hypothalamic amenorrhea Archives

Post Concussive Metabolic Dysfunction in a Dancer

Published on June 22, 2023

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post concussive thiamine deficiency in a dancer

A Concussion, an Infection and the Slow Spiral of Declining Health

Our daughter started ballet at 2.5 years old, and by 5 years old she had started competitions and had decided she was going to become a professional ballerina. She was talented, had an amazing work ethic and completely loved her life of ballet, friends and school. She was a very happy child, bright and bubbly and she woke up everyday super excited about what was going to be happening that day. From a very early age, our daughter showed determination, stubbornness and a quiet, but strong competitiveness.

In October 2016, when she was 12 years old, she got a severe concussion, and her whole life stopped for nearly 3 months. She stayed in her bedroom in the dark, couldn’t read, slept for most of the day and even trying to tie her shoelaces gave her an intense headache. After months of no improvement, we took her to a chiropractor, who told us her neck was out and she wouldn’t have gotten better until it was put back in properly. Our daughter floated out of that appointment so happy that she nearly felt back to her normal self. The chiropractor gave us an information sheet about Thiamine/B1 Vitamin at the time, but we didn’t really take any notice apart from trying to give her some more marmite (yeast spread) as it suggested.

Then in September 2017, both our daughter and our older son suddenly became very ill with vomiting, diarrhoea, rashes, headaches, stomach pain, joint pain, and bright red palms. Our older son had more intense symptoms, and also had extreme nose bleeds and petechial rashes – he was admitted to hospital where they found his liver and spleen were enlarged but they couldn’t work out what was wrong. Our son had recently come back from a school trip to Vietnam – we were trying to find if there was a link to Vietnam but he had already been home for a couple of weeks so the hospital didn’t test for any illnesses from Vietnam. After weeks of this illness, we were told our daughter had Mono/Epstein Barr Virus and that this was causing her illness and it was completely unrelated with our son’s illness. We found this extremely odd that they could have mostly the same symptoms at exactly the same time, but as our son was more acute and in hospital, we were just concentrating on trying to get both of them well.

Since then, our daughter has never fully recovered. She started not sleeping, and constantly having body pains and headaches. She was sent to a paediatrician who diagnosed her with Child Migraines and told us she would outgrow them and was given melatonin for sleep. The melatonin worked for 3 nights and then completely stopped working. Our daughter started to put on weight, and would look puffy in the face, and she lost her menstrual period even though she was gaining weight. She was always tired, always had body pains and slowly but surely lost her sparkle.

Declining Metabolic Function and Weight Gain

At the end of 2017 when she was 13 years old, she lost her place in the national ballet training program. Our daughter was extremely stoic at this point, and was determined to get a professional career without the training academy’s help. Throughout 2018 she continued to put on weight, no matter how healthy she ate or what she ate, and still didn’t have a menstrual period. We saw doctors and nutritionists, but they couldn’t explain why her weight continued to increase or they would tell us there was nothing wrong. Our daughter became quiet, withdrawn, easily irritated and frustrated and stopped being interested in anything or anyone. She continued to work at her ballet, and the only time she would ‘light up’ would be on stage, as she was still trying to compete. During 2018, she gained 10kg/22lbs while being on a very strict nutrition plan. She auditioned for a ballet academy to start at the beginning of 2019 and was accepted; she was happy but in a tired way, and she knew that she would need to stop gaining weight but had no idea how she was going to do that when she had already been trying so hard.

In February 2019 we saw a naturopath who diagnosed our daughter with Adrenal Fatigue, and said her thyroid needed support, and that she still had lingering Epstein Barr Virus in her system. The naturopath pointed to our daughter always wanting salt as an indicator of adrenal fatigue. She was put on some herbal remedies for her immune system, inflammation and liver, adrenal and thyroid support, and relaxation/sleep support as well as Epstein Barr Virus liquid drops to help her immune system recognise the lingering EB virus in her system.

The weight started to instantly melt off, her sleeping improved and we felt we finally had some answers and a solution. Our daughter was happy with the weight loss, but still struggled with her other symptoms: dizziness, dry/gritty eyes, chest pain, tiredness, muscle and joint pains, extremely sore lower and upper back pain, brain fog, very low blood pressure, daily headaches, daily sore throat, complete lack of energy and occasionally sore under her right ribs (later on she told us that she couldn’t sweat, no matter how hard or long she exercised).

