Moon

With a tainted past of endless symptoms ranging from irregular periods to joint pain, I am constantly looking for new ways to manage my life. By manage my life I mean that I look for new techniques to relieve stress, I change my surroundings to optimize my happiness and I closely examine the medical choices I have to make. This all started about three years ago. Right after my senior year in high school, I started experiencing an array of symptoms. Slowly, they all compounded leaving me with an entire page of bullet points of things going wrong with me. Joint pain, muscle weakness, fatigue, irregular and painful periods, headaches, ear aches, mood swings and so on.

I started out in my family doctor's office wondering if I had polycystic ovary syndrome (my telling symptoms: acne, the period problems, unexplained weight gain, abnormal hair growth). I was told that I wasn't "fat enough" to have PCOS and sent on my way. Next I went to an actual OBGYN who prescribed me some strange hormones that I refused to take and eventually birth control. Then I tried the rheumatologist, the neurologist, the internal medicine doctor and an infectious disease doctor. All kept prescribing me pills but never coming up with a diagnosis. They did perform numerous amounts of tests and ruled out many things (Lupus, Leukemia, Lyme disease), but I was still left hanging.

I tried some of their prescriptions including an arthritis medicine, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant and that birth control. Nothing helped; in fact, some made everything much worse. I'm not bashing prescription medicines. I'm just stating the facts in my case. So finally, I threw all the prescriptions out the window and settled with the "rule out" disease (you know, where they rule out everything but still can't label what you have). I opted for lifestyle changes like increasing exercise and mass organization to "declutter my chaos." My symptoms persist and I still struggle with being a nineteen year old that can barely make it out of bed in the morning because of aches and pains.

With the news of ovarian cysts, a new OBGYN informed me that I most likely do have polycystic ovary syndrome (now titled anovulatory syndrome). Funny that was what I originally went in for (and no, I'm not much "fatter" than I was before)! My new prescription is another, different kind of birth control. I have yet to fill it. Honestly, I'm just a little scared and very doubtful of its effectiveness.

Recently, I've been reading about the alternative medical practice of bioidentical hormones (basically prescriptions that hold the same chemical compounds of the hormones our bodies produce). I've read both sides of the story. The medical community chooses to believe that these bioidentical hormones are not much different than the synthetics already being prescribed and that bioidentical hormones are not FDA approved (meaning they might not be as pure and safe as all would think). I completely understand this point. It makes sense to me that these bioidentical hormones may not be what they say they are and may not be consistent with treatment. On the other hand, I've ready many articles and books on the success of this type of treatment and the way the process works. That makes sense to me as well.

So my dilemma and my question to all: should bioidentical hormones be used as common treatment? Are they as great as some people say? As a diabetic, should I risk this? Or is the whole point of bioidentical hormones just some "quack" theory?