It’s My Hormones …

hormonesIt’s not much fun being fat curvaceous yet existing on a diet of chia balls and raw carrots with a single square of dark chocolate to brighten the dull evenings.

Ever since MS treatment played havoc with my thyroid, it’s swung between being over-active and under-active.

When it was over-active, the weight loss was quite spectacular (sigh), dampened only by ending up in hospital with severe heart palpitations and an inability to sit still for one minute.

Now it’s under-active (and then some), it’s dire. After gaining a pound every single day with my usual eating habits, I knew I needed to take drastic action, hence the carrot sticks.

So, after chomping my way through mounds of vegetables, getting to know my spiralizer (courgette spaghetti, yum), working out what farro is and how to make a lunch out of it and generally becoming a food bore, I haven’t gained a pound. But I haven’t lost any weight either. The unfairness of this is breathtaking.

Anyway, it was with much excitement that I went back for yet another endocrinology appointment last week. Would they reduce the medication, perhaps allowing me a glimmer of hope that I could wear a jolly sweater at Christmas without looking like a bauble? Could I increase my chocolate intake to two squares a night?

First up, the humiliating weigh-in. I tried balancing on one foot, but the nurse caught me out. ‘It’s my hormones’, I told her, ‘honestly‘. She looked at me with pity and waved me back to the waiting room, where I pulled out my never-ending Book Club book – only 1100 pages to go.

Finally, I was called and ushered into a tiny room. The doctor ran through a lot of numbers and letters, pausing every now and again to check some details. ‘You do know your thyroid is now rather under-active?’ Um, yes? Then she said the magic words, ‘I think we’ll halve your medication.’

‘Fabulous! Can I start today? Please?’

She gave me one of those huge hospital prescriptions and told me to take it to my GP, who would then convert it to a normal prescription and then pass it on to the chemist I have a repeat prescription with. Which could take a month. But I had a cunning plan.

On the way home I stopped at a pharmacy and asked if they had a pill-cutter.

‘You’re in luck, this is the last one.’

I drove home, emptied out all the tablets and neatly guillotined them in half.

That evening, I had three squares of chocolate.

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10 thoughts on “It’s My Hormones …

  1. Judy Epstein says:

    Yeah! You deserve it!

    • stumbling in flats says:

      Thank you, absolutely!
      I’m growing to love dark chocolate 🙂 Will never compete with Maltesers though 🙁
      x

  2. JadeyFung says:

    Aww, we’ll get there in the end missus! When an actual cure IS found, we’ll All be saying why did we even bother with all the injections and blood tests?! ;-p hehe! 🙂

    • stumbling in flats says:

      So true! Mad what we’ve got to put up with. But it’s all good – wouldn’t swap the treatment for the world 🙂
      x

  3. Kiran says:

    Impressive example of problem-solving re legitimately increasing the chocolate quota! x

  4. Jonny says:

    I love dark chocolate, as a kid Cadburys Bournville did the trick, luxury treat. I hope I’m hot being too snobish BUT how could any one categorise milk chocolate
    with REAL CHOCOLATE…..at least 81%!

    Everything in Moderation

    Jonny

    • stumbling in flats says:

      Totally agree with you!
      I’m addicted to the stuff. Never used to like it really but had to put a stop to my Maltesers addiction, lol.
      x

  5. MS Unites says:

    Ummm… hate to say this, chocolate is another problem.

    Not so much the caffeine though dark chocolate can have more than a fair share. Sugars.

    I “Aced” Microbiology and several other rather difficult courses in college. A key to MS management is “balance” as I said in another response. Disease Modifying Treatments do make a different indeed but they are not a “primary” prevention and any Neurologist worth a hoot will tell you that.

    MS is like standing in the middle of a freeway. Bam, you get hit.

    The Disease Modifying treatment is sorta akin with moving into the area between lanes. Much less likely to get struck.

    But, if lifestyle makes one predisposed to placing oneself at a higher risk then BAM, still likely to get struck, DMT or not.

    I loved breads, chocolate, cakes, now I do gluten free bread and not ALOT of it, the rest are off the table. The sugars can spring forth fungus in the body. Processed sugars are big no no’s and one even need watch natural sugars (such as amounts of sweet fruits etc).

    Fungus is thought to be one of the probable reasons of cancers.

    Cancers result in cells essentially taking a step backwards in evolution. Thats what cancer cells are. Instead of consuming normal proteins they step backwards and the wastes excreted are backwards as well with high fermentation levers which damage nearby cells that are healthy causing them to go backwards on the evolutionary time table.

    Fungus in the body can have very very bad impacts.

    As I said, MS is really a 50-50 deal, treatments and lifestyle result in the best outcomes.

    People do not understand that our immune system is intelligent in several ways, the Active immune system that is. It “remembers”. Hence you get the mumps once in life because any signal of the antigens the immune system already knows how to attack.

    Think about WHY the immune system is attacking nerve connectivity tissue, not the actual PROCESSING centers, but the connections. Its like its not attacking your HOME but instead the wiring in it.

    The Active immune system is attacking the wiring. It believes that wiring is an antigen, a foreign invader in the body. Why?

    A set of conditions exist for initial CIS (clinically isolated syndrome) to occur. Probably VERY complex, vitamin D, pre-disposal in respect to genetic percentiles and more than likely a pluther of modifiers. But once the Active immune system remembers, now its a whole lot more complex again.

    This is why research suggests, stay away from stress, wide flying ranges of emotional up’s and down’s and in order to do that regiment is necessary, exercise, proper diet, proper fluid intake, its all about finding the balance which is different from person to person as will be the stress relations the appear to kick the immune system into place to attack what it believes to be an antigen. That being “the mental communication mechanism”. Thats REALLY complex.

    One of the most promising therapies in respect to MS is to TRAIN the immune system to REALIZE that Myelin is NOT an antigen much in the way of trying train the immune system that an alergen should not result in the immune system flipping on.

    Its also amongst the most dangerous research as if it goes wrong, the immune system now thinks nerve connectivity tissue is an antigen, all of it, it completely attacks it and well.. Thats game over.

    But akin with the highway paradigm. Dont want to be standing in the highway at all. With MS we can try to be on the side of the road and thus once in a great while we might have a car run us down (an MS attack). To be on the side of the road we need manage our MS and stay on a disease modifying therapy so “close calls” dont result in a flare-up. In order to do that we need manage lifestyle. If we dont, we predispose ourselves to higher risk.

    • stumbling in flats says:

      I’m glad to say my lifestyle is actually healthier since my MS diagnosis! My diet certainly is and I make sure I get a lot of gentle exercise.
      I eat purely unprocessed foods and only have the occasional treat. My energy levels have increased but the MS fatigue still wipes me out.
      X

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