A month after starting the herbal remedies, she had her first panic attack during rehearsal for a school production – she had no idea what was happening and it took a long time to calm her down. Her mental and emotional state continued to decline, it was a daily struggle to do anything; she always had to push through every single day. We continued to take our daughter to the doctors for the sore throats, tiredness, headaches etc. but we were always told there was nothing wrong with her. During this time she got an infected toenail, and ended up being on antibiotics for twice as long as usual as it wouldn’t heal. The naturopath added in additional supplements to help, and eventually her toe got better.

Even though she was still losing weight, our daughter became very apathetic and would stay in her room – we would try to talk to her every day, try to reach her but she was shut off emotionally. Then we ran out of one of the herbal supplements, and suddenly she began to gain weight again – she gained 2.8kg/6.2lbs in 2 weeks. Once we got her back on the herbal supplement she began to lose weight again, but it seemed to be slower and less effective. Our daughter got to 51.3kg (she is 5ft7 inches tall) and she was happy, and her ballet teachers told her to not lose any further weight as she was fine at the weight she was.

Hair Loss, Pale Skin, and Skyrocketing Weight

Halfway during 2019, our daughter’s hair started to fall out in clumps, it got to the point where she was too scared to wash or comb it, as it was falling out so much. We noticed our daughter was extremely pale, and at times she looked translucent. The naturopath put her on iron pills and told us to massage her scalp, but it didn’t really make a difference. The naturopath didn’t think she needed to be on the adrenal/thyroid support any longer, and was changing her supplements. Our daughter’s weight then skyrocketed, and our relationship with the naturopath started to deteriorate as she kept implying that we were starving our daughter and we felt she wasn’t able to answer our questions on why one particular supplement seemed to be the only one that would help our daughter lose weight, but she still had the other symptoms that were getting worse.

We took our daughter to other GP doctors, trying to explain her symptoms and asking for her thyroid to be checked, but we were continuously brushed off and they would look at our daughter and say it was just normal teenage hormonal stuff and there was nothing wrong. In our gut we felt there was something drastically wrong, but nobody would listen to us. We started to hate going to the doctors, going through her symptoms only to be told again and again there was nothing wrong with her, and being looked at like we had the problem, not our daughter. We started trying to research things ourselves, started tracking and monitoring everything she ate/did/sleep patterns. The naturopath would change the supplements and our daughters weight would skyrocket – we would then put her back on the original supplements and again she would start to lose weight, but every time it was less effective.

Low Metabolic Rate, Low Estradiol, Yeast and Bacterial Overgrowth, Constipation and Parasites

At the beginning of 2020, our daughter’s weight was going back up significantly and it seemed that the original supplement was no longer working at all. We realised that our daughter’s face and neck seemed to be more swollen on the left side, but couldn’t find any reason why it would be like this. Our daughter started to get new symptoms around this time as well – from not being able to sweat at all, she started to have extreme sweating everywhere, and started to get hot flushes and night sweating. We noticed that the hair on her upper lip was more noticeable/darker, and she started to get a small patch of hair just under the middle of her lower lip as well. She also started to get a very bloated around her stomach area, and couldn’t pull it in no matter how hard she tried.

In February 2020, we decided to try and get testing done ourselves, and found a functional doctor who supplied a variety of tests. We got a hormone and thyroid test, as well as a MTHFR gene mutation test. We thought if we could show our doctor some factual data, we might be taken more seriously. The functional doctor advised us to also do an Organic Acid urine test, which we did as well. The test results came back saying that our daughter’s total estrogen was so low that it was at the level of a post-menopausal woman, but the functional doctor thought that was because she was a dancer. The organic acid test picked up that she was in a hypometabolic state; again with the reason given that this was because she was an athlete. The organic acid test also showed that she had a significantly high amount of yeast and bacterial overgrowth in her gut, which would cause inflammation system wide and insulin resistance.

