out stress hormones when they get so high they have potential to do serious physical damage. If we couldn't cry, stress might kill us a lot more quickly than it already does.

Years ago, when I first had this business, I was under contract to write a textbook. Numberous delays on the publisher's ended created backups and backlogs that, through a domino effect, crushed my business plan just as I was starting to see a return on my investment. To this day, I tell people I felt like I was in an old"Roadrunner" cartoon, standing on top of a cliff, watching my business fall to the ground like the cartoon anvil, with a momentum so powerful there was nothing that was going to stop it. All I could do was sit there and watch it happen, wait until the cloud of dust from the impact settled, and then start to rebuild my dream.

Talk about stress. A lot of what happened reflected on me, because it was my name that ultimately showed up on the cover. Like anyone, I value the brand I've created for my name, and it was pretty devastating to watch events completely out of my control chip away at that brand's reputation.

It was ironic that at the very time all of this was happening, I was researching a concept called"restraint stress", which is the kind of stress any animal experiences when it perceives that it is locked into a situation with no way out. In the laboratory, restraint stress is researched by immobilizing rats and subjecting them to electrical foot shocks. After repeatedly experiencing these shocks, these rats develop a behavior called"learned helplessness", which is essentially giving up even trying to escape their dilemma, and instead just sitting there and passively allowing themselves to be subjected to discomfort.

In a way, it helped to be researching this, because at least in my head, I knew that the very worst thing I could do was follow in the footsteps of those rats. I had to make sure, that every single day, even if it was something small, I had to do something that moved me forward.

I can tell you now that I am many years past the initial crisis, that there were days when getting out of bed was the something small that I managed to do.

Most days I could motivate to make coffee, and then the rest of my energy was devoted to being as engaging as I could with anyone I needed to interact with.

Sometimes the smallest thing would just push me over the edge. And a lot of times, when I wasn't feeling sad at all, usually in a very inopportune moment like when I was in the checkout line at the grocery store, tears would appear out of nowhere.

Honestly, it felt great to cry. What was really hard was dealing with the reactions of people who were around me when the tears came. They usually wanted to hover, comfort, make them go away. And that put me in a position of having to take the energy I needed to take care of myself, and put it into taking care of the people who thought they were taking care of me, but who were really making their discomfort with my stress, my responsibility.

I realized that it is probably this discomfort we have with tears that makes many of us shove them back into our heads when we feel like letting them flow.

Why am I telling all of you this? Well, it's interesting. I started to tell you because tears have come up in more than one counseling session recently, and I've shared the tears and cortisol fun fact. I thought, since cortisol can wreak havoc on PCOS and fertility, that it might be a good idea to put that fun fact on this blog.

But as I was writing this, I realized that in recent weeks I've heard many, many stories from friends who are losing jobs, freaking out, experiencing losses both personal and financial, that are leaving them feeling like those tied down rats.

Just wanted to tell you, first of all, if you feel like crying, it's ok. It might be the best thing you can do for yourself today, to do just that. It also means you're human. And that your brain is working, doing exactly what it's supposed to do when you're stressed and it's starting to put you at risk.

For what it's worth, the times my life has been thrown into the greatest of upheavals have also been the times when the land needed to be cleared, so to speak, for newer, bigger, and better things. I just had to stop resisting it and let the momentum go where it needed to go. When I was standing on the cliff, thinking the momentum was downward because all I could see was that anvil, I should have been looking up and forward. There were amazing things coming that the anvil was making room for.

I encourage all of you, if you've been feeling like it but resisting it, to have a good cry. Then get some sleep. And marvel at the fact that no matter what happened today, the sun will come up tomorrow.

Have a great week!

Last month I had the opportunity to spend a week with 5 women with PCOS at Green Mountain at Fox Run's first ever PCOS week. I learned a tremendous amount from them, maybe even more than I went to teach to them, about the syndrome.

One of the most important insights I gained, was why it can be so difficult to lose weight once you've decided to change your eating and exercise habits.

Insulin has a lot to do with it.

Your body is constantly taking in data, recording the temperature, the light level, energy levels, etc., and adjusting itself to be able to meet the demands of the situations it's recording. When it comes to hormones, it often records and hangs on to information from weeks before. It's as if it wants to be sure it's ready to handle the worst case scenario it's going to have to be asked to deal with. So…if you've been binge eating, and you've changed your habits, information it's taken in about that binge, if it occurred in your recent past, is still in the database. Your body is likely to want to make more insulin than it currently needs, just in case it's asked to have to handle a binge session like one it remembers you engaged in.

If you continue your new eating habits, consistently, that will register positively, your body will trust that it needs to make less insulin, and your lab values will improve.

The challenging part is being patient with your body while the new data has a chance to be recorded and acted on.

If you've got high insulin levels and all of a sudden you decide to go on a diet, or exercise at high levels, the insulin levels won't automatically adjust. It can be very easy to create a hypoglycemic state if you take on too much too soon. And, as your blood sugar levels drop, your hunger and carbohydrate cravings are likely going to be triggered to correct the situation.

Hypoglycemia is a stressful situation for the body, so when this scenario kicks in, it also triggers the release of stress hormones. Cortisol, one of the major stress hormones, is made with cholesterol. As are estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone. If choices you are making are demanding of the body that it makes more cortisol, it's going to be hard for it to make the other three hormones in the proper proportions.

The other thing that is common with PCOS is an intelligent, driven, all-or-nothing tending personality. When you decide to take on diet and exercise, it can be in an extreme fashion. When weight doesn't come off as planned, you can be very hard on yourself, raising your stress levels, possibly bingeing out of frustration.

And thus the cycle starts, all over again.

Hence the title of this post. How do you back yourself out of such a situation?

Ohhhh…you all are going to hate this, but the key word is"moderation". Be gentle with yourself. Rather than taking on an extreme exercise plan and a rigid diet, focus on small simple changes and working to turn them into habits. Be patient. Understand that the changes you're implementing on the outside take time to be registered by your internal hormone control systems.

Probably key? Remember this: THE DAYS YOU FEEL THE LEAST LIKE STICKING WITH YOUR NEW HABITS ARE THE DAYS IT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO DO JUST THAT. It's tempting to blame a bad day on something you've done, to take it personally, rather than let your body do what it does best when it's not interfered with. By bingeing and not exercising on a day you feel badly, you prolong the time it's going to take to get things back into balance.

