My garden and my hormones!

We are putting in a huge garden. Here's a photo from about a week ago as Tim is rototilling in our compost! The area is about 100 x 20 feet and includes beans, peas, 7 kinds of tomatoes, 10 kinds of peppers, 5 kinds of greens, red and white onions, garlic, rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, watermelon, squash, potatoes, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, beets, cabbage, broccoli, eggplant, Brussels sprouts and herbs.

Now for the hormones. Be warned: this is going to get personal. Since about mid December I've not been getting my period. I just thought that since I was 46, perhaps I was repeating what a few of my friends had gone through and was hitting menopause early. That's fine with me. Although my nice little stepson wants us to have a baby boy, I'm not interested in complying! Too hard on my body and a lot of work. Three new children is already a lot of work. Then, bammo, last Friday the darn thing reappeared. What the. . . ?

Well, a little research on Woman to Woman, a Web site on women's health indicated that hypothyroidism can make your menstrual cycle irregular. (Naturally, Tracie had already told me that, but I really thought it was menopause.) As you may remember, I have a confirmed case of Hashimoto's thyroiditis as per the UW oncology department (no cancer, just my immune system attacking my thyroid). Hashimoto's results in reduced leves of thyroid hormone in your body. Symptoms are increased lethargy, depression, weight gain and other hormonal imbalance-issues such as hair loss, irritability, dry skin patches and period irregularity. But, because I'm eating foods that support my hormone production rather than throw it off wack, perhaps this is a sign that I'm doing better! Yay.

On May 19, I'm going to see Dr. Stanger, a medical doctor who supports natural medicine. Just a couple miles from my house, she will take some tests to see where my T levels are at and, hopefully, prescribe a natural medicine to stabilize my thyroid levels so that I don't have to deal with the symptoms I suffer: weight loss resistance, lethargy, dry skin and isomnia. Yay! But I'm really hoping to make the largest change with my eating habits.

All there is going pretty well. if I can just stay away from the processed foods a bit more (although I'm doing so much better) and stick to the real foods, I'll be good. A big part of that is continuing my habit of just buying the foods we are going to eat over the next couple days. We're going to clean out our fridge a bit more and really be eating fresh.