The functional doctor wanted to test for parasites as well, so we did a complete microbiome mapping test using a stool sample. While taking the stool sample, we were surprised that our daughter could only produce tiny, rock-hard little pebbles and we questioned her about it, we then found that she was constipated but she thought passing tiny pebble-type stools only every 3-5 days was normal.

While we were waiting for the microbiome mapping results, the functional doctor prescribed a total of 30 supplements/remedies as well as adrenal support liquid drops – these were to cover supporting biochemical pathways, weight management, cognitive support, anti-inflammatories, detoxification, liver support, hormonal metabolism, adrenal and energy support, amino acids to support cellular energy, mitochondrial NRG multivitamins to support cellular health, l-tryptophan to support sleep and neurotransmitter mood support. During this time she was also advised to stop all dairy (she was already gluten/sugar free and very low carb). We did take all of these tests results to our GP doctor, but were advised that they didn’t recognise these tests.

After a week of the new supplements, we noticed a complete shift in our daughter’s energy level and emotional/mental state. We were relieved to have our daughter’s personality back – it was literally like a heavy, suffocating blanket had been taken off her and she could finally think, feel and breathe again – it was a huge difference seeing her not having to mentally struggle through every single day. We did a lot of talking with her and she finally admitted just how numb she had felt to everything, but also scared that this was how she was going to be for the rest of her life. The supplements did nothing for her weight, which continued to increase, and some of the other physical symptoms, but we were now clinging to the information that we knew she could lose the weight, and that now she could also be better emotionally and mentally with higher energy levels – we just had to figure out what was stopping her from having all of these things at the same time.

In May 2020, the microbiome mapping results came back, and we were surprised to find that our daughter an extreme level of a parasite in her system, called Blastocystis hominis, as well as an overgrowth of Rhodotorula fungi and a couple of other opportunistic bacterial overgrowths. The functional doctor immediately put her on a parasite/bacterial/yeast eradication protocol that was to be for two months, and then we were supposed to follow that with 6 months of a rejuvenation program.

When our daughter found out it was a parasite that was making her sick, she was absolutely ecstatic. She had loved ballet her whole life, but thought it was ballet making her sick so had been pushing it away which had been hurting her emotionally – it hurt her to think that the thing she loved the most was hurting her. Now that she knew it was instead a parasite making her sick, she felt she could allow herself to love ballet again. While waiting for the herbal remedies for the eradication protocol, we started to research the parasite, and started to become very concerned at just how difficult it was to get rid of it, and the devastating symptoms/damage that it could do.

Looking at other protocols that were used to get rid of this particular parasite, the remedies weren’t the same as the ones prescribed by our functional doctor, so we questioned if these particular remedies had been used for this parasite before and if they were successful. We were assured that these remedies had been used and were definitely successful.

Failed Treatments and Inconclusive Diagnoses

Our daughter started on Australian Oil of Oregano, 6 capsules a day totalling 900mg of essential oil each day, as well as 6 capsules of a GI-Microbe remedy for worms. After a week she noticed she had a very itchy bottom and a sore stomach. Our GP doctor wanted to check for PCOS because of the lack of menstrual period and her hair falling out, so our daughter had a pelvic ultrasound 6 days after starting the Oil of Oregano. The sonographer couldn’t see anything in the ultrasound because of the amount of gas (it looked like billowing black clouds on the screen), so after a lot of discussion due to our daughter’s age, she had an internal ultrasound. The sonographer was surprised that it was still hard to see anything due to the amount of gas, so could only see one ovary and a small piece of her uterus, which the sonographer said looked good and didn’t indicate there was PCOS.

During the following week our daughter’s stomach pain became more intense, and her weight was skyrocketing. We started to get very concerned at her escalating reactions but kept being reassured by the functional doctor that this was normal. After 20 days of being on the Oil of Oregano we decided to take our daughter off all of the supplements as we felt they were just making her worse. All of the literature on the parasite Blastocystis advises that you need to wait 8 weeks before doing PCR stool testing to see if the parasite has been eradicated or not. We are currently waiting until 10 August 2020 at the earliest to be able to test to see if the parasite is gone. Since this Oregano treatment, her stools are now every day and better consistency (they were floating which we think is fat malabsorption issues?) and her menstrual period has returned. Her appetite has also reduced, and she isn’t craving carbs and sugar as she has now revealed she used to.