If you've ever dieted, and you have trouble sleeping…there may be a reason. Keep in mind, this study was done on rainbow trout, but there is still a message in it for humans. Three groups of trout were studied with regard to their melatonin (sleep hormone/antioxidant) levels and cortisol (stress hormone) levels. The three groups were defined as fed fish, fish that were fasted for 7 days, and fish that were fasted for 7 days then refed for 5 days.

Melatonin levels were disrupted in fasted fish. If you were human, this would likely mean if you were on a strict fasting/dieting protocol, you were probably having trouble sleeping as well.

Interestingly, nighttime serotonin levels were higher in these fasted fish. Melatonin is made from serotonin, so I would presume that what the body tries to do when you're not eating well is to keep you alert and thinking about getting some food. It does that by hanging on to serotonin and preventing its conversion into melatonin. That's a survival mechanism.

So if you're dieting and you're awake at night with cravings? That's a normal response. Don't obsess about what's wrong with you, don't surf the Internet looking for what to do about your cravings. In this kind of situation, you're thinking about food because you need it. Get some.

As far as cortisol, dieting reduced levels and they stayed low after refeeding. You could argue that this is a benefit of dieting…except for the fact that if you're cutting yourself short on melatonin, you're aging yourself more quickly than you should. There are plenyy of ways to reduce melatonin levels without dieting that don't cut your life short on the back end.

By the way, since I write so much about sleep I thought I should mention…I love naps. The long afternoon kind where my cats curl up with me, and I wake up with a little bit of drool on my pillow. I don't feel guilty at all. I completely buy into the idea of"beauty sleep"--sooooo much cheaper than all those anti-aging potions on the infomercials!

Ceinos RM, Polakof S, Illamola AR, Soengas JL, Míguez JM. Food deprivation and refeeding effects on pineal indoles metabolism and melatonin synthesis in the rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss. Gen Comp Endocrinol. 2008 Apr;156(2):410-7. Epub 2008 Jan 8.

If you've ever dieted, and you have trouble sleeping…there may be a reason. Keep in mind, this study was done on rainbow trout, but there is still a message in it for humans. Three groups of trout were studied with regard to their melatonin (sleep hormone/antioxidant) levels and cortisol (stress hormone) levels. The three groups were defined as fed fish, fish that were fasted for 7 days, and fish that were fasted for 7 days then refed for 5 days.

Melatonin levels were disrupted in fasted fish. If you were human, this would likely mean if you were on a strict fasting/dieting protocol, you were probably having trouble sleeping as well.

Interestingly, nighttime serotonin levels were higher in these fasted fish. Melatonin is made from serotonin, so I would presume that what the body tries to do when you're not eating well is to keep you alert and thinking about getting some food. It does that by hanging on to serotonin and preventing its conversion into melatonin. That's a survival mechanism.

So if you're dieting and you're awake at night with cravings? That's a normal response. Don't obsess about what's wrong with you, don't surf the Internet looking for what to do about your cravings. In this kind of situation, you're thinking about food because you need it. Get some.

As far as cortisol, dieting reduced levels and they stayed low after refeeding. You could argue that this is a benefit of dieting…except for the fact that if you're cutting yourself short on melatonin, you're aging yourself more quickly than you should. There are plenyy of ways to reduce melatonin levels without dieting that don't cut your life short on the back end.

By the way, since I write so much about sleep I thought I should mention…I love naps. The long afternoon kind where my cats curl up with me, and I wake up with a little bit of drool on my pillow. I don't feel guilty at all. I completely buy into the idea of"beauty sleep"--sooooo much cheaper than all those anti-aging potions on the infomercials!

Ceinos RM, Polakof S, Illamola AR, Soengas JL, Míguez JM. Food deprivation and refeeding effects on pineal indoles metabolism and melatonin synthesis in the rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss. Gen Comp Endocrinol. 2008 Apr;156(2):410-7. Epub 2008 Jan 8.

In my last post, I talked about the relationship between depression and PCOS; this post addresses anxiety and PCOS. Although we may tend to think of anxiety and depression as two different and distinct conditions or diagnoses, in fact, there's a lot of overlap. As a therapist, I end up assessing to see whether depression or anxiety is the more dominant condition, but I almost always end up treating some degree of both conditions.

Women with PCOS are well aware that their state of well-being is affected by their hormonal balance. Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, melatonin, and cortisol all play vital roles in mood regulation as well as physical well-being. Depression is often a symptom of estrogen deficiency. Irritability and anxiety can be indicators of progesterone deficiency or estrogen excess. Likewise, testosterone deficiency can contribute to symptoms of anxiety, not to mention reduced energy and initiative (which is where you can start to see the overlap with depression symptoms). Melatonin deficiency contributes to anxiety and nervousness and disrupts sleep, which can further contribute to development of insomnia and depression. Inadequate cortisol as a result of too much stress can also result in symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The endocrine system is so complex, and PCOS patients typically are managed with hormone-affecting medications such as birth control pills and diabetes medications. If not properly balanced, side effects of such medications may include moodiness, irritability, and other symptoms that either mimic or exacerbate anxiety conditions. Medications that are prescribed for treatment of anxiety may include special anti-anxiety medications, but anxiety symptoms are often treated with depression medications, like the SSRIs (Zoloft, Celexa, etc.). Some anti-anxiety medications can be addictive if overused or misused.

To further complicate matters, your physician may not be aware of the complex interaction and possible healing benefits of proper nutrition and PCOS-specific supplementation that can dramatically lessen symptoms, and even eliminate the need for some medications. All of our neurotransmitters (those things in the brain that help generate the happy, sad, and anxious feelings) can be positively affected by the proper fuel as well as mind/body treatments that include stress management, meditation, mindfulness, exercise, yoga, hypnotherapy, etc. Just as the body yearns for homeostasis, so does the brain. The brain actually reshapes itself in response to stress, trauma, and our interactions with other people — that's true for the good as well as the bad.

