Oh, what women have to go through with their hormones! First, it starts at an early age around twelve or so when many experience cramps and that “yuchy” feeling once a month. That goes on for a while until they reach their thirties when many start experiencing the symptoms of premenopause which include PMS, weight gain, infertility, fibroids, endometriosis, etc. This goes on until perimenopause when symptoms such as greater weight gain, irregular periods, heavy bleeding, hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, mood swings, thinning skin, fatigue, memory loss, etc., begin to occur.

I wish I had known in my thirties and especially my forties what I do now. So many things affect our hormones such as diet, lack of exercise, stress, hormones in our toiletries and in the beef we eat, toxins, etc. These things affect our hormones to the extent that our hormones get out of balance and start causing the above mentioned symptoms. I am now using natural hormone supplements prescribed by my doctor. Let me stress the word…natural. They are not synthetic. They are compounded by the pharmacist, made especially for me, and are definitely making a huge difference in the above mentioned symptoms and fibromyalgia.

If you’d like to read more, then I recommend reading this chapter called“Hormone Balance Made Simple” by Dr. John R. Lee, who was “an international authority and pioneer in the use of natural progesterone cream and natural hormone balance.”

You may be asking what in the world do money and enzymes have in common. Let me see if I can explain. When you have a certain amount of money, it’s easy to understand that the faster you spend it, the sooner you will run out. It’s the same way with enzymes. The late Dr. Edward Howell said, “It seems that we inherit a certain enzyme potential at birth.” Whatever we get, that’s it. So it’s like spending money, and the faster you use up your enzymes, the sooner you run out. So why are enzymes so important? Enzymes are needed for every chemical reaction that occurs in your body. Without enzymes, vitamins and minerals and hormones can not work … at all. That’s how crucial enzymes are for your body. And I know with my fibromyalgia, enzymes make a big difference!

Some of you may be wondering exactly who was this Dr. Howell. Well, he was a doctor from Illinois who was the first researcher to discover how very important enzymes from raw foods are to human health and nutrition. In fact, in 1946 he published his first book about enzymes and kept researching after that.
(Watch for a later post “Money & Enzymes - Part 2″)

Soy has helped a lot of women with hot flashes, and it helped me for a while. I found that eating 1/8 - 1/4 cup of soy nuts a day greatly diminished my hot flashes. I continued this for five months or so until….I started breaking out in hives. I’m not talking about a few hives in one small area. I’m talking about hives in several areas, some small areas and some large areas. I had them on my arms, my elbows, my hips, my thighs, my waist. I was miserable and the itching would be intense at times, so much so that it would wake me up during the night. I never had a food allergy before, but I learned that the best thing to do is keep a food diary. So that’s what I did. There were several foods (soy, wheat, barley, especially) that I had reactions to, and the hives would itch more after eating them. These were foods I’ve eaten my whole life and never had a problem. I found the common denominator between them was phytic acid, and soy has the highest content of phytic acid of all. I decided, for a while anyway, to elliminate all the foods that made me itch. After a couple of months, the hives went away. When the time for my appointment with an allergist finally came around, the hives were gone. I told her I thought it was the soy. She didn’t think so. After two different allergy tests, she said that she thought it was the soy. So after paying all the out-of-pocket medical expenses (our insurance isn’t very good), I didn’t know anymore than I did before I went to the allergist. I have continued to stay away from soy nuts ever since, but I was able to start eating everything else without any problem.

I had told a friend of mine about the soy nuts when I first started eating them, and she started eating them to help her hot flashes. When I realized it was the soy nuts that were causing my hives, I told her about it. She said that she had been itching some since she started eating the nuts. Well, after she heard about my experience, she quit eating soy nuts immediately and the itching went away.

Everyone is different, but if you are eating soy nuts on a regular basis, watch for any signs of an allergy…especially itching or hives! I’ve read that there are quite a few people who are allergic to large amounts of soy.

I started having trouble with my hormones several years ago, but I just attributed it to perimenopause.  I wish I had known then what I do now.  Due to a breast biopsy in 1993 which turned out to be non-malignant but still put me in a higher risk category, I said that I would never take hormone therapy.  I had PMS every month which I grew to dread.   And I didn’t know until last summer, but I started having symptoms of fibromyalgia a few years ago during perimenopause.  I knew my body was changing because things I used to be able to do I could no longer do without my muscles knotting up and bothering me for a week or so.  It wasn’t the soreness a person feels from a good workout.  It was different.  And then last year when our dog tripped me and caused me to fall, fibromyalgia set in full force.  The three months during the summer  were difficult and depressing.   Not only did I have extremely sore, bruise-like places in different places from my neck down to my ankles, but I had chronic fatigue and other symptoms that go along with it.  That’s when an answer to prayer occured and I was able to go to this wonderful doctor who had been through a lot of what I was going through herself.  After consultation and saliva testing, I went on a natural compounded progesterone prescription and some nutritional supplements.  I had said I would never use hormones, but this natural progesterone made a huge difference in the way I feel.  I’ve been using it for a year now and my fibromyalgia symptoms have eased tremendously.  Also, I have a wonderful husband who gave me daily muscle rubs summer before last which helped ease the aches and pains.  But I’ll have to write about that in another post.  I’m just so thankful to feel as good as I do now.

A lot of doctors prescribe synthetic hormones for hormone related problems.  After researching various sources through the years, I decided I would never use synthetic hormones myself.  I do use a natural hormone cream, though, natural  compounded progesterone to be exact.  My doctor gave me a prescription for it last year to help correct estrogen dominance that was causing me a lot of problems.  She had been through a lot of the same things I was experiencing and so she prescribed for me what she used herself.  And it made a huge difference and really helped to alleviate my problems.

I wish I had known about natural progesterone cream back when I was having PMS for one week or longer every month during perimenopause.  And I especially wish I had known about it when I started having fibromyalgia symptoms.  There are a lot of problems caused by estrogen dominance and natural progesterone helps to correct that imbalance in hormones.

If you’ve ever had a problem with PMS, then you can relate to feeling miserable during that time.  Some people refer to it as “pretty mean syndrome,” but I prefer “pretty miserable syndrome.”  True, irritabilty is often a symptom of it.  But a girl can feel miserable from PMS and not be mean.   The symptoms include but are not limited to the following:  backache, headache, bloating and weight gain,  anxiety, depression, food cravings such as chocolate (yum), cramps, fatigue, insomnia, water retention, mood swings, and the already mentioned irritability…sometimes major irritability.  I’m sure our family members can attest to these!  LOL   But for the poor gal experiencing a multiplicity of these symptoms, relief is sometimes hard to find and it’s just a matter of enduring until the symptoms pass.  There are some natural helps out there, though.  I’ve received some natural PMS relief samples.  Although I don’t have PMS anymore, I do have trouble with fibromyalgia pain some days.  The next time I do, I plan to use these samples which I think will be very helpful from what I’ve read.