Confession #9: C’mon girls! Let’s do this!

It’s here. 2010. For the xxth time, I have made that New Year’s resolution. You know the one. To lose the extra that’s following you around on your backside.

Seasons, in collaboration with Northern Louisiana Medical Center’s Healthy Woman and Sharon Jackson’s Slammin’ Boot Camp, is bringing you the tools you need to accomplish the goal you resolve every New Year. But we’re not going to say the “d” word. This isn’t about a diet. We’re going to do this the right way. We are going to pursue WELLNESS. Do you hear me? Wellness. That means make good food choices. And that means get off your booty and get busy!

With some great seminars from Sharon Jackson, CPT (that’s certified personal trainer), and Valerie Costanza, RD (that’s Registered Dietician), we are going to gain the knowledge, the tools, the motivation, and the inspiration to do this together.

The kickoff party is coming up soon…Tuesday, January 12, 2010 from 6 until 8 p.m. at the Community Trust Bank Community Room. It’s in the rear of the CTB Financial Center located at 1511 N. Trenton St. in Ruston. Look for the Healthy Woman Wellness Challenge signs and you’ll find it! At the kickoff party, we’ll learn the ropes of what we’re about to undertake. You need to let us know you’re coming. So register by calling 318-255-3223.

We’ll hear from Sharon and Valerie and from wellness advocate and local physician, Dr. Nathan Goodyear. There will be yummy, HEALTHY food for all to munch on and tons of fabulous door prizes (for everything from Botox to Best Buy). Sharon will even be doing some baseline measuring and weighing if you are interested in tracking your progress throughout this journey.

You’ll leave armed with a fitness training guide to begin a running/walking program to prepare for our final event - the Fitness Challenge - to be held Saturday, April 28. Sharon has put together a day-by-day training regimen to help guide you towards running a 5K. And in addition, Sharon will be hosting weekend group runs to prepare for this event most every weekend until April 28. I love Sharon Jackson! And you will, too!

In addition, you’ll take home recipes from every event and a nutrition guide from each event. Valerie is going to teach us how to make better choices when we cook, grocery shop, and meal plan.

So what are you waiting for? I have NEVER been a runner…I’ve always been a walking treadmill kind of girl. So if I can do this, you can too! And it will be much more fun if we do it together.

So…c’mon girls! Let’s do this!

For more information about the Healthy Woman Wellness Challenge, click here.

Phytonutrients…What Are They?

Phytonutrients are nutrients found in plants that may affect health positively. The health benefits found in these nutrients include decreasing the risk of heart disease and cancer, improving glucose control in people with diabetes, and much more. A few examples of phytonutrients are: carotenoids, flavonoids, lignans, phytosterols and stanols, and some vitamins. Each phytonutrient is found in varying amounts in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts.

Phytonutrients function by:

• Serving as an antioxidant
• Enhancing the immune system
• Altering estrogen metabolism
• Causing cancer cells to die
• Repairing DNA damage

Eating a wide variety of colorful fruits and vegetables and replacing refined grains with whole grains will ensure you are getting the beneficial effects of these powerful phytonutrients. To learn more, contact our office and schedule an appointment today.

Our Strategy For Treating Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)

After my last post on Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS or PCO), a reader from Arizona emailed us and said: “My doctor prescribed metformin for me and my periods came back after 5 months of no periods!! It also is helping me lose some weight. Keep in mind, I am overweight, hypertensive, and have slightly elevated cholesterol. Ugh!”

Let’s focus on her two implied questions. First, why did her periods return when she started taking metformin? Second, why she has lost weight? As we address those two questions, you’ll learn more about our treatment strategy for PCO at Seasons Women’s Care.

As I explained in my last post, PCO is characterized by

• High insulin levels and insulin resistance
• High androgen levels (think testosterone)
• Irregular cycles (due to anovulation)

Additionally, many women gain weight.

At Seasons we focus on alleviating these three areas without introducing any side effects. You work with the body, the body will work for you! Let’s go over them one at a time.

Elevated Insulin

Elevated insulin is the result of poor insulin sensitivity, or insulin resistance. The most commonly prescribed insulin medicine used today is the drug metformin. This is a diabetes medicine that improves insulin sensitivity and reduces the liver production of glucose. Metformin can also be associated with significant gastrointestinal side effects, though.

Metformin isn’t the only treatment to reduce insulin resistance. Alpha-lipoic acid also works, and it doesn’t have the side effects associated with metformin.

However, the easiest way to improve insulin resistance is through weight loss. You read that right. Merely losing weight will result in improved insulin sensitivity. At Seasons, we help all women with PCOS to lose weight through nutrition.

One final note about insulin. High insulin levels appear to be a primary factor in testosterone production (discussed below) because insulin binds to specific receptors in the ovaries that augment testosterone production.

Our strategy at Seasons: We work to improve insulin resistence and lower insulin levels, using weight loss, Lipoic acid, and metformin (if necessary).