So even if you have experienced a lot of negative things that are contributing to feelings of being anxious, there are many ways to approach the problem — and medication is only one of the possibilities in a big bag of therapeutic tools. Although your hormones are powerful influencers of mood and anxiety, so are nutrition, supplementation, and a proactive approach to therapy and other forms of support.

You may know of melatonin as a potent sleep aid. So much so, that if you took melatonin and you did not experience an enhanced ability to sleep, you stopped taking it.

Did you know, melatonin is a very powerful antioxidant as well? Some of the benefits of this compound relevant to PCOS include:

--lowered blood pressure
--improved memory
--reduced adrenal gland activity and cortisol secretion
--reduced cortisol response to stress
--reduced blood glucose, insulin levels, and insulin response to a glucose load
--reduced cholesterol and triglycerides
--reduced testosterone levels
--increased progesterone synthesis
--slows gastric emptying (which can help you to feel fuller, longer)

That's a lot of stuff! And it's not just not sleeping well that interferes with melatonin metabolism. So does fasting and starvation…which includes any kind of radical diet, including the medically supervised ones and the HCG ones. Melatonin levels in all three types of eating disorders, anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder, are disrupted. Obesity suppresses normal melatonin daily rhythms. Omega-3 deficiency reduces melatonin synthesis and total tissue levels.

Vitamin deficiencies such as B12, zinc, and magnesium, can interfere with good melatonin status. When I read that, I immediately thought of the many vegetarians reading this blog, as those are common deficiencies when vegetarian eating is not proactively balanced.

Normal melatonin metabolism may be dependent on physical activity.

Medical problems associated with a melatonin imbalance include: affective disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, asthma, autism, bipolar disorder, cervical cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, cluster headaches, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, Cushing’s syndrome, depression, diabetes, duodenal ulcer, epilepsy, fibromyalgia, hypertension, idiopathic pain syndrome, lung cancer, metabolic syndrome, migraine headaches, obesity, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, Parkinson’s disease, polycystic ovary syndrome, pre-eclampsia, premenstrual syndrome, schizophrenia, seasonal affective disorder, sleep apnea, and ulcerative colitis.

I'm well aware that many people reading this blog are looking for a magic supplement to erase the need for making healthy lifestyle choices. If you choose to supplement with melatonin, it likely will not hurt you, and it may help you to restore normal sleep patterns, but it will never replace the power of regular, adequate sleep. Just sayin'.: )

If you've never used melatonin before, and you decide to start, you may want to try it on a night when it's not essential that you be up and functioning early the next day. It can have a paradoxical reaction in some people.

And, if you happen to be a professional pilot, the FAA advises against using melatonin while on duty. It certainly wouldn't hurt on your days off, especially if you've been on some grueling red eye flights, just beware of this disclaimer while officially on duty.

I have an extensive list of references I've collected from which this blog post was derived. If you would like them you can contact me directly.

Bottom line, if you don't value sleep, your body is going to have a really, really, really hard time being healthy.

As I mentioned in the first part of this series, vitex has its strongest effect on four hormones: estrogen, progesteron, luteinizing hormone (LH), and the one this post is dedicated to, prolactin.

Prolactin is primarily associated with lactation. It is also important for sexual arousal, sensing orgasms, and libido. So it's safe to say, you have to have good prolactin metabolism in order to successfully conceive and carry a pregnancy through to nursing!

One of the most important, and often overlooked, influences on prolactin function, is medication. I am most familiar with psychotropic medications because of my specialty, and I believe, with the very high incidence of anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders in women with PCOS, it is incredibly important to use these medications with discretion in order to not interfere with fertility, or successful PCOS management in women who are not in pursuit of conception.

Before considering any supplement, make a list of all the medications you've ever been prescribed and show them to a registered pharmacist. Ask them if any of those medications have any potential for disrupting prolactin function. And if you come up with a"yes" for any of them, ask for a list of alternatives that you and your prescribing physician can use to adjust your treatment plan.

When prolactin is out of balance, funny things can happen. You can produce milk when you're not supposed to (I once had a male client who started to lactate, and it turned out to be a symptom of a pituitary tumor.)

You might not be able to produce milk when you want to. Many, many, many women with PCOS find, much to their dismay, that they get pregnant, and cannot feed their babies. I am shocked at how many medical colleagues with PCOS write me to share that until they heard us mention this at inCYST…they never knew it could be a problem. And they themselves could not nurse their babies!!!

This lack of awareness and the incredible importance of healthy prolactin function to the overall health of mother and baby, is precisely why, our first outreach outside of dietitians, with inCYST, has been with lactation consultants. They understand this physiology best, and they are the most likely to pick up on problems as soon as they become apparent.

Bottom line, PCOS is not just about infertility. It is about successful reproduction, which includes being able to successfully create the next generation of healthy people.

But I digress. Back to prolactin.

Prolactin is controlled by the hypothalamus, the part of the brain we at inCYST are obsessed with learning and teaching about. The hypothalamus also regulates estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, thyroid, and growth hormone. You can see why it's your BFF as a woman with PCOS. If you have problems with one of those, you likely have problems with more than one.

Most medical treatments address each of those hormone imbalances as if they are separate, requiring a separate medical treatment…better yet…a separate medication. So by the time you've made the specialist rounds, you've been given a birth control pill, an antidepressant, a sleep medication, a lipid lowering medication (since some of these hormones are made of cholesterol, when they're out of balance…cholesterol will be, too).

We like to think we start where the problem starts. Giving the hypothalamus what it needs to work efficiently. And the number one chemical you can focus on, which should help all of these functions, which I call our"Recipe for a Happy Hypothalamus (SM)"…is DHA, one of the fish oils.

1. DHA makes it harder for the hypothalamus to feel stress. Stress is a very selfish thing. It steals energy away from other things your body might need it for. With enough DHA in the system, the hypothalamus can put its energy into healing the functions that are NOT related to stress, mainly reproduction, sleep, and mood.

2. DHA increases dopamine receptor density. Prolactin is dopamine-controlled, meaning the more receptors there are to communicate with the dopamine that is there, the less prolactin your body needs to make.

An interesting aside--dopamine imbalance is common in people who crave and/or binge on sugar. So if you've got cravings AND your prolactin levels are not right…you just might be DHA-deficient.

