Women’s stories

“I don’t have to take drugs”

Kylie is only 40, and began having hormonal changes at around 38. Her worst symptoms were depression and insomnia for two weeks out of every four — half her life! She worked very hard at finding a solution through the usual channels, being diagnosed with an affective disorder, taking lots of prescription medications, and experiencing lots of unwanted side effects without a lot of relief. Fortunately, she had good support from her husband, and after noting improvement in her sleep with melatonin, decided to seek a more holistic approach. Now she’s feeling great — without prescription medicines.

“I began having hormonal changes at around age 38. I would experience a two-week good period and a two-week bad period — which (when you add it up) was like six months of the year that was bad! It seemed like my hormones would fluctuate most right around the time of my period. It was my husband who noticed it the most, because I was nice to everyone except my husband. I was really having trouble with it.

“So I started seeing a therapist, who immediately pronounced I had a mood disorder. Before this, I had tried different birth control methods as a way to try to regulate the hormones, and that would work to some degree, but it seemed like I had a lot of trouble with depression. I’m telling my therapist my symptoms — I was depressed, it seemed like it was PMS or PMDD, it always occurred around that time of the month — and that’s when she determined that it was a mood disorder. So we began to run through the gamut of antidepressants and other drugs they prescribe for mood disorders. None of which helped. And, in fact, one of them made the symptoms much worse, and I think it was only out of desperation that I was willing to even try them.

“Meanwhile, my husband was maintaining ‘But it’s just a hormonal thing, why don’t they test your hormones?’ And so they did test my hormones, but it came back normal. They were saying, ‘Oh, no, you’re fine, you’re normal.’ And he kept saying, ‘But it’s only that week before your period that you’re crazy.’ By crazy, I mean irritable, like there was a cloud over me. Just like the world is bad, everything is bad. All of the things in my life that aren’t perfect get mounted up during that two weeks, and it feels like an insurmountable weight on top of me.

“I resisted going for psychotherapy at all, because I was reticent to seek ‘mental’ help. So when I finally did go to the mental health person, and they wanted to put me on drugs, I was like, ‘No, I don’t want drugs...,’ but I was desperate. So I tried Lamictal, Prozac, Seroquel, Risperdal, Zoloft, and Abilify — the gamut — like, ‘Oh, this is going to fix everybody’s problems.’ But the prescription medications were not giving me any relief, and just complicating things. I was on three different meds at one time, with one causing more symptoms, so she would give me another one to counteract the side effects.

“My husband kept saying, ‘It’s just hormonal imbalance. I think you need more of this or that hormone.’ I thought, Well, maybe I’ll just Google that. And when I did, Women to Women’s website came up. So I read and I read. Your articles are thought-provoking. They talk about symptoms and fluctuations in hormones, and all the things that can go haywire. I took the hormonal health profile and, of course, it came out severe. I thought, Well, it’s a money-back guarantee, so I’ll go ahead and try it.

“And I’ve tried a lot of different programs before that are supposed to make you feel great — like Reliv and Herbalife. But I had not seen success, and I was desperate. So I got on the Personal Program, and probably within two months I started seeing a difference in my sleeping, because along with the ups and downs of my cycle, I was having sleep issues. And I had been having sleep problems for years. So bad, in fact, that I’d had a sleep study. They’d put me on Ambien and Lunesta. But everything started to wear off after a while, and eventually I went over to melatonin. You see, my therapist is not opposed to holistic things — it’s just that her training is in medicine, so she jumps on the medicines first. So when the sleeping issues were such, she was trying to find a combination that would fix both the mood and the sleeping, and it wasn’t really working. So as a last resort, she said, ‘You’ve tried melatonin, haven’t you?’ But I hadn’t! But once I tried it and it started working, I thought, This is natural. Why would I go to Lunesta or Ambien?

“And that’s what got me thinking, Maybe there’s a natural way to treat this whole problem. I think that’s when I thought, Yes, I’ll go ahead and try this — because the melatonin worked. After two months, my symptoms began to even out. And I decided that I was going to try to get off my medicines — which I didn’t think I needed in the first place. It was kind of a simultaneous thing, where I gradually started weaning myself off while beginning the Personal Program.

“It’s been a year and three months now, and I’m taking nothing — not even melatonin — except the Essential Nutrients and Herbal Equilibrium. But the point that I so appreciate about it is how much sense it makes to me that you take into account your whole body. It’s a total approach to your problem. It’s a holistic approach. If you’re not eating well, you’re not going to be feeling well, and you’re not going to be sleeping well. If your body is healthy, everything else will fall into place. And it’s a natural approach.