Since then our daughter’s weight has continued to increase at a rapid rate – in total from 27 January 2020 to 31 July 20202 she has gained 14.5kg/32lbs, with 10kg/22lbs being in the last 2.5 months. She can physically no longer do ballet, so she sits and watches in class instead. After joining a Facebook group for the parasite Blastocystis, we have been seeing a naturopath in Australia via Zoom who had the parasite themselves. We are currently waiting on a SIBO breath test results as the naturopath thinks our daughter also has SIBO. We spend all of our time trying to research all of our daughter’s symptoms, while watching her physically deteriorate. It has totally consumed our family.

Where We Are Now: Was It Thiamine All Along?

Our daughter is in a better mental/emotional space, but doesn’t physically recognise her body at all. Even our daughter’s orthodontist asked why she was so swollen in her face, especially the left side – but the doctors still don’t think there is anything wrong. Our daughter’s physiotherapist is too scared to touch her, as she is so swollen. We spend every day crying at some point. While researching SIBO symptoms, we came across a comment about Thiamine deficiency, so started to research and bought the book “Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition”. Reading about the swelling of the face, and that it is fluid retention in the body was a revelation. But because of what happened with the Oil of Oregano, we are too scared to try doing something on our own and potentially making it worse, and the more we research, more of the other co-factors, we keep finding and things to be careful of. We have been to our GP doctor asking them to investigate if it could be beriberi, so they have started doing blood tests, but then we found in the appointment notes that the doctor still thinks our daughter looks well, so we are disappointed that it looks like they are not taking this potential diagnosis seriously.

Currently we’re waiting on Allithiamine and Lipothiamine to arrive from Australia, as we can’t purchase it here in New Zealand, but with Covid-19 there are huge delays in postage. We have started our daughter on 150mg of Benfotiamine (even that was extremely difficult to find in New Zealand) but at this stage we are hesitant to just ramp up the dosage to see instant results. We took our daughter back to the chiropractor who now advises that her kidneys/bladder aren’t working properly, and also that her vagus nerve isn’t working either. Just this week, we have taken her to an acupuncturist to try and help with the fluid retention, and they’re concerned about her heart and liver and just how swollen she is. We have added in legumes to her diet to help with bile function/detoxification and her stools are now increasing and no longer floating. We are now wondering if maybe she was hypoglycaemic as well.

Reading the comments on the Thiamine Deficiency Facebook group, we should also be looking at potassium supplementation, but conversely you shouldn’t supplement with potassium if there is something wrong with your kidneys. With the doctors not believing us, alternative practitioners wanting to potentially only push their own agenda/supplements or not fully understanding the full consequences of their remedies, or not being able to find out what the root cause of the problem is, and the conflicting information all over the internet, we are completely lost/scared/petrified/confused and feel a huge pressure to fix our daughter and it feels like time is rapidly running out. The stress on us as parents is completely overwhelming, and financially we feel like we are throwing money at this ever-increasing problem and the money is fast running out. We feel that every day is getting worse than the day before, and our hope has faded to a tiny pinprick of light. Gathering all of the information together for the doctors/alternative practitioners/supplements/nutritionist plans/tests looks absolutely ludicrous, but when you’re in the thick of it you’re completely desperate to find anything that could potentially fix your child. Then when it doesn’t work, or it makes the symptoms worse, the guilt is huge.

We’re hoping that by publishing her story on Hormones Matter, others might look at our daughter’s case history, and confirm what is wrong, explain it to us so that it makes sense, and help us fix her in a safe way.

Current Diet and Supplements

Below is a snapshot of our daughter’s typical diet and supplement regime. Please note, the Benfotiamine was begun only recently.

