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Ditch the Excuses, Try Yoga

Published on March 14, 2024

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The title may be a little aggressive but your body asked me to tell you that. Why? Every day, more and more research comes out about the benefits of yoga. You may have heard yoga is good for depression, lowering stress and anxiety, reducing inflammation, etc., etc., but maybe despite the endless benefits, you’re still hesitant to try yoga.

The first time I tried yoga, I was 22 years old. I took a class with my sister at the community college. During savasana (a resting pose at the end of each class where you just lie on your back), I thought, “This is stupid. Why am I taking an hour long exercise class to just sit here for the last five minutes? What a waste of time.” Clearly, I was missing the point. And so are you if you’ve said any of these things about yoga.

“I’m not flexible enough to do yoga.”

This is like saying you are not in shape enough to go to the gym. Sure, a lot of people who do yoga are flexible, but yoga is more about your mental and emotional flexibility than physical flexibility. No one ever achieved enlightenment by touching their toes or putting their leg behind their head. That’s not where the answers are. The answers lie within and yoga helps us go within. That said, if going within isn’t what you’re ready for right now, of course yoga can help you become more physically flexible. Keep in mind that if flexibility was really the key, Cirque du Soleil performers would be the wisest gurus on the planet.

“It’s too hard.”

I used to play bass guitar and people would ask me, “Oh, is that easy?” (I don’t know why, presumably it seemed easier because it had four strings?) I would always answer, “Not if you want to do it well.” Nothing is easy if you want to do it well. Yoga is the same, but that doesn’t mean it has to be hard. There is yoga for everybody and there is yoga for every BODY. Seriously. Be smart about how and where you start, however. When I began playing the bass, I wasn’t slapping like Les Claypool at my first lesson. So don’t pick a hot, 90-minute, power flow yoga class for your first time. Start with a beginner class or a gentle class.

The temptation when going to your first class is to make sure you’re “doing it right” so you can look like everyone else. More than anything though, you should listen to your body. Not listening to our bodies is how we get hurt. Remember, the instructor is a guide. If a pose doesn’t seem right, modify it. Pay attention to how it feels. It’s your body and it’s your practice.

“I could never wear those little yoga pants.” Or “I’m too intimidated.”

Sure, there are plenty of yoga studios where the teachers look like models and everyone is wearing coordinating $200 yoga outfits, but there are even more where that is not the case. It’s easy to find them. Look at their websites. Find a teacher that says “yoga is for everybody” or something similar. That’s the teacher to try. And wear whatever you damn well please, as long as it’s comfortable. (Incidentally, that’s good rule for life, too.)

“I’m too old.”

There is chair yoga, senior yoga, gentle yoga, restorative yoga. This woman makes your argument invalid.

“But I’m Christian.”

Yoga is not a religion. You do not have to be Hindu or Buddhist or anything else to practice yoga. The practice of yoga can often become very spiritual though, and by deepening your connection to yourself, you may deepen your connection to the divine. If you’re still not convinced, you can find a more in-depth article about Christianity and yoga here.

One of my teacher’s teachers, Erich Schiffmann said this of yoga:

One of the main themes I always want to reiterate is that Yoga is a lifestyle. Yoga is about the way you do your life, not just part of the time, but all the time. The profound working hypothesis for how to do this, and this is the summation sentence at the end of many pages of figuring things out, is this:

THINK LESS and LISTEN MORE

because when you do KNOWING flows in,

and then GIVE EXPRESSION

to what you find yourself Knowing,

whether you can explain it yet or not.

It took having a stroke to slow me down enough to appreciate yoga. A stroke disconnects the mind and the body in such a startling way. One of the hardest things about recovering from my stroke (or probably any major health crisis) was the lack of trust I had in my own body. I was never sure what I was going to be able to do or not do, from putting on a sock to riding my bike. So for a long time, I just didn’t do much. As a result, I became more fearful and less sure of myself.

It’s not just something as dramatic as a stroke that disconnects us from our bodies. Our constant internet access may make us feel more connected to each other but now we’re even less present in our physical reality than ever before. I’m guilty of this myself–texting while I’m walking the dog, talking on the phone while driving (handsfree of course), shoving food in my mouth as I’m running out the door. All of these things are keeping us from really listening to our bodies. So when they don’t work how we expect them to, when they get sick or break down, we feel like they’ve betrayed us. In reality, by constantly ignoring our bodies, we are the ones betraying our bodies.

Try a yoga class. Listen to your body. I promise it will thank you.

My yoga practice has brought me back to myself by teaching me how to really be in my own body. It has restored the mind/body connection that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back. I’m so grateful for yoga that I became a yoga teacher last year. Just like any good teacher, I will forever remain a student. So now when I take a class, during savasana I think, “please, just five more minutes here.”

WARNING!

Doing yoga may cause the following side effects:

Love (of self, of others, of life)
Calm
Happiness
Patience
Being nicer to people
Knowing yourself
More flexibility- mentally, emotionally, and physically
Desire to wear fun pants

Have you experienced the benefits of yoga? How has it affected your life?

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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Photo by kike vega on Unsplash.

This article was published originally in July 2016.

Stroke, Birth Control and the Nelson Pill Hearings: What They Knew Then

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on November 2, 2023

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nelson pill hearings - birth control side effects

I had a stroke from hormonal birth control at the age of 28. Prior to my stroke, I didn’t think much about the side effects of hormonal birth control, or any other medication for that matter. Like many of us, I took for granted that if a doctor prescribed the medication, it must be safe. Especially one as widely used and as cavalierly prescribed as birth control pills. I was so wrong. Nearly dead wrong.

Since that time, I have become increasingly aware of how little we know about the side effects of many medications and how many are under-researched before being “approved.” We can see that in the number of medications that get taken off the market. The pressure of the pharmaceutical companies to make a return on their research investment and their exorbitant advertising budget is putting human safety, and especially the safety of women, at great risk. I wrote my master’s thesis on risk communication, how women are informed of the risks of hormonal birth control, and what they know about blood clots. I’ll write more on that later but suffice it to say, the results were not promising. It appears that we are intentionally misled where drug risks are concerned. “Well, of course,” the cynic in me says. “After all, who is writing the risk communication in the first place?” The very people that need to minimize risks in order to maximize profits.