I have one more post coming on chaste tree berry that will summarize important findings and recommendations.

But, with regards to prolactin, what I will say is that two very important things you can, and should, do, to move yourself back into balance, are:

1. Make sure your medications are not the source of the problem, and
2. Make sure your food choices are promoting healthy dopamine function.

Even if you DO decide to try an herbal formula, it is much more likely to work for you, if you provide it with an environment that allows it to do what it does best.

We focus a lot on the successes our program achieves, but I thought I'd take a blog post to talk about what happens when it doesn't work. I'm not so sure that's the way to describe unexpected results, but since that's how clients often perceive and define it, that's what I'll use for this discussion.

PCOS is a counterintuitive syndrome. It doesn't follow the typical weight loss patterns that most diets address and promote. If you're looking for"x" pounds of weight loss in"x" amount of time, it can set you up for disappointment. In fact, if you've got certain numbers in your head, and you don't get there in a certain timespan, it can set you up to be tempted to cut your calories back too severely, or exercise too intensely. With PCOS, one of your most important mantras needs to be"more is not better and moderation is best."

Are you gentle with yourself? Or do you tend to punish yourself if your body doesn't act exactly the way you wish you could just push-button program it to? One of the worst things you can do is stress out about changes not happening on a certain schedule. Cortisol, a very powerful stress hormone, is one of the hormones you just don't want to add to the mix. Be sure you treat yourself well, every day, even on the days your weight is not what you think it should be, when your pregnancy test is negative, when your blood test didn't show changes you hoped for. Sometimes it takes awhile for changes to blossom, and they have the best chance of doing so if you're consistent with your behavior. (Soon I'm hoping a network member will be sharing her own testimonial about the benefits of slow and steady…it's very motivating and inspiring.)

Are you too"black and white" with your problem solving? If you tried something that someone recommended, and you didn't see results in the time frame you expected…did you toss the idea completely because it"didn't work"? Or did you step outside of yourself and play detective, asking yourself if the change needed adjusting in dose, time, consistency…? Are you looking for the perfect food? Or are you letting yourself gradually introduce new and different ways to change your overall intake? Are you allowing for fun foods, or are you trying to completely eliminate foods you feel are"bad"?

Are you applying the wrong solution to the wrong problem? Of course, this is a nutrition website, and we believe wholeheartedly in the power of nutrition. But nutrition cannot solve everything. Sometimes the driving force behind an eating problem is a mood disorder. If you have bipolar disorder or severe depression, good nutrition can definitely help, but it may not be the most important thing you need to do to restore balance. As much as we believe in nutrition, we believe even more in the mind-body connection. If your mind is out of balance, and not being prioritized…you'll be chasing its cravings with the foods that throw your hormones out of whack. It's important to honor your mental health and ask for help with it if you notice that it's hard to slow down your thoughts or to not be negative.

For the most part, my experience is not that the information isn't working, but rather, that a client hasn't given it time to work.

Remember, slow and steady. Be gentle with yourself. Trust that your body knows what it needs to do to get healthy. When we don't get in the way and make it even harder for it to get there.

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.

The topic for this blog post was suggested by a reader. I figured it was likely important, since many of you struggle with depression and arthritis or some sort of chronic pain, and you're self-medicating. The effects of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, on hormones, is quite extensive. I am summarizing the findings reported in the reference I list at the end. Bottom line, it's probably not the greatest idea to be regularly introducing marijuana into your system if your hormones are out of balance and you're trying to correct that problem. Even if you're not trying to become pregnant but you're sexually active. The effects outside of your own self are potentially significant.

Interestingly, improving your omega-6 to omega-3 dietary ratio helps to correct some of your own human cannabinoid levels, which may help to decrease the desire to get them from an external source. It may also alleviate the depression and joint pain that you may be using marijuana for in the first place. Some experts suggest that this imbalance of our "natural THC" may be one reason women with PCOS have strong carbohydrate cravings--it's another form of the munchies!

Reduced FSH and LH levels.
Suppressed prolactin, thyroid, growth hormone
Provokes cortisol release and reduces production of adrenal steroids, which makes it hard to maintain hormone levels.
Interferes with ovarian prostaglandin synthesis.

HCG-stimulated and FSH-stimulated progesterone secretion is inhibited.
Inhibits estradiol release.

Inhibits cholesterol esterase manufacture, and cholesterol is the building block for many reproductive hormones.
Hyperplasia and hypertrophy of the uterus
Changes in vaginal cell thickness, character and mucoid presentation
Reduced uterine weight
Suppresses thyroid function.

A dose of LH that routinely caused ovulation in normal rats was only able to induce ovulation in 40% of the rats exposed to THC.
Two to fourfold greater doses of LH were required to restore ovulation in THC-exposed rats.

The equivalent of one marijuana cigarette per day interfered with cell division and embryonic growth in fertlized eggs. It also reduced intrauterine weight gain by the fetus.

Offspring of rats exposed to THC had abnormal eggs, meaning the fertility of future generations was also affected.

Prevents reuptake of serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine into the brain, increasing, not decreasing, depression over the long term.

Braude MC, Ludford MP, eds. Marijuana: Effects on the Endocrine Reproductive Systems. 1984

It was 1975, and my father had a powder blue polyester double-knit “leisure suit,” a weight-loss plan disguised as a plan to single-handedly re-roof our house, and a keen interest in alternative nutrition and well-being. The latter took the form of upside-down eating, in which we had our smallest meal at dinner and our largest meal at breakfast. My friends thought it was very strange that we ate steaks and pork chops for breakfast, along with huge salads.

We were also eating texturized soy protein, roughly ground grains made into coarse earthy breads, spoonfuls of lecithin, mung bean sprouts, and a whole lot of strange things that you could only get out of the bulk food barrels at Elliot’s Natural Foods. We had a copy of “The Whole Earth Catalog” on the coffee table, and there was also a well-worn copy of my dad’s new bible, Adelle Davis’ “Let’s Eat Right to Get Fit.” There was some new thinking going on in this middle-aged straight-laced German guy, and I was curious about it. Extremely curious. I read the books, and ate whatever weird stuff I was supposed to be eating.