Breakfast	Morning Tea	Lunch	Afternoon Tea	Dinner	Water/Teas and Remedies before bed
Douglas Labs Ultrazyme x 1	1 large gold kiwifruit	Douglas Labs Ultrazyme x 1	50gm Coconut Yoghurt	105gm Roast Beef	3 x Magnesium Citrate (Pure Encapsulations)
2 Egg Muffins – Bacon/Veg	2 teaspoon sunflower seeds	90gm tin pink salmon	with probiotics	0.5 cup roast pumpkin
2 Tablespoons Pumpkin Seeds	1 cup Almond Milk	1 cup green Kale/Pak Choi (homegrown)	10 almonds	0.5 cup broccoli
1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar	2 x Tran-Q	1 cup tomatoes	1 Apple	0.5 cup peas
2 Brazil Nuts		0.5 cup cucumber	2 x Tran-Q
1 scoop Orthoplex Gut Rx		0.5 cup grated carrot
1 X HPA Essentials Tablet		0.25 cup brown rice
** 1 x Doctors Best Benfotiamine 150		1 Tablespoon mashed Avocado
		1 teaspoon flaxseed oil
		1 tablespoon lemon juice
		1 X HPA Essentials
		1 scoop Orthoplex Gut Rx

** Benfotiamine was just recently added as of July 25, 2020.

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Image by Dimitris Doukas from Pixabay.

This story was published originally on August 10, 2020.

Intense Exercise, PCOS, and Hypothalamic Amenorrhea

by Laura Vegh, PhD

Published on August 4, 2022

10907 views

Understanding PCOS and Hypothalamic Amenorrhea

Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is an endocrine disorder characterized by various signs: irregular periods, anovulation, high androgens, and insulin resistance. Because it is a syndrome, it presents differently in every person. Two women might have PCOS and have completely different symptoms. The signs through which it is often diagnosed will also vary. For instance, insulin resistance is very common, along with excess weight, but someone with no insulin resistance and at a perfectly normal weight could have it as well.

Hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA) is characterized by anovulation and absent periods. With PCOS there is usually one or more hormones that are high, such as luteinizing hormone (LH), or testosterone, in most cases of HA, hormones are low. Hypothalamic amenorrhea is usually present in athletes and women who under eat and/or are underweight. It can also appear in times of acute stress, after a strong emotional shock, but also, due to chronic stress.

Something that not many people talk about is that the two conditions can co-exist. For instance, it is very possible for someone with PCOS to go on an extremely restrictive diet and lose their period as a result. In the same way, someone with PCOS can over-exercise and lose their period, because these women usually have irregular periods, pinpointing the diet or the exercise regime as the cause for the new hormonal imbalance isn’t always easy. Features of one condition can be present in the other, which further proves why looking at the lifestyle of a woman is imperative before setting a diagnosis.

My Battle With PCOS, HA, and Exercise Intensity

I was diagnosed with PCOS a couple of years ago when I got off the pill. In my teens, the condition had been suggested based on ultrasound and symptoms, but I was never told to do any further testing.

At almost 32, I was through with the side effects of the pill: anxiety, depression, low libido, and more. I had been on it without a break for over 12 years and a few more years on and off before that. My cycles were never regular, but the doctor’s only solution was birth control. So far, I’m sure this is nothing out of the ordinary and is in fact something that most women with PCOS experience. My story is slightly different though.

At 8 years old, I was diagnosed with scoliosis, a condition in which your spine curves into an S shape. Due to my young age, there was a huge risk it would progress rapidly, and I would end up needing surgery.

My family wanted to avoid that at all costs. The surgery is not without risks, and the prognosis, at least at that time, over 20 years ago, was not good. The chances of living a normal life post-surgery were small. So, they decided to take a different approach: managing the condition through sports, specifically swimming.

By the age of 9, I had a pretty good swimming schedule. Most of the school year, I would swim 3-4 times per week, an hour a day, and do some gymnastics at home on the other days. Then, 3 months per year I would train intensely, swimming 2-3 hours per day, usually 6 days a week. I loved it, I would have spent all day every day in the water, so I was far from complaining!

Somewhere around the age of 11, I got my period. Right from the start, it was irregular, happening anywhere between 35-60 days. That wasn’t ideal, but I wasn’t having any other symptoms that something was off.

Then, I experienced the first “odd” thing. My swimming season started, and everything proceeded as normal with my many hours spent at the pool. Halfway through, I realized I hadn’t gotten my period in quite some time, way longer than usual. The season ended, and a few more weeks went by, and still no period in sight. Finally, after about 2 or 3 months after the swimming season had ended, I got my period back.

