I have battled hormonal imbalances from the earliest that I can remember. I got my period when I was 13, and then didn’t get another period until basically a full year later. And after that, they would come about every 3-4 months, either extremely light or heavy, with absolutely no pattern at all. At 15, my doctor put me on birth control- the generic form of Yaz to be specific. Along with my doctor, this was also my mother’s decision, half of her reasoning being that she had to battle horrific acne as a teen as well as my brother, so this would eliminate the chance of me having skin issues..
So this was the band-aid solution to an irregular period and acne issues for about 10 years. I can say that I never had to worry about it- my period was regular, it was light, I didn’t experience any crazy PCOS symptoms, I had migraines 2-3 times a year (although they were nothing like they were when I was in middle school) and my skin was flawless. I continued on this generic Yaz until I turned 25, when all of the real issues started to surface.
Like clockwork, around my 25th birthday, I started getting deep breakouts all in my chin/ jaw region, commonly known to be the “hormonal” zone. I started seeking answers, to which everything I could dig up pointed to that around this age, your body goes through a sort of “second puberty” and your hormones reach another level of maturation. I started to see an acupuncturist for my skin and hormones. One day we got into an in-depth conversation about my skin & birth control situation. He explained what my body was actually experiencing as a result of being on the pill in a way it had NEVER been explained to me before… and actually never been laid out for me before being prescribed at all.
He said “by being on birth control, you are tricking your body into thinking it’s pregnant. So- when you get your period, you are not actually even getting your period at all. You’re not actually shedding the lining to your uterus, that’s why it’s mainly just fluid. So since you have been on birth control for 10 years, you have completely suppressed your natural hormone cycle and your eggs are dormant. You haven’t released a real egg from your ovaries in 10 years. And you slapped a band-aid on your former hormonal imbalance, causing an even more extreme imbalance, as your hormones are trying to mature now. So instead of getting to the root of the issue and treating the cause, you have treated the symptoms and are now experiencing adverse effects- like your skin. If you want to make sure you are fertile, I would get off birth control right now. You can treat this naturally.”
I was floored. I walked out of that appointment feeling relieved but also disgusted that my doctors never offered this level of transparency the entire time I’d been battling a hormone imbalance. I took his advice, I got off birth control immediately and started doing as much research as possible. The first 3 weeks off, I was the most exhausted I had ever been in my life. I could feel my body struggling. There wasn’t much I could do but just rest and give my body the downtime it needed to re-acclimate.
Around this time (August), I decided to get the copper IUD (Paraguard), which is the only non-hormonal IUD available. Ideally, I’d be completely birth-control-less, but being the sexually active, young woman that I am, who is absolutely not ready for a pregnancy, I decided this would be my best bet. The copper IUD works by releasing copper ions into uterus, which make the fluids in the fallopian tube inhabitable for the sperm. **more on my experience with the Paraguard later**
From September to March, I really didn’t make any intentional or focused efforts to change my lifestyle or diet. I started feeling better energetically, and chose to ignore my period issues because of my newly implanted IUD. They say your period will likely be irregular for the first couple months, you will spot, etc., so I gave it no thought. My skin was so bad I went on accutane **also more on my experience with accutane later.**
Nothing seemed particularly wrong with my body until March. I woke up one morning with a shooting pain around my appendix, that would intermittently pulse and throb. When I pressed on the area, I could feel what felt sort of like a ping pong ball mass. I did what anyone would do- Googled, WebMD’d the shit out of all this stuff, basically convinced myself I had a tumor. But from reading more and more and connecting all the dots- I realized, I had an ovarian cyst. I was heading to a music festival that weekend, and felt this throbbing pain walking around all weekend just praying to god it wouldn’t burst. It didn’t, but when I got back home, I knew it was really time to get to the bottom of all my issues.
At this point, March 2020, I hadn’t had my period for about 4 months. I did a deep dive on ovarian cysts and what they are/ how you get them, and this is what I found:
- Every month, your ovaries release an egg that travels down the fallopian tube
- Eggs form inside of the ovary in a “follicle” structure- which contains fluid that protects the egg. The follicle will eventually burst when the egg is released
- Sometimes the follicle does not release the egg/ or does not discharge the fluid OR shrink after the egg is released. This is how a cyst forms.
- PCOS, hormonal imbalances, and Endometriosis are the most common causes for getting them.
This was a big lightbulb moment for me, because I hadn’t gotten my period, which made me think— Damn OK, no wonder why, I never released an egg and this ping pong ball-sized cyst has just been growing there. This was the catalyst to all of my significant changes. This was what had to happen for me to actually implement real diet and lifestyle changes. I went HAM on my research about hormonal imbalances. Basically everything I was reading kept circulating back to one key theme: eating clean, elimination diets and treating food as medicine. Removing inflammatory foods was my best bet at healing naturally.
As a result of that, I landed on the Medical Medium’s “Cleanse to Heal.” This book WAS and IS everything to me. Not only did I learn what types of herbs and vitamins to incorporate into my daily wellness for hormonal support/ balance, I learned how to detox naturally and in a gradual manner, as well as the truth about so many highly inflammatory foods that were staples in my old diet. I think the biggest takeaway for me was actually realizing that I was absorbing synthetic hormones from the low-quality animal proteins I was eating… as well as other dangers from factory farmed foods and how imperative it is to eat and live clean in today’s world. I truly read this book from cover to cover because I was so motivated to find a solution. It’s lengthy and would be easy to skip a lot of parts, but I truly cannot recommend reading the whole thing enough. The knowledge I gained from it not only taught me so much about my own body and the nutrients that will serve it best, but opened my eyes to sad truths about the toxins that surround us, the atrocities of our food systems and the importance of cleansing your liver and prioritizing liver function often.