Things got even more curious when my father signed the entire family up to learn Transcendental Meditation (TM), which was developed by the Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi in the 1950s. Although it started elsewhere, by the 1970s, it had penetrated as far as “The Big Tomato,” my hometown of Sacramento, California. He went to a couple of introductory lectures, and the next thing we knew, all five of us were learning TM! It sure seemed exotic at the time, but it’s a technique I have practiced off on and on for over three decades. It’s so simple, I find it the easiest place to return to when I’m most stressed.

TM is a mantra-based meditation technique that has been scientifically validated for stress reduction, blood pressure reduction and, most recently management of the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress in veterans. The National Institute of Health has spent in excess of $20 million validating the benefits of TM. It increases mental clarity, creativity, and overall health, and decreases stress by decreasing the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. When the sympathetic nervous system’s activity decreases, so do adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol levels. Therefore, it is quite effective for stabilizing mood and even controlling appetite, because your appetite tends to go out of control when you’re feeling stressed.

Technically, it must be taught through an authorized trainer (see www.tm.org), but a great deal of introductory information can be gleaned online. I’ve written previously here about the benefits of meditation, and I’d love to introduce you to this technique.

Simply sit quietly and comfortably. This is essential to all forms of meditation. The mantra would be assigned by your teacher, but you can choose a syllable or sound with no inherent meaning (other forms of meditation might focus on a word with a meaning, such as “love” or “peace.”). The act of focusing on the mantra draws your mind out of its normal state of anxiety, chatter, and activity. If your mind drifts, return your attention to the mantra gently and repeatedly, for a period of 20 minutes per day. Results have been verified with as little as eight weeks of consistent daily practice. Optimally, practicing twice a day for twenty minutes each time is the goal, but benefits can be derived from as little as five minutes a day.

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

References:
Dillbeck M.C. and Orme-Johnson D. W. Physiological differences between Transcendental Meditation and rest. American Psychologist 42:879–881, 1987.
Jevning R., et al. The physiology of meditation: a review. A wakeful hypometabolic integrated response. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 16(3):415-24, 1992.
Orme-Johnson D.W. and Walton K. W. All approaches of preventing or reversing effects of stress are not the same. American Journal of Health Promotion 12:297-299, 1998.

I got my start in this specialty in a nontraditional fashion. Even though I did a lot of work in endocrinology initially, I gravitated into sports nutrition, and from there, eating disorders. I initially started my business thinking that it would be a resource center for eating disorders. But PCOS followed me. I kept getting phone calls from women looking for help with their eating disorder who mentioned they'd recently been diagnosed with PCOS. Thinking there must be some relationship, I started mentioning the symptoms of the syndrome at local mental health networking meetings. I started getting counseling referrals from eating disorder specialists--and they tended to be women who had initially been diagnosed with bulimia, put into traditional eating disorder treatment, and then a few years later,"relapsed". It was with this"relapse" that the PCOS was diagnosed.

I put that word into quotes, because you can only relapse from a disease you've been treated for…if the treatment you received is for the problem you have. The word blames the person for the diagnosis with the problem.

I have come to believe the problem may lie, in large part, with the caregivers. Eating disorder symptoms are primarily behavioral. There isn't a blood test you can administer, or an x-ray you can examine. And therefore, if you fit a certain criteria, you must have the disorder.

Just as diabetes won't respond to psychotherapy, PCOS, which in many cases is PREdiabetes, won't either.

The problem with PCOS is, the hormonal imbalances it renders can induce the very same behaviors that we use to diagnose eating disorders. Carbohydrate cravings are extreme. Hormones are so out of whack that the only thing that manages them, it seems, is extremes in diet and in activity. And God forbid, if no doctor caught on to your hormone problem and you decided to take things in your own hands…then you have control issues and you have an eating disorder.

What can make it especially challenging to diagnose PCOS, if it has progressed this far, is that the extremes in exercise and diet may, at least temporarily, suppress abnormal labs. It takes a skilled clinician to even see what's going on. I think back to my 3 1/2 years in an inpatient treatment center, and how many young women came to me complaining that as they started to refeed, they were craving carbohydrates. And because it was the treatment center's philosophy, I smiled back and told them all foods could fit.

A lot of eating disorder treatment is about the battle between the clinician, who wants his/her clients to believe that they can get back to eating everything in moderation, and the client wanting to tell the clinician that just isn't so, but playing the game as long as she needs to in order to graduate to the next level move toward discharge.

Last year I wrote to several hundred mental health practitioners who specialized in PCOS, introducing my company and the work I do with PCOS. I described the symptoms and explained to them what I just explained above. I received who knows how many polite responses, thanking me for my interest, but they worked with eating disorders, not PCOS, and there wasn't really a need for my information. I wondered how many thousands of women were sitting in therapy, being told if they just addressed their"issues"…they could beat the problem.

Don't get me wrong, I know there are plenty of issues in PCOS that psychotherapy can benefit. But there's a difference between anxiety over the prom and anxiety driven by excess cortisol levels resulting from a poorly balanced nervous system.

Sometimes I wonder if it's not the same diagnosis, being given a different name depending on the office in which it first shows up?

I sure hope at least some of those women have found my website on the Internet and have benefitted from the information I've learned and posted there since that tenure.

I got a little sidetracked with things, sorry for not getting to this sooner.

Progesterone is a topic I've covered before in other posts. Rather than repeat myself, I'll just link you to each part in that 5 part series.

Important things to remember about progesterone:

The basic building block for making progesterone, is cholesterol. Cholesterol is also the building block for testosterone and cortisol. If your body's balance is shifted in the stress management direction, it is likely that any cholesterol you might have had to make progesterone…was used up to make cholesterol.

One of the absolute most important things you can do to improve your progesterone levels, therefore, is to manage your stress.

I noticed after writing the original five part series that traffic to this blog increased significantly. The most common keywords were,"foods to enhance progesterone". Unfortunately, simply adding foods or supplementing with progesterone is not going to be the answer. If you really, truly want to have good progesterone balance, a commitment to better stress management is going to be a very important part of the solution. Some days it will be easy to do that, other days you will be challenged. Being gentle with yourself and accepting the best you can do on any given day…is what you deserve to give yourself credit for!