For the rest of the time, I continued with my irregular pattern of 35-60 days. The year went on and the swimming season got back. Guess what? My period vanished again, only to return about 2-3 months after the season had ended.

The pattern repeated each year. Finally, when I was around 15 my mom decided to take me to see a doctor. Again, it was well beyond 3 months since I had had a period. The doctor did an ultrasound and didn’t see anything abnormal, so he decided to put me on the pill. I stayed on it for a few months, then quit, and the cycle of irregular periods, that would completely stop when I was exercising intensely, continued.

I had a few more ultrasounds in the years that followed, at different times in my cycle. During a few of them I had polycystic ovaries, so PCOS was suggested, though an official diagnosis was not made at the time. Also, nobody ever considered requiring blood work for me. Just like nobody ever suggested that the workouts could be the root cause of my missing periods for half of the year.

It was only many years later, while I studied to become a health coach and a fitness trainer that I became more interested in the relationship between hormones and workouts and learned about hypothalamic amenorrhea in female athletes.

Covering Up PCOS and HA with the Pill

When I left for university at age 20, I decided I would stay on the pill. The on-and-off pattern was making me feel less than well. I would always get mood swings coming off it, and I wasn’t having any of that in a new environment.

For the first few years, I was ok, or at least I thought I was. I continued working out, but because I had developed a slight allergy to chlorine, I had to start looking at different sports. I discovered fitness, and later yoga. During many of these years, I continued training intensely. I loved doing it and I decided to become a trainer. Being on the pill, I had no way of knowing if my reproductive system was reacting or not.

It was during those years that I was introduced to the concept of hypothalamic amenorrhea. I remember feeling pretty mind blown that neither my OBGYN nor my GP had ever mentioned it. Nobody had ever even mentioned the risks of HA or taking birth control pills to “cover up” HA.

Coming Off of the Pill and Listening to My Body

A couple of months before my 32nd birthday, I decided enough was enough and I quit the pill. Thanks to all the years of training, plus studying to be a trainer and a coach, I learned to listen to my body. I could feel how it was rebelling more and more against the pill. On top of the health issues, I developed anxiety, panic attacks, and depression that were getting worse and worse out of the blue.

I started doing a lot of research about hormonal health, PCOS, and HA – and I do mean A LOT. I have a PhD. It is in computer engineering, mind you, but the point is I’m a bookworm and research is my middle name. With each new book, or new research article that I read, my mind was blown, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Coming off the pill, I experienced something very common: my body didn’t know how to restart itself. I went 5 months without a period. My doctor’s answer was more birth control, a different brand maybe. “I only experienced side effects to one brand, they’re not all the same”, she said. Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not going down that road again.

Again, I was faced with the same issue: nobody questioned me about my lifestyle. Someone suggested I go on a low-calorie, no-sugar diet since I have PCOS. They didn’t bother to ask me how much I exercise or even what I currently eat. In case you’re wondering I’m right in the middle of the perfect weight for my height, I have absolutely no reason to go on a low-calorie diet or to lose even one pound.

The Most Dangerous Advice for PCOS: Just Lose Weight

While the low-calorie advice was ridiculous for obvious reasons in my case, and it made me turn my back to that doctor without any remorse, it did shed light on the most common (and most dangerous) advice, women with PCOS receive: just lose weight.

Lose weight, and all your hormonal troubles will go away.

Look, I’m not saying losing weight won’t help some people. What I am saying is that the way this problem is perceived is dangerous and unhealthy. Just look at all the people who saw me, who knew about my lifestyle, who had all the evidence right there in front of their eyes and they didn’t even consider the over-exercise (and subsequent weight loss) that happened when I was training could be to blame.

PCOS Versus HA

Before writing about the changes that helped me, I want to go a bit more in-depth on the two conditions, why they are so easy to confuse with one another, and why having one, doesn’t necessarily exclude the other.

We already know both are conditions that affect the reproductive system. While PCOS is an endocrine disorder with unclear causes, HA is triggered by lifestyle. You can reduce (or worsen) your PCOS through your lifestyle, but that is not the ultimate cause.