I followed the original 3:6:9 cleanse. “The purpose of the Original 3:6:9 Cleanse is to uproot deep-seated toxins and pathogens, opening the door to a future where it’s possible to live free from your chronic symptoms,” the book writes.
At this time I was also cleansing my body of Accutane and I was going through a lot of significant life, diet, lifestyle, body and career changes, all during COVID. Whew, what a time to be alive!
I loved this cleanse because you gradually ween yourself off of animal proteins and solid foods, by the end just drinking juice, tea and lemon water. It is 9 days long, but the gradual process makes it completely doable. This is the type of cleanse that makes you realize how BS a “pressed juice” cleanse is (no offense to Pressed or the Pressed juice fans out there). That type of cleanse definitely does wonders for the waistline, but this is a cleanse that’s LITERALLY clearing out your liver.
Post-cleanse I definitely remember feeling amazing and so light, I was weary to put anything into my sensitive body because I had just done so much work to reset it and my stomach felt like it shrank completely. At this time, I cut out all animal proteins, stopped drinking coffee, continued to eat dairy and gluten free and made a conscious effort to eat even cleaner. I doubled my fruit and vegetable intake and I started taking all the supplements recommended for “hormonal imbalance” from this book. These proved to be key for me: Glutathione, Spirulina, Vitamin B complex, Ashwagandha, Vitamin C, Raspberry leaf tea.
I followed this regimen for the next few months and hoped my period would come. In the meantime, I had a doctor’s apt. to get my hormone levels tested to see what advice they may have. My progesterone was high, my testosterone was slightly high, and my estrogen was essentially normal. I was diagnosed with PCOS. This was actually a shock to me, because I had been “tested” for it at 15, and they told me I didn’t have it- just a significant hormonal imbalance. They didn’t give me an ultrasound, but being that I had actually just had a cyst, it all made a lot of sense.
I asked the nurse what my options were moving forward. She said “technically, there is no ‘treatment’ for PCOS, but you can manage it best by going back on birth control to balance your hormones.” I thought you’ve got to be F*cking kidding me. You’re recommending I go back to this band-aid solution that so severely f*cked my whole body up in the first place? Hell no.
So at this point my frustration for Western medicine and the general “birth control” situation had absolutely peaked. There was a fire under my ass to get this figured out as naturally and holistically as possible. I made a contract with myself to become the healthiest version of me I’d ever been.
After not having my period for 134 days, I FINALLY got my period!!!!! The cyst I had in March never burst, thank god, and I did end up getting a period shortly after the pain went away. I went from a 63 day cycle to a 134 day cycle, and every cycle after that for the rest of the year averaged out to be 37 days.
My historical cycles from 2020:
63 Days:
Jan. 8- March 10
134 Days:
March 11- July 22
46 Days:
July 23- Sept. 6
43 Days:
Sept. 7- Oct. 19
33 Days:
Oct. 20- Nov. 21
32 Days:
Nov. 22- Dec. 23
33 Days:
Dec. 24- Jan. 25 2021
I can whole heartedly say the Medical Medium’s approach worked for me. I was absolutely amazed. The answers were right in front of me the whole time- I just had no idea where to look until I got desperate, which is unfortunately the case for most people that end up in this same position.
The removal of inflammatory foods, low-grade GMO animal proteins AND coffee have made the HUGEST impact not only on my hormones, but my energy levels, stamina and general well-being. I’ve truly never felt this good in my LIFE. Two years after adopting this lifestyle shift, I’ve slowly re-introduced animal proteins (all GMO, organic, grass-fed or Atlantic-caught) and lessened my supplement intake, but I feel bulletproof compared to my old self.
The biggest lesson for me in all of this: is simply to treat food as medicine. Food is how we nourish ourselves— our biggest source of vitamins, antioxidants and micronutrients that the body requires to function. So why aren’t we ever taught to approach eating as such? Pick foods that will make you feel good, not just taste good. Plus— there are an abundance of foods that do both!
Two major side effects I have battled my entire life, whether as a result of the hormonal imbalance, a poor diet, or the birth control itself, I have no way of knowing, and it’s most likely all three together, but my energy levels were never sustainable and I’ve had digestive issues from as early as I can remember.
These are two things I’ve quite literally just now figured out, as a result of my lifestyle shift and the introduction of probiotics and eating certain things at certain times. Switching from coffee to matcha has also, whole heartedly, changed my life. I’ll save this topic for a separate post because there is so much to dive in on here, but in the simplest of explanations- coffee stimulates the adrenal glands to release adrenaline. Because many with PCOS suffer from adrenal fatigue, you are overstimulating your adrenal glands which will then cause burnout, and your coffee crash will feel much more severe than others.
Lastly, I AM STILL LEARNING SO MUCH ABOUT PCOS and how my body and my hormones have been affected by it! Organic Olivia’s podcast outlines how PCOS should really be viewed as a spectrum, as there are 4 different types (insulin-resistant PCOS, post-pill PCOS, inflammatory PCOS and adrenal PCOS). I have also learned that PCOS is more of a metabolic issue than anything, which is why a clean diet is absolutely key to maintaining equilibrium.
It’s been a long road for me to figure out what foods make my body feel best, and I’m definitely still fine-tuning my diet. If you are someone who is just beginning to learn about all of this, it can be extremely overwhelming and even emotional, realizing that you need to change major parts of your life. I went through this as well. Don’t stress yourself out or put too much pressure on yourself, but know that this is a healing journey that will not happen overnight and does require commitment, but the end result is priceless.