Here are the other five links with more information.

Watch out for environmental estrogens
Tackling insulin resistance
Enjoying food
Stress management
Physical activity

Source: bakersroyale.com via Lauren on Pinterest

The cheat day is extremely counterproductive for PCOS, and here just a few of the reasons why.

1. It creates the mentality that there are good foods, and bad foods. Of course, there are foods that are more supportive of lessening insulin resistance than others. But subscribing"good" and"bad" designations to foods can be counterproductive. I have found that the minute a food becomes something you limit to just one day a week…it can cause you to crave and obsess about the very food you are supposed to be limiting.

2. And that brings me to my next point. Binge eating is extremely strongly correlated with PCOS, and what happens on some of those cheat days…can be mind boggling. Women with PCOS are extremely sensitive to small changes in diet, and a binge episode can include salty foods that promote fluid retention. If your physician is monitoring your insulin function with a test called a hemoglobin A1c, it is a reading of your average blood glucose over the past weeks. Major binges that take you a few days to get over can throw that average off.

3. I have seen cases where overdoing the cheat day has been a major barrier to overcoming insulin resistance. It can be the thing that provokes your physician to increase your medication dose…a dose which may be too high on days when you are eating well. The very best way to reduce your dependence on medication, is to refrain from starving/bingeing cycles that make it hard for your physician to create a medication regimen that helps you.

4. Cheat days can interfere with weight loss. Let's say you are losing about a pound a week. Your calorie deficit is about 500 per day. All it takes is one fast food dinner, in addition to a normal breakfast and lunch, to offset your progress you have made the rest of the week.

5. A lot of foods people"cheat" on are processed and high in sodium. It can take a few days to flush the water this sodium is retaining. My experience is, if you are working with the mentality of cheating and not cheating, even if you give yourself permission to do so, there is guilt involved after the cheat. And that can drive you to weigh in the next day, look at the higher weight, assume it is fat you have gained…encouraging overexercising and over restricting food. Both of those choices impose stress on your insulin and cortisol systems and interfere with blood sugar control.

Our goal at inCYST is to create a lifestyle where the healthier foods are the ones you gravitate toward, not because they are good for you, but because you genuinely enjoy them. My experience is that when you are in a hormone-friendly groove, you actually LIKE to eat greens, fruits, and lean proteins. I know, for me, when I am taking care of myself, I can barely handle walking through a food court in the mall or airport without feeling nauseated from the smell. I don't really need cheat days because I don't have an appetite for the kind of foods cheat days are designed to allow.

When you are craving"bad" foods, it is a major sign that you are out of balance. Cheat days have a way of keeping you stuck In that imbalance, not helping you out of it.

Let us help you learn what life is like living life in balance, rather than constantly counteracting some kind of extreme with another extreme. That is what we excel at.

I recently received a newsletter from one of our network members that I wanted to share with you. Karen Siegel, in addition to being a registered dietitian, is a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist. Her practice is located in Houston, Texas. She writes a wonderful newsletter entitled,"Qi Mail", which some of you might really enjoy. I am pasting the contents of her most recent newsletter for you to sample. Karen's contact information is listed below, if you'd like to schedule an appointment, or sign up to personally receive these wonderful newsletters. The actual layout is much more beautiful than what I can reproduce here, I can only paste the content in Blogger's format. As many of you are likely rushing around this weekend to get the last few holiday gifts, foods, and details taken care of, I thought this topic was especially pertinent. Enjoy!

REST, RESTORE, REVITALIZE

In nature, winter is the season where all living things slow down, conserve their energy and prepare for the outburst of new life and energy in the spring. Our bodies are instinctively expressing the fundamental principles of winter – rest, restoration and revitalization.

The Nei Ching, one of the earliest surviving medical books on acupuncture, advises:
“During the winter months one should refrain from overusing energy. Retire early and get up with the sunrise, which is later in winter. Desires and mental activity should be kept quiet and subdued, as if keeping a happy secret.”

Eating warm hearty soups, dressing warmly, and refraining from cold and raw foods is also recommended.

Element: Water
Nature: Yin
Organs: Kidney, Urinary Bladder, Adrenal Glands, Ears and Hair
Emotion: Fear and Depression
Flavor: Salty

Seasonal acupuncture treatments in winter serve to nurture and nourish kidney Qi (the organ associated with winter) which can greatly enhance the body's ability to thrive in times of stress and aid in healing, preventing illness, and increase vitality.

Call now for more information or to schedule your seasonal tune-up

De-stress this Winter with Acupuncture

While optimal health and well-being in the winter season calls for rest, energy conservation and the revitalization of body and spirit, your holiday activities may have a different agenda. This year can be filled with a mad scramble of visitors, family get-togethers and frantic shopping trips. Compound the usual seasonal pressures with the constant barrage of bad economic news and you may find this to be one of the most stressful times of the year.

Stress, frustration and unresolved anger can cause a disruption in the flow of qi or energy through the body. These energetic imbalances can throw off the immune system or cause symptoms of pain, sleep disturbances, mood changes, abnormal digestion, headaches, and menstrual irregularities, and, over time, more serious illnesses can develop. Acupuncture treatments can correct these imbalances and directly effect the way you manage stress.

Studies on Acupuncture and Stress

Numerous studies have demonstrated the substantial benefits of acupuncture in the treatment of stress.

A 2008 study published in Anesthesia & Analgesia found that acupuncture point alleviated preoperative anxiety in children while a 2003 study conducted at Yale University showed that ear acupuncture significantly lowered the stress level of the mothers of children that were scheduled for surgery.

A German study published in Circulation found that acupuncture significantly lowers both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The extent of the blood pressure reductions by acupuncture treatments was comparable to those seen with antihypertensive medication or aggressive lifestyle changes, including radical salt restrictions.

Another study from the University of New Mexico measured the affects of acupuncture on 73 men and women with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The researchers found the acupuncture treatments to be as helpful as the standard treatment of cognitive behavioral therapy.

Needless to say, if the stress in your life is throwing you off balance, consider acupuncture therapy to regain peace of mind, regulate your immune system and stay healthy.

Miso Soup with Scallions

Did you know that Miso Soup with Scallions is actually an ancient herbal remedy for colds?