Common misconceptions say with PCOS you’ll be overweight, whereas to have HA you need to be underweight. Both are false. Lean women can have PCOS, and normal to overweight women can have HA.

The latest research says you need to have 25+ follicles (commonly called cysts) on your ovaries to have PCOS. That’s because polycystic ovaries can be present in HA as well, though it is rarer.

The fact that restrictive diets, over-exercise, and acute or chronic stress can stop the communication between the hypothalamus and your ovaries, and eventually cause HA is known. Due to their similarities, a constant evaluation of symptoms alongside lifestyle is necessary. Especially when a woman with PCOS begins a new diet or a new workout routine, following her evolution closely for any symptoms that could show her new regime is causing more trouble, is crucial.

You don’t have to go into full hypothalamic amenorrhea (low hormones, no periods, no ovulation attempt) to be impacted negatively by over-exercise. It is, for the biggest part unclear whether I had true HA alongside PCOS, or I was just somewhere in the middle. However, it is undeniable that high-intensity exercise affected me each time. It is also undeniable that as soon as I would take it slow and even gain a bit of weight back, my body would be back to what was normal. I was lucky because I had an offseason that was longer than the training season. If I hadn’t had that, the outcome could have been a lot worse.

Healing PCOS and HA: Nutrition, Low Impact Exercise, and Relaxation

A few months after coming off the pill, I had blood work done and I began working with a naturopath, trying to understand what was going on. As much as I would have liked to be in one category or the other, I didn’t fit anywhere. I had a high LH:FSH ratio, common in PCOS (but not completely excluded in HA). My uterine lining was not building up, also very common in HA and very uncommon in PCOS. My testosterone and DHEA-S were normal, my androstenedione was on the high end of normal. Ultrasound revealed cysts, but not 25+, only about 15. My thyroid was normal, and so was my prolactin. All in all, my tests looked very close to normal, except I wasn’t ovulating.

To recover my health, I decided to take the middle ground. For my PCOS, I went ahead and eliminated foods that I was somewhat intolerant to such as cow’s dairy, gluten, and sugar. I’m not saying this is a cure for everyone, but I have always known I wasn’t digesting these well. I always had inflammation symptoms after eating them in excess including headaches, joint pain, and digestive issues. However, I took a lot of care to eat enough. I allowed myself the occasional treats. For instance, I discovered raw vegan cakes that make me feel amazing and are perfect for my sweet tooth. I didn’t run away from carbs and I made sure I included lots of healthy fats.

With PCOS as my main diagnosis, I was, of course, encouraged to continue my normal exercise routine. At this time, this consisted of HIIT 1-2 times per week, strength training 2-3 times a week, and Ashtanga yoga (a dynamic, strong style of yoga) the rest of the time. Technically it wasn’t much, and it was certainly a reduction considering my background.

I’d been feeling less and less well after HIIT, so I knew something had to change. I decided to go against every advice I’d heard for PCOS and cut back on everything except yoga, which I now do daily. My scoliosis is still very much with me, so doing no exercise at all, which is usually the recommendation in HA, is not an option. I changed the type of yoga and introduced yin and restorative yoga 2-3 times per week.

A few months after deciding to switch to yoga only, I found a medical study proving the benefits of yoga and mindfulness for PCOS. I take it as a sign that we might finally see a change in the constant recommendation to eat less and eat harder, which is mindlessly recommended to most women with this condition.

On top of nutrition and changing my workout routine, I’ve also created a non-negotiable relaxation time. Whether I read, paint, spend time with friends and family or go for a walk outside in nature, I make sure each week my schedule includes relaxation. It has taken quite a few months since implementing all these changes, but I can say my cycles are regular for the first time in my life.

Bottomline: You Can Recover Your Health

If there is one lesson that I’d like you to learn from this story is to listen to your body. Truly listen. Watch out for any changes, both positive and negative, and when you see something negative, take a step back. If you’ve just started exercising and are experiencing amenorrhea, for instance, you don’t have to stop exercising, just take a step back, exercise one day less, do something less intense, or use a lower weight. Like anything, health requires attention.