As mentioned in previous articles, I’ve recently begun a research project involving the Nelson Pill Hearings. Senator Gaylord Nelson scheduled these hearings back in 1970 after a number of reports, books (especially Barbara Seaman’s “The Doctors’ Case Against the Pill”), and studies brought up concerns about the safety of the birth control pill. Feminist groups and women’s health advocates attended the hearings demanding that women who had taken the pill be allowed to testify. To which Nelson responded, “I stated in advance of the hearings that every viewpoint would be heard on this issue… There will be women who testify… I will give you all the time—if you ladies will come to see me—would you girls have a little caucus and decide which one will talk one at a time, we can then decide what ladies will testify. Your viewpoints will be heard, don’t worry about that.” Then they were kicked out. And much of the testimony was never made public.

After a great deal of work from Karen Langhart, with the help of Senator Bernie Sanders’ office, and perhaps an invocation of the Freedom of Information Act, we were able to get a near complete copy of the Nelson Pill Hearing transcripts. (I say “near complete” because I have already found at least one instance of a page missing. But more on that later.)

A Massive Experiment

As someone who has survived a stroke directly related to the birth control pill, you can imagine how strange and challenging it is to read these hearings. Here I am pouring over 1500 pages of testimony from countless doctors who are describing problems, side effects, and dangers of hormonal birth control and as far as I can tell right now, they all seem to agree on two things. One, that putting women on birth control pills was (and I would say, still is) a MASSIVE experiment with millions of healthy women. Two, that there simply wasn’t enough research to understand even the short-term effects, let alone the long-term effects. Though these hearings were 46 years ago, I believe we have yet to discover all the ramifications of this experiment.

They Knew: Pill Induced Stroke

From a personal standpoint, one of the most frustrating discoveries I have made so far was found in the testimony of Dr. David B. Clark, a professor of neurology. Imagine my shock as I read him describing the exact symptoms of my stroke. This was particularly frustrating as my doctors indicated that the reason I was misdiagnosed and left untreated for so long was because my stroke was so highly unusual. And now I’m reading testimony from 1970 that says they knew strokes in young women on hormonal birth control occurred this way. Over forty years ago, these risks (and many more) were identified and, for the most part, ignored. Here is some of his testimony:

“It has been thought for a great many years that spontaneous cerebral vascular accidents are quite rare in healthy, nonpregnant women, especially the younger ones.”- Nelson Pill Hearings, page 6137

So seeing an increase in these should tell us something…

“Further, it was rapidly found, which was embarrassing, I think to all of us, that we did not have a really accurate idea of the incidence of spontaneous cerebral vascular accidents, spontaneous strokes, in young, healthy, nonpregnant women. We did have some comparable information comparing incidence in women with that in men.” -Nelson Pill Hearings, pages 6137-6138

This really isn’t surprising given that women were often excluded from medical research and are still vastly underrepresented in clinical trials.

“In looking at this group of strokes, it seems their time of onset is often prolonged, for days, and even weeks. In a considerable portion of the cases, the onset was marked by premonitory migrainous headache. The patient may have attacks of double vision, they may have transitory weakness in various parts of the body, which recovers for a time: they often report giddiness and fainting attacks, and this finally develops into a full-blown stroke.”- Nelson Pill Hearings, page 6140

These symptoms are almost identical to mine.

He goes on to say that these types of strokes do not appear to be related to arteriosclerosis (hardening or thickening of the arteries) or hypertension (high blood pressure), two normal precursors for stroke. I also had neither arteriosclerosis, nor hypertension.

“So I think it is possible that such premonitory symptoms for days or weeks before the full-blown stroke develops may be a reason for assuming a seeming association with the pill.”- Nelson Pill Hearings, page 6140

Expletives and Indignation

Needless to say, when I got to this testimony, I let fly several loud expletives that served no purpose but to release a decade of frustration and scare my dog. This was 1970! My stroke was in 2006. Where did this information get lost? Why didn’t my doctors know to check for stroke when I presented with an ongoing headache and transitory weakness? Maybe my OB-Gyn wouldn’t have thought I had a migraine and a pulled muscle. Maybe the doctor at the local health clinic wouldn’t have suggested an appointment with a neurologist a week later. Maybe I wouldn’t have been sent home from the emergency room twice. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to suffer the fear and pain of massive seizures. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to relearn how to tie my shoes and relearn how to walk and relearn how to do math.

And as if reading a near-textbook list of my stroke symptoms that no fewer than four doctors misdiagnosed wasn’t maddening enough—the very next doctor to testify at these hearings, Dr. J. Edwin Wood, said the question of whether strokes are caused by hormonal birth control is debatable. He goes on to say that there is “a definite hazard to life while using these drugs because of the side effect of causing blood to clot in the veins” (Nelson Pill Hearings, 6156). Now, I’m definitely not a doctor, but I do know that the majority of strokes are caused by blood clots. More cursing ensued.

So where does this leave us? For my part, I’m going to keep digging. And I’m going to keep telling you what I find.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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This article was published originally on April 18, 2016.

The Dishwasher In My Head: Whooshing from Pulsatile Tinnitus

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on April 25, 2023

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For months after my stroke, I heard what I can only describe as a dishwasher in my head. The whooshing, which was accompanied by a sensation sort of like when you feel like you need to pop your ears, started in the hospital shortly after I was moved from the ICU to a regular hospital room. When I asked my doctors about the sound in my head, the ongoing whoosh whoosh, they did what they so often did when I asked questions. They looked at me oddly then dismissed it as nothing to worry about. What I saw on their faces was this: “We have no idea what you’re talking about but you really shouldn’t be here so just be happy that you made it.” So I stopped asking about it. In the weeks following my stroke, I experienced it several times a day but after a few months, I would only hear the dishwasher every once in a while. Thankfully, now I only hear it when I am actually washing dishes.