“I have seen so many of my friends at this age, where it’s so obvious that their hormones are off-balance. They are not well, their lives are crazy, and I think that it’s partly due to not having the right nutrients. The more you spin out of control, the worse your eating becomes. I’ve recommended it to two people, both of whose lives were spinning out of control. So they tried it, but they were not as successful, though their symptoms are better. They would forget, or they would try to stretch it out, whereas I followed the program exactly because I was desperate, and found that I was very successful.

“And it is an expensive program. But where I was coming from, I figured, I can either give the pharmacy my money, or I can use it on my Essential Nutrients. I would either be taking drugs, or I could do something natural. We don’t have a lot of money, but my health is important to me. I want to give it a fair shot. To see if it will work. And I feel like it is working. I’m not on drugs, and I’m very happy with that. I have a sister who has been years on lithium, Zoloft, and other drugs. Those drugs take a toll on your body. I don’t care what they say; they don’t really know what the long-term effects of these drugs are. But I can see the difference in her, because she’s been on them for 15 years. Part of her issues now are the hormonal fluctuations.

“I think also there’s an education problem, where women in their latter 30’s or early 40’s are not thinking of menopause. They think, Oh, menopause is around age 50. But I know some of my symptoms are perimenopausal. Who knows what age you’re going to really be, in menopause? Every woman is different. I think that just because that time of life is so busy with young kids, and work, and this and that, you don’t even realize it until it’s right on top of you: you wake up one day and you’re 40!

“And I have been trying for four to five years now, to get help with this up-and-down issue. I’ve gone to medical doctors — even a pretty high-up doctor in Boston — trying to get help for these issues, and they do not have this conversation with me. They say, ‘Try some B6.’ Or, ‘Have you seen your therapist?’ They won’t have this conversation. And I say, ‘Is it my birth control pills? Can you change that?’ Or ‘Which birth control pill would work, then?’ So they put me on Yaz, or something else again, but they don’t have the type of conversation that gets into what the hormones are actually doing in your brain.

“I finally brought my Essential Nutrients in to my therapist and said, ‘Oh, by the way...’ and she was like, ‘Oh, really?’ She was looking at the types and amounts of different nutrients, and I think she was surprised by the quality. It’s not typical. She said, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s good, that’s good.’ She studied the list. She’s been fine with it. She’s not pushing the drugs on me now, because she’s seeing that it’s working. It’s been fine. And I’m still going to her because I think everyone needs a therapist. Everyone needs to go work on your issues! But I’m just amazed that as a medical person, she’s just fine with it, but yet she didn’t suggest a natural approach to begin with.

“It’s the whole picture. It’s about mental health, not drugging people. I’ve heard so many of my friends say, ‘Oh, you just need some Prozac,’ and all their kids need ADHD medicine. But then they’re eating crap — of course they feel terrible. What would you expect?

“I have had trouble sticking to the Nutritional Guidelines. I find that some parts of my cycle are the most difficult for sugar cravings. The whole sugar addiction problem is such a big issue. I am small — I weigh 110 pounds. And I’ve gone three weeks now just without candy. But it’s such a huge part of the American diet. I haven’t even got to the part where I can look at the grams of sugar in my cereal. I’m just trying to take control of the big stuff. But it’s going to even out. So I want to explore sugar cravings a little more.

“My symptoms were severe. Yes, I was skeptical. Yet I was so committed, I wanted to follow the Program exactly. At different milestones I have called in, where I have a question, and every single time I’ve called the people at the Program have been very, very helpful, and very positive. But not like trying to push anything. Not like trying to sell anything. It seems like you people are concerned about health. Sure, every company’s here to make money, but that does not come across with your customer service people. They are willing to listen to what your particular issue is that you’re struggling with, and I found that support to be very beneficial.

“My favorite part is that I don’t have to take drugs. I feel great and I’m not taking prescription medicines. It seems like the new buzzword these days is ‘mood disorder,’ like ‘ADHD’ was in the 80’s. I think the mental health professionals come up with these terms out of desperation. They don’t know what to call it: You’re just a bitch — I don’t know why! So aside from having a full-time therapist working with your Personal Program, I don’t know how you could improve it! There could be satellite psychotherapists that would hold the hands of these women... No — I take that back! The women who can do really well with your Program are taking charge of their health, are going to become advocates for themselves, and are going to be committed to taking their health seriously. But I am just so thankful for this. It’s a godsend that I was able to find it, because I had nowhere else to turn.”

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Last Modified: 02/16/2010