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The Shiitake Experiment

26-Oct-09

And the results of the shiitake experiment are…. inconclusive. :) After taking shiitake for a week or so, I noticed I was hungry all the time, even just after eating. I realized I must be taking an appetite stimulant. Shiitake was the only thing I’d added to my supplements recently. So I stopped taking it, and sure enough my appetite went back to normal. So I have no idea if it would have regulated my menstrual cycle. I had to stop taking it. I hate being hungry all the time. Not a fan of that feeling.

Instead of shiitake I decided to take Vitamin D again, but this time I split the pill in half. I split a 1000 IU pill and took 500 IU a day, plus 400 IU that is in my multivitamin. I managed to avoid getting the Vitamin D tension headache. I still felt sleepy. Anyway, my period never started. Then I realized that a few days after quitting shiitake I started taking neem, because I thought I had swine flu symptoms and I wanted to kill them with everything. Neem is kind of like echinacea for fighting viruses, etc. But I read more about it and a few websites said it stops ovulation. It is used for birth control, I just didn’t know exactly how it worked. Anyway, that can’t be good for trying to regulate a cycle! So I stopped taking the neem. Still no period.

I’m wondering if the Vitamin D will work if I take it long enough. Now that I’ve got it down to a small enough dose to avoid the headache, maybe I can keep taking it and see if it regulates my cycle. I forgot to take it the last two days, though. I’m incorrigible. But I’ll get used to taking it. I’ll train myself to look in the pill splitter. I mean I usually just grab my bottles of vitamins and take one from each. But then there is the pill splitter with a half pill waiting for me. Hello, me!

I also think eating more protein may have helped me have my one lone period last June or whenever that was. I ordered my protein vegan foods, yes, even more than before. I have to get back to eating that way. Must lose weight, and must regulate the cycle. I want to feel healthy. Looove feeling healthy.

Maybe I should start taking strawberry leaf to jump start my period. It tones the uterus. Gets things in order in there. Maybe that could work? I have it in a tincture, though. It’s even harder to get myself to remember to take a tincture. (Harder than remembering to take a half a pill in the pill splitter!) For now I’ll stick with Vitamin D and getting back into high protein foods. Hey, maybe I need “high protein” because vegan foods don’t have complete proteins, and so I need more of it? To make complete proteins. Hmm…. whatever the reason, it seems to have a good effect on me, so I’ll keep doing it. And it would be good if I would actually start to exercise like I planned to. Pah! But that’s a whole other story. :)

‘Til next time. ~Me.

Filed in Herbs, Menstruation, Veganism, Vitamins | Tagged , , , | Comments (0) »

Shiitake, Vitamin D, and Ovulation

13-Oct-09

I’m convinced shiitake mushrooms help regulate ovulation. But I can’t find one bit of information about that on the Internet. All I find is that it has nutrients, helps the immune system, and helps with cancer. Here’s a nice page about shiitake: Shiitake Mushrooms. Now I’m going to talk about what I can’t find online.

I rarely have a period, because of PCOS. Last spring I started using this shiitake mushroom salad dressing, and I noticed right away it had an effect on me. Made me ovulate, basically. What the?? That was the only change I’d made to my diet. How did I know I’d ovulated? People laugh at me when I say that. But how can you not know? First I start to feel sleepy and relaxed and clumsy and my muscles feel weaker. All day, every day. This is because I have more progesterone in my system. Then a day or two later I notice cervical mucous on the toilet paper. Which means I am ovulating. Then a day or two later my breasts start to hurt and I start to hate everyone, because the PMS part of the month has begun. Woohoo! PMS lasts for 2 weeks before my period. Have to find a way to soften the effects of that. Anyway, then two weeks after ovulation I had a regular period. Totally weird. I never do that. I ran out of the shiitake dressing and haven’t had a period since.

From my online research I discovered that shiitake mushrooms have one of the highest Vitamin D levels of any plant food. Hmm. And apparently experiments have shown that Vitamin D supplementation regulates ovulation. So I figured maybe the Vitamin D content of the shiitake dressing made me ovulate. I thought, “I’ll just buy Vitamin D then.” So I did, I took it, 1000 IU every other day. Because Vitamin D makes me very sleepy and gives me a slight tension headache. Anyway, a few months of that and no period. At some point I bought shiitake mushroom in a supplement and took it, and it made me start spotting immediately. I thought, “That’s not what I want!” I stopped the shiitake and the spotting stopped. I searched online and still I could find no information linking shiitake mushrooms to the menstrual cycle. Weirdness!

Then last week I had a dream that made me want to start trying to regulate my cycle again, and I started taking the shiitake again. It made me sleepy, gave me a slight tension headache, then the relaxed clumsy feeling of too much progesterone. I thought, “It’s doing it again. How is there no research on this????” Then the cervical mucous, then the breast pain and…. irrational anger. :) I’m angry for no reason. Hormones. I’m surprised I’m writing this entry!