I all but forgot about the dishwasher in my head until I ran across A Quest To Explain the Whooshing In Her Head.

Pulsatile Tinnitus

Apparently, the dishwasher in my head is called “pulsatile tinnitus” but it’s not actually tinnitus at all. Emma Greenwood started the site whooshers.com after experiencing difficulty getting her own pulsatile tinnitus diagnosed. As the site says, “According to many major medical institutions, only 3% of tinnitus sufferers experience pulsatile tinnitus. The rare symptoms create challenges for patients and diagnostic challenges for the medical communities that serve them.” For this reason, she has become a champion of the condition. A quick google search of pulsatile tinnitus shows just how pivotal Greenwood’s work has been. There simply isn’t much information about it and what you can find is usually a side-note to information on tinnitus, though the two aren’t really related.

So What Is It?

Tinnitus is categorized by a “ringing in the ears” or hearing noise that isn’t there and is primarily an auditory condition. This type of tinnitus is usually caused by hearing malfunction. Yet with pulsatile tinnitus, the patient is actually hearing a verifiable sound. These sounds can often be detected by a doctor and, in some cases, people with the condition have even been able to record the sound. If you don’t know what a dishwasher sounds like or you want to hear for yourself what it’s like to have pulsatile tinnitus, you can find audio clips on whooshers.com.

What Causes It?

Pulsatile tinnitus can be caused by abnormalities in the veins or the arteries and it often occurs only in one ear (unless the cause is bilateral). While regular tinnitus is considered more a nuisance than dangerous, pulsatile tinnitus comes with the possibility of some very serious and potentially life-threatening medical conditions. These conditions include:

Vascular stenosis or narrowing of blood vessels which is often caused by atherosclerosis or a thickening of arteries
Aneurysms or a bulging or weak area of an arterial wall
Anatomical variants and abnormalities of the arteries or veins
Intracranial hypertension or pressure in and around the brain (incidentally, this is a side-effect of the Mirena IUD)

One fifteen-year study of 110 patients with pulsatile tinnitus found that most patients had benign swelling of the brain (56) followed by blockage or narrowing of the carotid arteries (24). In 13 patients, no specific diagnosis could be reached.

In another study of 84 patients, a “vascular disorder was found in 36 patients (42%), most commonly a dural arteriovenous fistula or a carotid-cavernous sinus fistula. In 26 patients with a vascular abnormality, pulsatile tinnitus was the presenting symptom. In 12 patients (14%), nonvascular disorders such as glomus tumour or intracranial hypertension with a variety of causes explained the tinnitus.”

Silencing the Whoosh

Though my dishwasher has been silent for years now, I’m grateful that I’ve come across this information. Because my doctors had no idea what I was talking about, it’s not clear what caused my pulsatile tinnitus. My best guess is that I was hearing the sounds of the veins in my head recover from a traumatic brain injury. Now I know that if I ever start to hear it again, I need to have the health of the arteries and veins in my brain examined. And I need to keep looking until I find a doctor who will take me seriously. For now, it’s nice to know that it wasn’t all in my head.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

This post was published originally on Hormones Matter on November 8, 2016.

Why Aren’t Women Tested for Factor V Leiden and Other Clotting Disorders?

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on August 9, 2022

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When I had a stroke at age 28, my doctors did some tests and found that I have a fairly common clotting disorder called Factor V Leiden. They told me that this, combined with birth control pills, are what caused me to have the cerebral venous thrombosis (stroke). It didn’t occur to me then to ask what Factor V Leiden actually was. Or to ask why I hadn’t been testing for inherited clotting disorders before I was put on medication that increased my risk for blood clots. These things didn’t occur to me until much later, after I learned to walk again.

I spent most of the first two years after my stroke getting on with my life. It wasn’t until I was searching for a topic for my thesis that I revisited what happened to me. I had no idea that birth control pills could be so dangerous and I certainly didn’t know that I could have an inherited genetic condition which would make them exponentially more dangerous for me. “How many women have the same condition?” I wondered. “Why don’t we test them before they are put on hormones?” These are some of the questions I sought to answer with my research.

What is Factor V Leiden?

Factor V Leiden (FVL) is a 20,000-year-old mutation common in the general population and a major genetic risk factor for thrombosis. It’s the most common genetic clotting disorder, accounting for around half of all cases. It’s most commonly found in Caucasians (3-8%).

Patients with Factor V Leiden can be either:

Heterozygous: inherited one mutated gene from a parent

or

Homozygous: inherited two mutated genes, one from each parent

What Does It Do?

As my hematologist described, FVL doesn’t cause blood clots but once activated, it dangerously accelerates clotting. Researchers aren’t clear on why some people with FVL activate and others don’t but there is almost always a precipitating factor—surgery, trauma, immobility, use of hormones, etc.

According to a review in Blood, the journal for the American Society of Hematology, women with heterozygous FVL who also use oral contraceptives have an estimated 30 to 50-fold increased risk of blood clots, while women with homozygous FVL have a several hundred-fold increased risk.

It is the most common genetic cause of primary and recurrent venous thromboembolism in women.

We know that taking estrogen can increase the risk of blood clots, stroke, and heart attack in women. And estrogen, when taken by someone with FVL, can significantly increase the risk of blood clots. Whether women are taking synthetic estrogen in the form of oral contraceptives, or hormone replacement therapy or have increased concentrations of the endogenous estrogens due to pregnancy, they are at much greater risk of clotting.

FVL accounts for 20-50% of the venous thromboembolisms (VTE) that are pregnancy related. In the United States, VTE is the leading cause of maternal death. In addition to causing VTE in pregnant women, FVL has been linked to miscarriage and preeclampsia.