In 300 AD famous herbalist, Ge Hong, writes about Miso Soup with Scallions in a book called, Bei ji zhou hou fang or Emergency Formulas to Keep Up One’s Sleeve.

The soup is indicated for the onset of a cold when a person is just beginning to feel a headache, stuffy nose and a slight fever. So, the next time you feel a cold coming on, be sure to have your miso!

Miso Soup (Serves 4)

Ingredients:

* 6 cups water
* 3-4 Tablespoons Aka Miso or red soy bean paste (usually sold in the refrigerated section)
* 3-5 green onions stalks, chopped

Directions:

* Dissolve the miso in a little bit of boiling water (about 2 tsp.)
* Bring water to a boil in a saucepan and add the miso & scallions.
* Simmer for 5-10 minutes.
* Remove from heat top with green onions and serve.

Variations: you can add various other ingredients to make a more substantial soup, such as tofu, seaweed, fresh mushrooms, cooked shrimp, snow pea sprouts, cooked rice noodles, or paper-thin slices of fresh ginger.

Be a Good Friend
Refer someone you know for acupuncture and get $10 off your next acupuncture treatment.

Stress Busting Foods

The foods that you eat play a crucial role in your overall well-being as well as your ability to handle stress.

Over 1400 chemical changes occur as stress hormones, such as cortisone, sap important nutrients such as B vitamins, vitamin C and magnesium from the body.

Here are three foods that can replenish your supply of these nutrients and enhance your ability to manage stress:

Cauliflower – Cauliflower and other cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbage, and kale are chock full of stress-relieving B vitamins. Cauliflower is also one of the very best sources of vitamin B5 or pantothenic acid.

Pantothenic acid helps turn carbohydrates and fats into usable energy and improves your ability to respond to stress by supporting your adrenal glands. Fatigue, listlessness, numbness and tingling or burning pain in the feet are all indications that you may need more vitamin B5 in your diet.

Salmon – Salmon is a healthy and delicious way to get your dose of B vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids. Vitamin B12 supports production of red blood cells, allows nerve cells to develop properly and is essential to the synthesis of the “happy” brain chemical serotonin.

Among the many benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, a 2003 study published in Diabetes & Metabolism found that a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids significantly reduced the stress response and kept the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine in check.

Blackberries – Blackberries are jam packed with Vitamin C, calcium and magnesium. Vitamin C has shown to be a powerful stress reducer that can lower blood pressure and return cortisol levels to normal faster when taken during periods of stress.

Magnesium and calcium act together to help regulate the body's nerves and muscle tone. When there is too little magnesium in your diet, nerve cells can become over activated and can trigger muscle tension, muscle soreness, muscle spasms, muscle cramps, and muscle fatigue.

Blackberries have more than double the amounts of vitamin C, calcium and magnesium than their popular cousin, the blueberry.

Karen Siegel MPH, MS, RD, LD, L.Ac.
9660 Hillcroft, Suite 202
Houston, TX 77096
713-721-7755
karensclinic@gmail.com

We've gotten a whole lot of traffic from people coming to learn about Amber. And I'm guessing, more than a few came to see what diet I put her on.

We'll eventually get to the food stuff, but there was something else going on with Amber that caught my attention and seemed like the more important priority. I say that, because it holds the potential to undermine any kind of nutrition advice I might give. Because of that, it needs to be addressed and corrected first, so that any type of nutrition changes we pursue have a better chance of catching and taking hold.

Amber doesn't sleep well. She shared with me that she often gets up in the middle of the night, she wakes up unrefreshed, as if she hasn't slept at all, she's exhausted most of the day, and she has memory problems.

Does that sound to you, like someone who's going to do well with a diet and exercise problem?
--She's going to have a hard time finding the energy to exercise. For those of you who have labelled yourselves"lazy" because you're not sleeping well…stop it. You're exhausted.
--She's going to have a hard time choosing productive foods, because all she's going to care about is quick energy to get through the next 10 minutes.
--She's not going to be able to organize her day to accommodate exercise because she's too tired to think about how to do that.

What it really sounds like Amber might be doing…is something called MICROSLEEPING. It's something sleep-deprived people do, kind of going through life in a subconscious haze, never really sleeping, never really being fully conscious. It's hugely stressful on the brain, and it tends to chomp away at neurons so they can't function. It's also quite dangerous, as you can see in this video, if you're spending any part of your day at all operating some sort of machinery.

It makes better sense, rather than imposing a self-defeating program onto an exhausted, stressed out system, to pull that system back into balance so it has the energy to pursue healthy living.

Here's what I think microsleeping does to hormones and how it may be affecting Amber.

1. When you're hyperinsulinemic, and you go long periods of time without eating, your blood sugar is likely to get low. That's not something your body really likes to see, so when that happens, it releases cortisol in order to get blood sugar back up. If that happens in the middle of the night, when stress hormones aren't supposed to be circulating, it prevents you from cruising through normal stages of sleep. So you wake up feeling as if you haven't slept.

2. When your stress hormones have been working during the night, you're likely to wake up in the morning not feeling hungry. Plus, it's likely that you overslept, finally having fallen asleep just before the alarm went off, so you hurry out the door without breakfast.

3. High insulin levels and empty stomachs are not really the greatest combination, so at some point, mid-morning, hunger appears…with a vengeance. If you're tired and haven't really planned your eating, you're highly likely to seek out caffeine and sugar to fix the problem.

4. And thus, the vicious cycle begins.

But how in the world do you begin to break it? Here are the things I suggested to Amber.

1. Eat a protein-containing snack about a half hour before bedtime. It should contain at least 8 grams of protein. It will help stabilize blood glucose through the night. I don't care if it's an energy bar, string cheese, or a slice of turkey. I like to have Greek yogurt with nuts, myself. (I don't even have PCOS but I find that it helps me to sleep better if I do this.)

2. Spend at least a half hour outdoors each day. Amber lives in a hot, desert, climate, and we're closing out our"winter" in the desert, meaning her body is likely really needing a hormonal reset. UV light exposure really helps to improve melatonin (and serotonin) metabolism. So she's been eating breakfast outside.