So, I expect a period in a week and a half. Probably premature to write this entry. I should have waited to see what happened. Pretty sure it will happen. Oh, my theory, by the way, is that maybe Vitamin D in its natural context works better than Vitamin D separated out into its own supplement. Even if, as I suspect, there is less Vitamin D in the shiitake supplement than in the Vitamin D supplement. Every day I take 400 IU of Vitamin D in a multi-vitamin. Have for… ever. Except for when I was temporarily taking more. And once again I’ve made no changes to my diet or supplements, except the shiitake. HMM. I’m sure I’ll be writing soon about how to lighten up a heavy period. I have that problem also. Probably because I don’t have periods often enough. I enjoy not having periods! But it’s time to get healthy.

‘Til next time. ~Me.

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Excess Facial Hair Prevention

08-Oct-09

One of the side effects of my PCOS is excess facial hair. It’s kind of hard to find information about preventing or curing that. It’s easy to find hair removal information, but I’d rather prevent the growth. Over the years I’ve tried various things to get rid of the excess hair, and there are a few things that made a big difference.

Vitex / Chaste Tree Berry
I started taking this to regulate my period. I think it gave me only one period. But I noticed that it made a huge difference in my facial hair. Made me grow a lot less of it. So I kept taking it for that reason. It took a few weeks to notice any changes, though. It takes a while to work, but it works great.

Spirulina / Blue Green Algae
This one I wasn’t taking for anything PCOS related. I forget why I was taking it. Probably because it makes my period lighter. (I guess that’s sort of PCOS related.) Anyway, I noticed by accident that whenever I took it I had a lot less facial hair to pluck. I took the blue green algae sporadically. I tested it, to see if it really was making a difference, and sure enough it was. I would take one pill a day and the next day the hair was very noticeably less. Two pills a day would do even better, but after two pills it made no noticeable difference. The first pill made the most difference. So I took one or two pills a day. Now I take four, just because it has vitamins and minerals. I started out taking blue green algae, and now I take spirulina. They have the same effect. Very cool.

Beta Carotene
Getting enough vitamin A or beta carotene seems to make a noticeable difference too. Vitamin A helps regulate hormones. I think beta carotene might have worked better for excess facial hair, though. But I was taking more of it than I would have taken of Vitamin A. I was taking 25,000 IU of beta carotene. I only take about 5000 IU now. I don’t want to be orange!

Veganism
I notice another big difference when I give up animal foods. Now and then I fall off the vegan wagon and eat dairy, and my facial hair gets worse during those times. I believe it might be because of hormones in animal foods. I’m not sure why it works, but when I’m completely vegan, my facial hair is much less.

Blood Sugar Balance
I’ve noticed recently (after I stopped my crazy cinnamon roll phase) that when my blood sugar is balanced, my facial hair is almost nonexistent. Neat! Weird, but neat. When I eat too many carbs or sugars, the facial hair grows wild and out of control. When I eat less carbs and more protein, my facial hair is kind of barely there. This seems to be at the heart of PCOS. Insulin resistance. Very interesting.

Weight Loss
I’ve been thin and I’ve been overweight (60 - 70 pounds overweight), and I definitely have less facial hair when I’m thin. It’s a hard thing to accomplish, but getting down to a healthy weight seems to get rid of a lot of the excess facial hair. Excess fat stores excess hormones, which probably contribute to the excess facial hair. Easier said than done, but I’m working on the weight loss!

Certain Moisturizers
Aveeno Positively Smooth Facial Moisturizer (for reducing unwanted hair) made my facial hair a lot less. I used it because I had to be in a wedding. I’d rather prevent the growth with good nutrition and supplements, but this moisturizer does work. Also there is a prescription moisturizer that works the same way, Vaniqa. My mother uses it and loves it. They work by… I have no idea, but I think they have hormones in them, and putting them directly on the skin seems to help? I don’t like messing with hormones, so I have never used these things consistently. But they do work.

Now for some things that did not really help with my facial hair:

Electrolysis
Okay, this did work. But only temporarily. I had this done for years. It thinned out the hair some, but I stopped having it done, and after a few years the hair was back to where it had been before I’d ever had electrolysis. ! For as painful and expensive as that was, I definitely don’t think it’s worth it for a temporary fix.

Saw Palmetto
I see this all over the Internet listed as the best hope for reversing or preventing excess facial hair, but I have yet to read one anecdote that says it worked. Not even one! I took it for a few weeks. It made no difference in my facial hair whatsoever. But it did seem to make my skin more oily. ? It just made me look grosser, so I stopped taking it. Very weird. I can’t believe how much medical advice is just speculation. Educated guessing. I’d rather hear about things that actually worked for people. Which is why I started this blog.

There you have it, my experience with excess facial hair prevention. I think it’s funny that nothing, yet, has made it go away completely. There are always a few hairs to pluck. I suspect, though, that when I get my weight down to a normal range, the rest of the hair may go away. That will be awesome. Lol.

‘Til next time. ~Me.

Filed in Herbs, Insulin Resistance, PCOS, Veganism, Vitamins, Weight Loss | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0) »


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