Perhaps the women most at risk for blood clots are those that have been placed on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). A recent review of data from several studies found that women taking hormone replacement therapy were at an increased risk of blood clot and stroke. Worse yet, women with FVL who are also on HRT were 14-16 times more likely to have a VTE.

Despite these risks, women are not systematically tested for FVL before they are prescribed oral contraceptives, before or during pregnancy, or before commencing HRT.

What Women Know about Birth Control and Blood Clots

Part of my thesis research included a survey to assess what women understand about the risks of birth control pills and clotting disorders. Over 300 women who had taken birth control pills participated. What I found was that most women do not understand the side effects of hormonal birth control, nor are they familiar with the symptoms of a blood clot.

As for clotting disorders, nearly 60% of the women surveyed had no knowledge of these conditions. When asked whether they knew about clotting disorders BEFORE they took birth control pills that number increases considerably.

Over 80% of women were taking a medication without the knowledge that they could have an undiagnosed genetic condition that would make that medication exponentially more dangerous.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise give that this information is not found in advertisements for birth control pills, on non- profit websites about birth control pills and their risks, or on literature provided with the prescriptions.

Why Aren’t Women Tested for Clotting Disorders?

The most common reason I found in my research for not testing women were cost-benefit analyses measured in cost per prevention of one death.

Setting aside the moral argument that you cannot put a price on a human life, because clearly the government and corporations do just that. (It’s $8 million in case you were wondering.) The cost of taking care of taking care of victims of blood clots is not insignificant.

Each year thousands of women using hormonal contraceptives will develop blood clots. The average cost of a patient with pulmonary embolism (PE) is nearly $9,000 (for a three-day stay not including follow-up medication and subsequent testing).

A hospital stay as a stroke patient is over twice that at nearly $22,000 (not including continuing out-patient rehabilitation, medications, testing, etc.). As a stroke survivor, I can tell you that the bills don’t stop after you leave the hospital. I was incredibly lucky that I only needed a month of out-patient therapy. Most patients need considerably more and will require life-long medication and testing. It’s important to note that due to the increasing cost of healthcare, the figures in these studies (PEs from 2003-2010; strokes from 2006-2008) would be exponentially higher now.

I’m not a statistician but I can do some basic math and while I wasn’t able to find data for the United States (surprise, surprise), the health ministry in France recently conducted a study that showed that the birth control pill causes 2,500 blood clots a year and 20 deaths. The United States has 9.72 million women using the pill compared to France’s 4.27 million. This doesn’t include the patch, ring, injectable, or hormonal IUD, but for the sake of keeping things simple, let’s just use the pill. So we have over twice the pill-users as France, which means twice the blood clots (5,000) and twice the deaths (40). If we assume that half of the blood clots are PE and half are stroke, we come up with a whopping $77.5 million in hospital bills for these blood clots (not counting life-long treatment). Now adding the cost-of-life determined by the government (40 women times $8 million= $320 million) and we end up with nearly $400 million a year in damages caused by the pill. For the cost of only one year of damages, all 10 million women could have a one-time $40 blood test which would result in considerably fewer blood clots.

Furthermore, the research in my thesis shows that women would be willing to not only take these tests, but also to pay for them!

Of the 311 who answered the question, 82.3% (or 256) said they would be willing to take the test. Only 7.2% said no, with the other 10.6% “not sure.” More than 60% of respondents would be willing to pay for the test (up to $50).

In addition, the cost of a blood test is directly proportional to how frequently it is performed. An increase in testing will result in a decrease in the cost of testing.

Women Deserve Better

Putting aside the monetary costs for a moment, what about the emotional and physical toll for women who suffer these dangerous and debilitating blood clots? There is no excuse for women to suffer strokes, pulmonary embolisms, DVTs, multiple miscarriages, and still births because they have an undiagnosed clotting disorder.

That said, requiring a test before prescribing hormones to women would raise awareness of the dangers of these drugs and may reduce the overall number of women using them. Which leads one to wonder if the absence of testing for women is really just a public relations strategy.

Perhaps one of the most devastating cautionary tales of not testing for clotting disorders comes from Laura Femia Buccellato. Her daughter Theresa was 16 years old when she was killed from a blood clot caused by (undiagnosed) Factor V Leiden and birth control pills. Would Theresa be with us today if she had had a simple blood test? Would I have had a stroke? When we will demand better?

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

Image by fernando zhiminaicela from Pixabay.

This article was first published in September 2016.

The Power of Repetition for Improving Brain Function

by Arlyn Smith

Published on April 6, 2022

3441 views

repetitive behaviors, neuroplasticity and stroke recovery

Through personal experience and research, I have gained insight into the power of repetitive thoughts and behaviors in creating new neural pathways and forcing the brain to “rewire” itself. This has occurred within my brain as I recovered both physically and mentally after suffering from a cerebellar stroke. Repetition of activity and repetition of thoughts retrain the brain. I will delve into each subject separately, as they are both similar, yet use different avenues to achieve results

Regaining Physical Capacity After My Stroke

In November 2002, I found myself in a coma following a massive cerebellar stroke. This was after 13 years of other issues. The stroke was precipitated by a suicide attempt, one of many over the course of 13 years of poor mental health, drug and alcohol use, anorexia, and bulimia. Details of my story can be found here. With that stroke, I lost all ability to move. Even swallowing was difficult. At that time, I did not know how to recover and the physicians did not appear to think recovery was possible. In fact, the possibility of the long-term training of my brain’s neuroplasticity was mentioned as a mere afterthought by my neurological team. I will admit that at the time this was not something I was overly concerned with initially either. I was simply trying to survive.

At some point, however, I became aware of the fact that the cans of soup I was lifting for physical therapy seemed incredibly easy to lift. Of course, this was gradual and after months of training. It was then though that I realized that minimal retraining of these neurons could yield such results. Research supports this. Here is some of the science behind the post-stroke improvement of the neural pathways pertaining to motor skills.