3. Define breakfast as something that contains protein and is consumed before 10 am. If she's not hungry at 7 am, I don't want to force her to eat, but I do want to be sure she's keeping blood sugar levels stable. I told her that a good sign we're resetting hormones is if she starts to feel hungrier, earlier in the day. Within a couple of days she emailed to tell me that she was.

4. Take a dose of fish oil equivalent to 1000 mg DHA (not total omega-3's, specifically DHA) per day. Not sleeping well is one of the quickest ways to oxidize and destroy brain cells so we need to rebuild them. And, because memory is an issue, we had a pretty detailed discussion about what needed to happen in order to make sure this happened every single day, without fail.

5. Eat at least 5 servings of vegetables per day. Research has shown that people who do this, have higher melatonin levels, which means they also sleep better.

6. Keep doing Craig's exercises, because they would help her be ready to fall asleep at bedtime.

Fortunately, she started feeling better almost immediately, so now we're looking at her food patterns to see what we can productively layer on this foundation.

In the meantime, Amber's discovered she's a bit dependent on soda, likely for the caffeine. So I wrote an article for my Examiner gig about some substitutions that at least give her some fizz.

We'll get back to you with more food information in future posts, but I wanted to be sure those of you who were disappointed to not see some sort of magic diet or supplement in our program, understood why you didn't find it.

Our approach at inCYST is very different. It feels a bit counterintuitive, I know, but those who trust it and use it, do see results. I hope this series is helping you, too.

Here's a pretty large study (650 women with PCOS) that illustrates why taking care of your PCOS is not just about diet and exercise.

Smoking cigarettes may be very important in hormone function and PCOS. They found that women with PCOS who smoked, compared to women with PCOS who did not, had higher fasting blood lipids (cholesterol, triglycerides, and low-density lipoprotein) and lower prolactin levels. They also had higher adrenal responsiveness (meaning more cortisol secretion).

One of the reasons often given by women for not quitting smoking is that it helps keep weight down. But if you're doing unhealthy things to keep that weight down (restrictive dieting, smoking, diet pills, etc.), you may be making the problem you are trying to control, even worse.

Sometimes the initial weight gain that comes with quitting smoking keeps people from quitting. But if you hang in there, and keep up the other healthy behaviors you have been working on, that weight will eventually come off. It's a type of weight gain, in my opinion, that is well worth it, for the long-term gains you earn.

It's a tough one, I know…nicotine is the second most addictive substance (behind heroin) known to man…but if you can conquer the butts…you can do just about anything that comes along afterward that you decide to put your mind to.

Glintborg D, Mumm H, Hougaard DM, Ravn P, Andersen M. Smoking is associated with increased adrenal responsiveness, decreased prolactin levels and a more adverse lipid profile in 650 white patients with polycystic ovary syndrome. Gynecol Endocrinol. 2011 Jul 20. [Epub ahead of print]

We all throw the word"fat" around as if we really know what it is. If I were to stand at the mall and take a survey, I'd likely get the following answers to the question,"What is fat?"

"Gross"

"Something I have too much of."

"Saturated and unsaturated."

"Something that unfortunately makes food taste good."

Have you ever thought about why we even make and store fat in the first place? Just a few decades ago, nutrition students like me were taught that the primary source of fat was as a storage tissue for excessive calories eaten. Oh! And it helps to insulate you and keep you warm. That was that.

That paradigm is what the vast majority of nutrition advice is based on…that fat is an inactive mass that has little value, really, so when we have too much of it we should do whatever it takes to get rid of it. Diet. Exercise. Liposuction. Bariatric surgery.

In recent years, scientists have been studying fat and learning some really interesting things. Fat is actually an endocrine organ! Just like the pancreas and the liver, our fat tissue manufactures and secretes hormones and chemicals of communication that are used by other parts of the body in other locations. Fat tissue can make estrogen, and it can also even make cortisol! Other hormones that fat tissue can make include leptin, resistin, and adiponectin.

The fact that fat has functions suggests that we should be much more respectful of its existence. Apparently it is created when we need what it does. Simply removing it, without figuring out what conditions triggered it to appear in the first place, is likely why drastic, imbalanced methods of reducing fat don't have long-term success.

I read long ago that insulin has a mild-antidepressant activity. It occurred to me, that when a person is not living their life in balance, and the nervous system is having a hard time doing its job, that we may have been programmed to have back up plans to ensure our survival. Such as not allowing insulin to be used by muscle and fat, rather rendered available to be used by the brain to keep doing what it does. After all, if our brains aren't working, we aren't working…right?

So instead of thinking we are depressed because we are fat…maybe we should consider that we are fat becasue we are depressed.

The type of fat that is found in our abdomens is commonly written about as dangerous to have. Yes, it is associated with a lot of expensive and deadly illnesses. However, it is also where a lot of omega-3 fatty acids are stored. So if we're eating the kind of fat that overpowers the ability of the body to do its job, and not eating enough omega-3 fatty acids in the first place, it's actually pretty amazing, if you think about it, that our bodies have a way to make sure that despite these somewhat self-destructive choices, the fats our brains desperately need, stay in the body and get to where they are most needed?

I stopped thinking of fat as a bad thing a long time ago. When I see someone whose adipose organ is overdeveloped, it makes me stop and think about how far out of balance they must be. If you exercise and train and work your muscles routinely over time, they become big and strong, right? If your life is imbalanced, your fat tissue will be worked out in similar fashion. If you don't need the fat, it is not likely to stick around.

When I see someone with an overdeveloped fat organ, my very first thought is,"That body is having to work sooo hard to stay in balance. That must be an exhausting job."

When you are diligent with self-care, that is you make food choices that promote better balance, you move your body regularly, you don't take on unnecessary stress, and you practice good sleep hygiene, your body won't have to be so dependent on its fat tissue to do all that work. The responsibility is better divided between other body parts.

It's a bit of a shift to wrap your brain around, I know…but I encourage you to think about it. The very fact that you're able to make fat may have been lifesaving, up to this point. But since extra fat was more designed as a backup plan, and not the primary way to stay in balance, perhaps you can think of your choices from this point forward as ways to give that organ a break and not wear it out…not wear YOU out…before your time.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15195692