Hormone Wildfire: Sustained progress takes time

Hey All!

It’s been months since I updated you on the hormone wildfire event. Great news! I am feeling better and better with time! This post will really be about the education as to why it happened and how I came out the other side of this without serious disease or illness.

I took another DUTCH test in August 2022 and the results really surprised me!

First of all, my Progesterone went from below post-menopausal levels to a higher normal level. My testosterone elevated greatly, however. My previous DUTCH had this level at 12.97 in March 2022 (which is considered normal). Looking at the metabolites of testosterone and seeing that these were elevated was also a concern. This can look like insulin resistance or insulin resistance PCOS. I’ve never been diagnosed with PCOS and fertility has never been an issue for my husband and I, but seeing this happening in my body now would likely create a fertility concern.

Take a listen to the Zoom recording I did on the effects of Burnout and stress on the body to help catch you up to date here. This is exactly what was happening to me! The physical stress of the “thing I took in two doses” in addition to an already stressed-out body, was like lighting a match in a forest and then the entire thing went up in flames. And here I was, looking around and asking, “what in the hell is happening?!”

The second part of my own physiological burnout started to manifest as insulin resistance, as noticed in my DUTCH test. I had lab work done in late Dec. 2021 that was starting to trend towards an insulin resistance, but these values were still normal. Fasting insulin is a very important blood marker for insulin resistance and this isn’t part of your standard lab work. Normal values are 1.90-23.00 (uU/mL) and this is a wide range! At the time of my lab draw, my value for this was 15.81. Still considered normal, but functional medicine (which is root cause medicine, not symptomatic medicine) has a much smaller range which includes normal fasting insulin to be under 7.0 uU/mL. My Hgb A1C level was 5.0% and this reference range is 4.0-5.6%. This is the long term marker to see how the insulin/glucose interaction is happening in the body. If this is an elevated percentage, we know that this issue has been happening over an extended period of time. The other lab marker that is the most commonly measured level is the fasting glucose. Important to note: this is the last marker to be elevated and usually the first one ordered. That’s not very specific! My level was 102 mg/dL and this range needs to be under 99.

So, even before my Aug. 2022 DUTCH tests, my body was starting to trend into the insulin resistance stress response. In the Zoom video, you’ll learn that the other systems that become dysregulated during stress and burnout are the HPG and HPT axes. The HPG is the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal feedback axis and this explains why my cycle was absolutely affected by the dosages I received. During intense times of stress and/or burnout, the reproductive hormones will be greatly affected and symptoms can range from too much bleeding to no bleeding at all, ever. My nervous system didn’t feel safe during this stress, so it makes sense that it would not allow a fertile environment (which explains how my progesterone plummeted and I became infertile). The second system: HPT is the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis . This will decrease its activity when long, chronic stressors are present! Lab work that I also had done for my thyroid in Dec. 2021 was showing subtle hypothyroid function too.

All of these pieces to the puzzle finally fell into place.

I didn’t want to utilize pharmaceutical intervention, but I also knew that these medications are more powerful and can help me trend out of this direction quicker (since I had been dealing with this for 1.5+ years). So, I decided to reach out to my own medical provider and we chatted about the use of a pharmaceutical medication. I made it very clear that this would be a TOOL that I would utilize with a specific goal in mind (eliminate insulin resistance) so this would only be needed for a short period of time. Many times pharmaceuticals are used as the answer rather than the tool. It’s easier to dig a hole with a shovel than a spade and you’ll be more efficient and effective if you only have the shovel for a set period of time, rather than forever. So this is exactly what I did.

I was on day 7 of a very heavy cycle, again when I took my first dose of Metformin. My period ended the next day. This was such an eye opening experience to see how much my body was trending to insulin resistance to have this kind of outcome, so quickly.

Other adjustments that I made in my life: walking 20-30 minutes daily, eating the carbohydrate last at meal time, protein/fats/carbs at each meal, maintaining my daily vitamin routine, strength training 3-4x/week, meditation, and SLOWING DOWN. Within a few weeks, I started to notice less cravings for sweets and I was getting fuller, faster at meal time. My clothes were looser too. Hormonal acne along the jaw and chin? Almost immediately gone. My cycles are NORMAL now: maximum 5 days with no extensive bleeding.

—>Insulin resistance can elevate testosterone. Testosterone can be converted to estrogen via the aromatase enzyme. This can make a woman’s cycle heavier, more clotting, more crampy, and downright miserable. And this is classic of an insulin resistance PCOS female. This is why Metformin is usually prescribed, but IMO, she needs to be educated on the process and I’m not sure that is happening.

The second part of my updated DUTCH test that surprised me: my cortisol.

Remember, cortisol is the hormone that sends signals when the brain and body (HPA axis) are experiencing stress. Insulin resistance symptoms are stressors. The interesting thing about this snapshot of my daily cortisol levels was that I was not experiencing fatigue in which one would think I would be (based off of test). But that doesn’t mean that fatigue could never come, it just means it wasn’t there yet. This was such a great eye opening lesson for me because I was associating so much of my fatigue with loss of blood and extremely low hemoglobin and ferritin levels for the past 1.5+ years, so once this issue stopped, it felt like I had enormous amounts of energy!

Summary: insulin resistance is the first step to a type II diabetes diagnosis. Pre-diabetes is step 2. 1 in 3 Americans are DIAGNOSED as pre-diabetic. 1 in 3. When it comes to insulin and our glucose relationship, we want to ride the train…not the rollercoaster. These levels need to be fairly constant and controlled or we are opening our bodies (and minds) to more and more stress and disease. The Zoom call goes into these details much more! Females experience stress differently than males do and we are more likely to become insulin resistance DUE to stress. It’s not fair, but here we are.

Education is powerful, guys. It literally can be lifechanging and the current medical model doesn’t emphasize, or have time, to educate patients. Chiropractors do. We are natural educators and this is the role I am taking so that maybe my shitty experience (that no one could explain to me) can help you. Or your friend/loved one.

Please reach out if you have any questions!

Dr. Kelsey