Over time, I recognized that many years of consistent repetitive physical activity, in my case weightlifting, has retrained the neurological damage acquired by my brain in ways greater than was remotely expected to be achievable without the use of pharmaceuticals, which given my history, I was none too keen to take. I am happy to say that I have yet to take any drugs to treat my extreme neurological symptoms. Instead, I trained, day in and day out. The simple act of repetition and strength building seems to have re-trained my brain. I am now able to walk, talk, and swallow. This took upwards of 17 years to achieve, an exceedingly long and arduous process, but it was well worth the avoidance of medicinal side effects.

In addition to the physical training, I found that supplementation with certain vitamins, such as thiamine, a strong multivitamin, vitamin C, and vitamin D daily, has allowed me to achieve that which dumbfounds scientists and doctors. Vitamins, supplementation, and strenuous physical activity are looked down on by most professionals. I guess things like proper nutrition and exercise are not considered scientific. They work, though. At least for me, they did.

Hopefully, my medical journey will challenge the current medical perspective, and if not, inspire other similarly afflicted individuals to pursue alternative approaches. I have dealt with a cerebellar stroke, anorexia, bulimia, cyclothymia, substance abuse, dialysis, coma, and spinocerebellar ataxia, to name a few of my physical ailments, but I am doing extremely well, despite it all. This is contrary to what was expected of me by my physicians. Frankly, many still cannot believe what I have achieved. Research supports my success. From Neuroplasticity after Traumatic Brain Injury – Translational Research in Traumatic Brain Injury:

The central nervous system (CNS) retains an innovative ability to recover and adapt secondary compensatory mechanisms to injury. The basis of recovery stems from neuroplasticity. This is defined as the ability of neuronal circuits to make adaptive changes on both a structural and functional level, ranging from molecular, synaptic, and cellular changes to more global network changes. The adult brain was traditionally thought to be stagnant, with neuroplasticity confined to cortical development.

Although traumatic brain injuries differ in some ways from stroke, the principles of neuroplasticity remain. The key to retraining the brain is simple repetition. That, along with other supportive influences like diet, nutrition, and of course, no small degree of mental fortitude, is, in my opinion, far more important than medication.

Rewiring Thoughts and Emotions

The concept of creating new neural pathways in the mental and emotional portion of the brain is the most important aspect of this particular subject for me. I have more experience, personally, with this than my physical situations. In 1990, I began down a path of mental self-destruction. Years of depression turned into bouts of psychosis. I attempted to vanquish the mental torment through heavy drug and alcohol use, which was compounded with severe anorexia and bulimia. I was admitted to countless hospitals, treatment centers, and alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers between 1995-2002. I attempted to commit suicide 5 times between 1995-and 2003. The pain I felt from existence was so unbearable that I could not fathom the thought of mortal existence. I suffer from genetic mental illness. This has been an ailment in my family lineage for as long as there have been historical records. It should be noted that many of the mentally ill members of my family have been or are, incredibly intelligent. There is a commonality with those I have interacted with. During our suffering, we repeatedly told ourselves similar things. A lifetime of imprinting our minds with these statements ultimately led to feelings of futility and attempted or completed suicide. The following was ingrained on our psyche, through years of reiteration and brain imprint: “CAN’T”, “NEVER”, “IMPOSSIBLE”.

I remember the specific day that changed my life. On December 15, 2013, I had enough of it all. I was no longer suicidal yet was hit with this realization that my mental health was taking such an enormous toll on me physically and if I did not completely change, mentally, I would not remain alive for very much longer at all. It should be noted that there are countless people throughout the world who have dealt with or are currently dealing with situations parallel to mine. These people remain in the shadows, but trust that the amount of emotional pain they feel or have felt mimics my own.

As would be imagined, by 2003 regular visits to psychologists and counselors had become a routine part of my existence. On the aforementioned date of that monumental decision, I was in some sort of confused state as to “how” I would retrain my brain like I was retraining my body. I quickly recalled an idea mentioned to me by a psychologist regarding retraining neural pathways. I instantly searched keywords online and was inundated with stories, scientific studies, and articles written by prestigious medical professionals. This was, undoubtedly, an extremely effective tool. As I dug deeper, the concept behind this method seemed attainable. I had spent my life reinforcing negative beliefs and thoughts in my mind. Over the years, the negative self-enforcement had imprinted itself deep within my psyche. I need to reverse this and imprint more positive thoughts.

My entire life, I had plied myself with pharmaceuticals and had found no relief. These medications made matters worse. I had somehow come to rely on and believe that these drugs would “fix” me. In pursuing the medical model, I had turned my life over to medicine, and as consequence, did not understand the concept of responsibility for my own life. If I was to retrain my mind, this had to change. I had become responsible for my own life. I began by doing some intense psychological work.

I upped my counseling session to twice a week and realized that the only way I would truly be able to undergo this retraining would be through honesty. Blatant honesty. Not only with my therapist, but with myself. I had to break down the barriers that had barred my mind from receiving any type of positive self-talk. At some point, my counselor and I created a personal mantra:

“Nothing in my life has been a waste.”

This brought a sense of relief. I repeated this to myself ad nauseum. The underlying reasons for my suffering began to seem less invasive and not quite as severe as once thought. I was able to ascertain meaning in my life. Another enormous thing I began to do was to accept compliments. I had become accustomed to rejecting and deflecting them. Self-deprecation had become my normal. Through acceptance of others’ positive views of myself, I was able to view myself more positively.

I was not prepared for the mental shock of quickly switching my thoughts to positive. I feel it necessary to relay this, everything was worth it. The pain, the tears, the hard internal work, it was a small price to pay. The feeling I have now is worth every moment of strife that I experienced initially. This is the recount of my experience. The following are some articles to back up my personal experience, as it is that. My personal experience. Also searchable are more complex experiments, data, and peer-reviewed articles. I challenge the reader to research “neural pathways,” study the idea, be your own mental health advocate, and, if fitting, discuss the concept with your health provider.

You may be surprised by the results!

