“ If you want to awaken happiness in your world, you must start by living a life that makes you happy and then radiate your happiness outward. If you want to eliminate suffering in the world, you must start by eliminating the negative parts of yourself and then radiate positivity outward. Truly, the greatest power you have in this world is the power of your own self transformation. It all starts with the man or woman in the mirror.” - Nikki Rowe

The Next Three Years:

In April 2014, I was diagnosed with PCOS. With that information, I began the work of finding out exactly what I could do to manage my chronic illness. One of my big goals was to be able to manage my health without becoming dependent on medication. The biggest goal? DON’T DEVELOP TYPE 2 DIABETES. This was the biggest, scariest part of the PCOS diagnosis for me. I needed to do something to get myself some wins.

Here is what I did...

1. Gluten Free Experiment

The doctor who provided me with the PCOS diagnosis gave me a piece of advice, telling me to try to go gluten free to see what it did for me. One of the driving factors in PCOS is chronic inflammation, and if you have a gluten sensitivity this can be a factor in your inflammation levels (there are lots of schools of thought on this. We can talk about that in depth, later.) Now you need to know that I’m not a fad dieter. I’m not the type of person who wants to try doing paleo at all. And at this point in my life, I lumped gluten free people into this category of fad diet if they weren’t true celiacs. I was highly skeptical when my doctor suggested it.

But my husband said, you feel so bad right now, let’s try it for a couple of weeks and see if it makes a difference. It can’t hurt!

So, we tired a two week experiment. It worked fast! Within that two weeks, I started feeling so much better! My ankle and joint swelling started to go down. I started to feel more energy. My stomach felt better.

I was a believer! Since that experiment, I have been mainly gluten free as a rule. I allow myself treats, but the longer I do this dietary adjustment, the more I notice the side-effects when I do cheat. Most of the time it has to be really worth it for me to be willing to eat something with gluten. 

2. Diet

I started researching the major symptoms of PCOS and what to do to help manage them. It was important to me to try to do all of this by making lifestyle changes. Since blood sugar management and inflammation control were high on this list of things to address, I knew I had to look at our diet.
This was especially important since the gluten free experiment worked so well for me! I began learning about the best way to eat for my body. Now, this took literal years of trial and error. I’ve had bumps in the road. But I’ve mainly been consistent in making and sticking to some strong dietary changes.

We’ll break this down later in detail, but I worked on limiting my sugar intake, slowly eliminated processed foods from our diet, and added lots of new recipes to our list of go-tos that gave me energy when we made them instead of making me feel weighed down and sluggish. I’d say a great place to start was with the most simple step of making my plate half vegetables, one quarter carbs, and one quarter protein. This ratio has changed a bit over time, but it was perfect for me at the very beginning.

3. Exercise

This one has taken the longest for me to adjust and find what worked well for me. I’ve gone through phases where any workout would put my body under enough stress that I’d get a migraine as a result. I’ll talk more about this in my next installment of this story.

Over time, I had to completely re-evaluate what a “good” workout routine was for me. As with every person, our bodies respond differently to different activities, and my belief that a workout should be exhausting to be worth it turned out to be exactly the opposite of what my body needed. I began to experiment with going back to yoga as a beginning. That eventually led to me getting my Yoga Teacher certification in 2020 (lockdown hobby, anyone?!) Today, I have a great routine that works for me, and I’ll share more about it in the future.

4. Supplements

The next thing that started to make a difference for me was adding some supplements to my daily routine. My doctor prescribed 3 supplements based on my specific bloodwork, and they began to help me regulate my blood sugar and my menstrual cycle. After starting the supplements, I had my first period after going off the birth control at the beginning of my health journey (I hadn’t had a period for about 4 months by the time of my diagnosis.) My periods were never regular before I started birth control. At one point, several years earlier, I had gone 9 months without a period. Now, with the supplements, I was having regular periods for the first time in my life. This was major.

I also added a supplement at the recommendation of a friend to help manage the very regular severe migraines I’d experienced since hitting puberty. The supplement really did help, and I slowly (over a span of two years) went from my high point of weekly migraines in 2013 to getting migraines just once a month. This was miraculous to me! It changed a lot, and allowed me to dive deeper into my health quest!

5. Stress Management

This one was the hardest for me! I love a high-pressure work situation. Give me tight deadlines, crazy expectations, some post-its, and a spreadsheet and I’ll have a strategy worked out to make it happen! The problem with that is long term stress contributes directly to my health, even if I’m enjoying the pressure! I had to learn to completely reprogram my work habits, my life, and my expectations of myself.

For example, as soon as the supplements and dietary changes started making me feel better and I gained energy, I signed up to go back to grad school full time while still working full time AND driving to work an hour each way. (I did cut back on my work hours to between 40-45 a week during this time! Good for me!!)

Eventually, I realized what I was doing to myself, and when an opportunity came for change in 2017, I took it and ran with it…

More next time!