Elevated Testosterone

Many drugs today are prescribed to lower testosterone. These include spirinolactone, finesteride, cyproterone acetate, dexamethasone, Lupron, flutamide, and finesteride. These are big drugs, and they can have big side effects.

At Seasons, we attack the cause at the source: lack of progesterone and elevated insulin.

OK, this part is a bit technical. Progesterone dominates the last two weeks of a cycle, following ovulation. When you don’t ovulate, your body lacks progesterone. When your progesterone levels decrease, your body stimulates more testosterone production. Raising progesterone levels again can reduce the stimulation to the ovaries for more testosterone production.

Even more important for most women, progesterone lowers the testosterone to dihydrotestosterone conversion. This will reduce the facial hair, hair loss, and acne so commonly associated with PCO.

Progesterone also improves a women’s estrogen dominance (high estrogen to progesterone ratio), and thus improves weight loss.

Our strategy at Seasons: We work with your body to lower testosterone levels more naturally by addressing the root causes of decreased progesterone levels and elevated insulin levels.

Irregular Cycles

Irregular cycles are a hallmark of PCOS. They are, however, just a symptom of the hormone problem. A woman’s uterus will only do what her body tells her to do. You might call the uterus a “Yes, Ma’am” organ. This is why removing a woman’s uterus won’t fix the problem.

The problem is hormone imbalance: high testosterone, high insulin, and low progesterone. When we add progesterone back in, we can address the high testosterone and the low progesterone problems. Additionally, we help women eat better and encourage them to eliminate their exposure to environmental toxins. This helps a woman lose weight, and it helps her body’s insulin sensivity and estrogen dominance.

Now, what about birth control pills? Most of your friends are probably on birth control pills to treat PCOS. Birth control pills do correct the cycle issues, but they replace a hormone imbalance with a hormone overload. This can be a big band-aid with dangerous consequences.

Of course, band-aids aren’t solutions. But we’re more concerned about the consequences of long term birth control. It has been shown to increase your chances of breast cancer and weight gain.

Our strategy at Seasons: When we treat PCOS, we look to the root causes, not quick fix band-aids. Treating the causes—high testosterone, high insulin, and low progesterone—results in long-term solutions that restore your overall health.

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Hormone Therapy May Help You Lose Weight

I am always shocked when I read this statistic: 33% of women in America are obese; 62% are overweight. That’s the bad news. The good news is that obesity among women may be stabilizing.

What is obesity exactly? If your doctor tells you that you are obese, it means your body mass index is greater than 30. A normal body mass index should be less than 25. A body mass index of 25-29.9 is overweight.

Being overweight or obese is the number one health problem facing women today. Period. It leads to diabetes. Hypertension. Cardiovascular disease. Strokes. It can even contribute to cancer. Being obese is a disease, and it should be treated as such.

Here’s what I tell patients who are obese: for your health and longevity, we need to help you lose weight. We’ll start by assessing where you are with your body. Eventually, we’ll put you on a weight loss program, but we need to make sure your body is ready to lose weight first.

How would a body not be ready to lose weight?

Well, if you have estrogen dominance, your body may work against you losing weight. Think about women over forty who start to gain weight around their middle section. They’ve stopped ovulating and stopped producing progesterone. But they are still producing estrogen. That means they’re experiencing “estrogen dominance.”

I know, I know. More medical speak. Don’t worry about what “estrogen dominance” means exactly. Just know that estrogen tells everything to grow… including fat cells. So if you’re in an estrogen dominant state, that’s going to do nothing but promote weight gain.

If we don’t address the estrogen problem, you’re not going to be able to lose weight very efficiently. That’s why we often start with hormone therapy.

What is Metabolic Syndrome?

Metabolic syndrome is a collection of conditions that occur together to increase a women’s risk of heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, stroke, and type II diabetes.

It isn’t a disease, so much as a collection of conditions. However, it can still be dangerous if left untreated, possibly leading to the diseases listed above: peripheral vascular disease, heart disease, stroke, and type II diabetes.

The identification of metabolic syndrome provides a window of opportunity for treatment to prevent disease.

The following risk factors co-exist in metabolic syndrome…

• abdominal obesity
• blood fat and cholesterol disorders
• elevated blood pressures
• insulin resistance
• pro-blood clot state
• pro-inflammatory state

Abdominal obesity and insulin resistance are the dominant risk factors. Other conditions that affect metabolic syndrome include physical inactivity, aging, hormonal imbalances, and genetic predisposition.

Since it isn’t a disease, we diagnose metabolic syndrome by looking for co-existing symptoms. Any three of the following are required to meet the classification of metabolic syndrome…

• abdominal obesity (waist circumference >35 inches)
• elevated triglycerides (>150)
• low HDL (<50)
• elevated blood pressure (> 130/85)
• elevated fasting glucose (>110)

Metabolic Syndrome is not uncommon. It is estimated that over 50 million Americans have it. We treat it by managing a patient’s weight loss, increasing physical activity, treating hypertension, prescribing daily aspirin therapy to reduce pro-blood clot states, and treating elevated triglycerides and/or low HDL levels.