Here are some articles to consider to begin your journey.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, and like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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Let It Go! Forgiveness Is Part of a Healthy Diet

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on September 11, 2019

4452 views

As I pulled out of my neighborhood onto the main road in my town, a truck whipped up beside me the man leaning his head out the window, shooting me the bird. We were at a stop light but apparently I hadn’t sped to the stoplight fast enough for him. My initial reaction was to return the favor- two can play at the nasty, indignant driver game. But I was on my way to yoga class, so I decided to try practicing patience instead. It wasn’t easy. I was startled by the aggressiveness of his behavior over something so trivial. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong but his anger and negativity affected me more than I was comfortable with. “Maybe he’s just having a terrible day,” I thought. “Who gets so hateful about something so insignificant?”

You may have heard the old chestnut, “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” It’s often attributed to Buddha or Nelson Mandela though it’s not clear who said it first. Versions of this quote abound because of the profound truth that anger and resentment can make us physically ill. While many religions preach forgiveness as a model for salvation or enlightenment, the science actually agrees that letting go of blame can make us healthier.

Forgiving Others

There are many theories about why it’s so hard for humans to forgive. It may be that we are not very good at living in the present moment, always worried about the past where someone may have wronged us or anxious about the present where someone may wrong us again. Or perhaps it is that we are simply wired to remember what has hurt us so that we can avoid it. For whatever reason, and no matter how counterintuitive it may feel, letting go of anger and forgiving may be one of the best things we can do for ourselves.

This can be a real challenge for many of us. Especially depending upon the type of offense and the level of hurt. It didn’t take me long to forgive the man in the truck for his obscene gesture. But I wondered how long it would take him to forgive me for the offense of not driving exactly how he wanted me to.

“People who are hurt by others too often are hurt because someone is seeking power—power over you. Forgiveness, in contrast, concerns love—-loving those who are not loving you.”

Loving people who are not loving to you is a tall order- sometimes a Herculean, or rather Mother Teresan, task. So why should we do it? Doesn’t it just make me a sucker to forgive someone who has wronged me?

According to the Mayo Clinic, “Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you deny the other person’s responsibility for hurting you, and it doesn’t minimize or justify the wrong. You can forgive the person without excusing the act.”

If being the better person isn’t enough for you, how about being a healthier person?

A study published in the American Heart Association Journal shows a link between coronary heart disease and anger, particularly in men. “In other words, we observed a gradient in CHD risk, with evidence of increased risk even among men with apparently “average” levels of anger.”

Florida State University found a correlation between forgiveness and improved cardiovascular function.

And the European Heart Journal published a meta-analysis that concluded that outbursts of anger are associated with the short-term risk of heart attacks, strokes, and disturbances in cardiac rhythm.

If that’s not convincing enough, letting go of anger and resentment can also help with anxiety and mental health. Concordia University found that anger has a powerful and serious health consequences “for millions of individuals around the world who suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, anger is more than an emotion; it’s an agent that exacerbates their illness.”

Forgiveness can also make your life feel easier. A study done at Erasmus University showed that holding onto grudges can literally weigh you down.

“Metaphorically, unforgiveness is a burden that can be lightened by forgiveness; we show that people induced to feel forgiveness perceive hills to be less steep (Study 1) and jump higher in an ostensible fitness test (Study 2) than people who are induced to feel unforgiveness. These findings suggest that forgiveness may lighten the physical burden of unforgiveness, providing evidence that forgiveness can help victims overcome the negative effects of conflict.”

How Can We Forgive?

One of the main things we can do to release the negative feelings associated with holding a grudge is to cultivate empathy. I tried to do that with the rude driver and I try to do this with anyone in my life exhibiting behaviors I don’t understand or find off-putting. I don’t know what the truck driver was going through that day. Perhaps his girlfriend had just broken up with him and he wanted to lash out at someone. Maybe the person who parked their car so terribly has a sick child at home and was too distraught and hurried to be more considerate. We never know what other people are going through. As another favorite old chestnut says, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

Another way to practice forgiveness is to let go of expectations. Expectations are the root of all conflict. Expecting other people to think and act like you, to understand what you understand, to feel how you feel, to look at the world as you look at it- these are all ways we place unfair burdens on others.

Practicing empathy and letting go of expectations for others are just part of the forgiveness process. We must also learn how to do these things for ourselves.

Forgiving Yourself

If you’re anything like me, you may find forgiving yourself to be exponentially harder than forgiving others. According to University of California, Berkeley, “The ability to forgive oneself for mistakes, large and small, is critical to psychological well-being. Difficulties with self-forgiveness are linked with suicide attempts, eating disorders, and alcohol abuse, among other problems.”

This can be particularly difficult for women. According to study published in the Spanish Journal of Psychology, guilt is significantly higher in women. The same study claims that the problem is not that women feel more guilt but that men don’t feel enough. But that’s a topic for a different article. What can we do about all this guilt? Simply, we can forgive ourselves.

How exactly do we do that?

Steps to Forgiveness

Feel the feelings

The Greater Good website from the University of California, Berkeley explains, “Research suggests that criminal offenders who recognize that doing bad things does not make them bad people are less likely to continue engaging in criminal activity. And remorse, rather than self-condemnation, has been shown to encourage prosocial behavior. Healthy self-forgiveness therefore seems to involve releasing destructive feelings of shame and self-condemnation but maintaining appropriate levels of guilt and remorse—to the extent that these emotions help fuel positive change.”

Take responsibility and apologize if the situation warrants it

“In order to forgive ourselves, we first have to admit to ourselves that we blew it. We have to take ownership and acknowledge the flaw or mistake—and that feels almost counter to our sense of survival! It’s how we learn and grow.” – Psychology Today

Practice empathy for yourself and the person you wronged

You are human and make mistakes. The person you wronged is human and makes mistakes, too.

Learn from the experience. One of the great things about feeling bad is that we don’t like it. In fact, we go to great lengths to avoid feeling bad. And that’s exactly what makes feeling bad, making mistakes, such a powerful teacher. Our mistakes are painful so that we may learn from them. Try not to miss the lesson in whatever situation you find yourself in so that you don’t have to relearn it again in an even more painful situation.

Ask for help if you need it

According to Joretta L. Marshall, PhD, a United Methodist minister and professor of pastoral care at the Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, it can be done with or without formal therapy. “But not without community of some kind. It is in the context of our relationships (whether with therapists, pastors, counselors, churches, families, and friends) that we experience the grace of being forgiven and forgiving others.”

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash.

This article was published originally on August 11, 2016.

Blood Clots: What Women Know Versus What We Should Know

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on August 22, 2016

2893 views

I was on the birth control pill for ten years. I knew that it could cause blood clots in women over 35 who smoked. I wasn’t over 35 and I didn’t smoke. That was all I thought I needed to know. Then I had a stroke. It was caused by the pill and a genetic clotting disorder I never knew I had. In fact, I didn’t know there was such a thing as clotting disorders or that I could have one or that in combination with hormonal birth control, it could kill me. And I certainly had no idea what the symptoms of a blood clot were.

What Do We Know? Not Too Much, It Appears

When I began to do research for my thesis, I wanted to know if it was just me or if other women who took the pill were also unaware of clotting disorders and of the symptoms of a blood clot. Spoiler: I wasn’t alone in my ignorance.

I surveyed over 300 women who had taken birth control pills. Among other things, I wanted to know:

What did women know about the risks associated with the pill?
Were they aware of clotting disorders?
Did they know the symptoms of a blood clot?

Survey Results

Neither Women Nor Their Doctors Understand Risks for Blood Clots

The results of the survey showed that women do not clearly understand the risks involved with taking birth control pills. Many of them believe that certain risks are only associated with being over 35 years of age and/or smoking. This is not surprising given that only a little over half said their doctor discussed the risks with them before giving them a prescription. And for a majority of the women, their doctor never discussed other birth control options with them.

Most of the women were asked about their family history before being given a prescription, but fewer than half of their doctors actually discussed it with them, and fewer than a third of the women actually read the risk information that accompanies their prescriptions. That’s not surprising given how dense and misleading the pharmaceutical companies have made risk communication.

When asked whether they were familiar with the symptoms of a blood clot, most women (60.5%) admitted that they were not. Eight women responded that they had learned the symptoms because a family member or friend had a blood clot, and two participants said they had actually had blood clots. One stated, “When I experienced chest pain and did research online. It turned out that I had pulmonary embolisms (while on BCP- birth control pills).” Only 6 out of 311 women reported learning about the symptoms of blood clots from their doctor. Ironically, more women knew someone who had a clot.

At the end of the survey, the participants were invited to share anything further about their experience on the pill. Here are some of their answers:

My experience on birth control pills, the Nuvaring, or Depo-Provera all proved to be horrendous… I think birth control pills came straight from hell and I hate, hate, hate it. I would rather undergo Chinese water torture daily thank take birth control, and that is the God’s honest truth… My fertility has been affected forever by my under informed choice to go on birth control, and by the irresponsible doctors who encouraged me to switch methods rapidly “until I found what worked for me.”

I’ve had two different GYNs give me completely contradictory information about the side effects and dangers of BCPs… Overall, I’m surprised at how little doctors seem to know about female BCP- I haven’t experienced this amount of ambiguity with any other medical specialty or problem.

I was shocked- and grateful- when I finally found a doctor who discussed alternatives with me, suggested a wide variety of reading, and let me do my own research and make my own decision before wiring[sic] a prescription. After doing the reading, there is no way I will ever take another birth control pill in my life. Every other doctor I had acted like it was giving out Altoids…

I think they’re too often the first option doctors prescribe for reasons other than birth control. That’s frustrating. They’re not a magic pill and some doctors seem to think they are.

The bottom line is that most women do not fully understand the risks involved with taking birth control pills and they are not familiar with the symptoms of a blood clot.

At my thesis defense, when I mentioned that most women (over 60%) did not know the symptoms of a blood clot, my advisor asked, “Well, I don’t think that’s so unusual. Do you think most people know what the symptoms of a blood clot are?”

“No, but I think people who have been prescribed a medication that greatly increases their risk of blood clots should be informed of the symptoms,” I responded.

Who Is Responsible?

This is a simple question with a complicated answer. Who is responsible for making sure women who use hormonal contraceptives, especially women who are at a much higher risk for blood clots, understand the symptoms and when to get help? Is it the responsibility of the doctor who prescribed the medication? Or is it the responsibility of the pharmaceutical company to provide clearer information? Or is it the responsibility of the patient?

From my personal experience, I now know that I cannot trust my doctor to always make the right diagnosis and provide the right treatment. Most of their information comes from the pharmaceutical industry who have clearly demonstrated that they put profit first. And our research is showing that their information is not correct. Therefore, I cannot rely on the drug companies to make sure they provide me with accurate and straightforward information about their medications.

So that leaves me. And you. Until we demand a system that puts patients first, a system of health and transparency, we have to put ourselves firsts. How? We do that by listening to our bodies, doing the research, and learning to trust our intuition. That may mean we have to disagree with our doctors. That may mean we have to ask for a second opinion. That may mean we have to insist on being heard. We can’t be afraid of offending someone or “rocking the boat.” We can’t be afraid of being considered hysterical or melodramatic. We can no longer sit back and hope others are making the best decisions for us. We have to educate ourselves. We must be our own advocates. Our lives depend on it.

And we can start by learning the symptoms of a blood clot.

What Are the Symptoms of Blood Clots?

Blood clot in leg:

swelling
pain
tenderness
an unusually warm sensation in the affected area
an unusually cold sensation in the affected area (this is per our research, more details to follow)
pain in your calf when you stretch your toes upward
a pale or bluish discoloration

Blood clot in chest:

sudden shortness of breath that can’t be explained by exercise
chest pain, may feel like extreme heart burn
palpitations, or rapid heart rate
breathing problems
coughing up blood
dizziness (per our research)
uncharacteristic fatigue (per our research)

Blood clot in the brain:

severe headache
loss of speech
numbness or tingling of limbs
difficulty seeing or changes in vision
difficulty speaking or finding words

For more information about blood clots, especially in conjunction with hormonal contraceptive use, click here.

Why Am I Here? Thoughts on Survivor’s Guilt

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on July 25, 2016

2215 views

“I’m so glad to see you. I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

If you’ve read my story, you may remember that is what the emergency room doctor said to me a few weeks after I had a stroke. I had only been out of the hospital for a week when I developed a rash from the seizure medication I was taking. Because it was a Friday night, my neurologist told me I needed to go to the emergency room. I cried as my in-laws drove into the parking lot of the little local hospital. It was the very same hospital that had sent me home twice before finally discovering, days later, that I had blood clots and was bleeding into my brain.

“You’re a miracle.”

One of the advantages of having a stroke at 28 is that when you return to the ER, they finally take you seriously. I was ushered into an examination room within 5 minutes of checking in. As I waited to be seen by the doctor, a nurse came in. She was very excited and a little emotional.

“Hi,” she said. “Don’t you remember me?” I did not. “I sat with you for hours when you were in here a few weeks ago.”

I immediately began to feel very guilty for not remembering this lovely woman who so obviously cared about me. She took my hand in hers. “You’re a miracle,” she said reverently.

Confused about what the appropriate response to that was, I smiled meekly and said, “Thank you?” When she left the room, I could hear her talking to people up and down the hall. “The miracle girl is here!” she said over and over.

Later, I would lay in bed, or sit on the couch, or ride in the car and wonder, “If I’m such a miracle, why am I here?” What was an enthusiastic and loving sentiment from that nurse turned into a real mindf*@k (pardon the language but there was really no phrase that worked as appropriately here) as my poor, broken brain puzzled over why I had survived.

What is Survivor’s Guilt?

Trying to understand your purpose in this world is a tough enough task. Nevermind trying do it while you’re struggling to just tie your shoes and feed yourself. I wanted to put it out of my mind and just take things one day at a time. But it was hard to do that. There is so much uncertainty during and after a health crisis like a stroke. What will my life look like now? Will it ever look like my life before? Do I want it to look like my old life? Of what kind of life am I even capable?

At the time, I wouldn’t have called it survivor’s guilt, but that may have been what I was dealing with. Survivor guilt (or survivor’s guilt; also called survivor syndrome or survivor’s syndrome) is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives themselves to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not.

Though more common, or perhaps more noted, in survivors of combat and natural disasters, it can also occur in patients who have overcome a health crisis (cancer survivors, HIV/AIDs patients, etc.). It was originally identified in the 1960s in survivors of the Holocaust and since been re-categorized as a symptom of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Treating the Whole Patient

Because we don’t usually think of health crises as causing PTSD, the guilt and other mental health conditions that accompany these situations are often left untreated. I was treated for my stroke physically, but not really mentally, except in the capacity that it affected my actual cognitive abilities. I was sent home from the hospital with prescriptions for blood thinners, seizure medication, and a whole host of other drugs to counteract the side effect of the other two (despite the fact that I had not exhibited any of those side effects). Yet no one asked how I was dealing with the emotional side of what happened to me.

And it’s not just stroke survivors that have trouble processing what happened to them.

“Depression is 3 times more common in patients after a heart attack than in the general population, with 15% to 20% of heart attack victims qualifying for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, and a far greater proportion experiencing increased levels of depressive symptoms.”

According to the Lung Cancer Alliance, 63.9% of lung cancer survivors have experienced feelings of survivor guilt.

“While survivorship is often portrayed as an over-the-moon, happy feeling that all people battling cancer set as their goal, many lung cancer survivors feel burdened by it, experiencing emotions of guilt, anxiety and stress.”

Yet it seems that once the physical body is out of danger, many patients, myself included, are left on their own to unravel the emotional impact—to make sense of the new and unfamiliar life in which they find themselves. Often this process can take years.

For example, this project I’m working on is a staggering reminder that I have survived while so many haven’t. Though my stroke was 10 years ago, it is difficult to read the stories and interact with the families of the women who were killed by hormonal birth control. It brings me face to face with questions I thought I had long ago answered. Why me? Why did I live while so many others did not? And am I doing what I’m supposed to with this life?

“I really needed you.”

About a year after my stroke, I told my dear friend Jamie about what the nurse said. I told her how much it weighed on me, about the pressure I was putting on myself. Her response was beautiful and simple and a good reminder for us all. “What if you’re here because I really needed you not to die?” Mind blown. Maybe some survivors are supposed to achieve great things and change the world. Or just maybe our purpose is as subtle and as profound as being there for someone else.

That message was enough for me for a long time. But when I was contacted about working on this project, I knew there was a reason. This work is important. Women need to understand the side effects of hormonal birth control, the symptoms of a blood clot, and that their options are not just the pill or pregnancy. We need to start asking why life-threatening blood clots, emotional issues, loss of libido, weight gain, as well as many other side effects are considered “acceptable.” We need to hold the pharmaceutical companies to a higher standard. We need to value human life above corporate profit. We need to take women seriously when they discuss their medical concerns. We need to fully research women’s health issues. The entire paradigm of women’s health care and contraception needs to change. The conversation has been started. And I think I may be here to add another voice to it. The voice of a survivor.

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

stroke

“I’m not flexible enough to do yoga.”

“It’s too hard.”

“I could never wear those little yoga pants.” Or “I’m too intimidated.”

“I’m too old.”

“But I’m Christian.”

WARNING!

We Need Your Help

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Ask for help if you need it

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What Do We Know? Not Too Much, It Appears

Survey Results

Neither Women Nor Their Doctors Understand Risks for Blood Clots

Who Is Responsible?

What Are the Symptoms of Blood Clots?

Blood clot in leg:

Blood clot in chest:

Blood clot in the brain:

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“I really needed you.”

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