...is that the several years of extreme stress I experienced in the recent past are responsible for my diagnosis of osteopenia.
Okay...that being said, let's go back to the beginning. Some of this will be a repeat for some of my readers. Sorry.
In 1979, I got a job at Wheaton Natural Foods. I had worked before that, for my dad at his factory in the summers, and for a burger joint for a very short while, but this.....this was what I consider to be my first real job.
It didn't last long, either, because I wasn't big and strong enough to unload 50 pound bags of brown rice and dried beans from the truck (don't know why she hired me if she wanted me to do THAT kind of work, I was a 90 pound bag of bones at 17!), but while I was there, I opened my eyes to a completely different way of life than I had known.
I was great at working the register and stocking the shelves, but I couldn't do the heavy labor, so she fired me.
During the several months that I worked there, though, I started to learn about healthy foods, vegetarianism, natural supplements, natural remedies, herbal medicine, yoga, meditation, and earth awareness.
I tried an herbal remedy for my irregular periods (I made blue cohosh root decoction tea for myself every morning, and, in so doing, started myself on the path to becoming an herbalist) , and it was not only remarkably effective at that, but it also regulated my digestion in a way I had never known before. No more constipation!
Anyway, that may be TMI, but the point is, I have been an almost-life-long student of good health through natural therapies.
I became a well-researched, "smart" vegetarian the moment I moved out of my parents' home, and I became a massage therapist later in the 80's, and have two certifications in herbal medicine (not that I can use them legally, as mentioned before).
I have spent my entire adult life exploring the possibilities of, and reaping the benefits of healthy foods, healthy supplements, herbs, exercise, and healthy lifestyle.
When I had to return to office work in the early 2000's in order to make a living, my co-workers called me the health food nut who always brings her healthy home made food for lunch.
Yep. That's still me. My newer co workers here refer to me the same way.
I know a LOT about nutrition and natural ways to stay healthy, strong, and vigorous.
This is why, forgive me, my well-intentioned friends, when someone tells me "eat bananas for your leg cramps," you can BET I already know about that, and have researched natural remedies for it until there is no more research to be done.
This is my life....I LOVE this stuff, and have since I first woke up to it at 17.
So, with a few exceptions (taking breaks due to stress and bad influences!), most of the years since 1979 have been spent studying, learning, and using all of this knowledge.
My family probably thinks I am a freak, but they say nothing. *laughter*
Cut ahead to 1996, December. My mom gets out of bed to go to the bathroom at 5 am, and breaks her pelvis in three places.
Her doctor THEN diagnoses her with osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis...hmmm, says I. Well, DUH.
Why the hell did he never TEST her for that? Oh yeah, that's right... He's an incompetent, abusive ASS HOLE.
SO, I started, in my usual fashion, to research the health condition. Mom was female, and white/European...those are automatic strikes against us. But she also drank a bottle of gin every couple of days for something like 30 years, and smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes a day for 60 years, and drank a pot of coffee a couple of times a day for at least 35 or so years! No wonder her pelvis fell apart.
My sister and I started, right then, on a regimen of mineral supplements, which both of us have taken religiously ever since. Sure, mom had probably done most of this to herself, but we weren't taking any chances.
Grandma ( who had passed away the year before) had also been bent and hunched by the time she died at 95, but she never broke a bone because of osteoporosis (she fell on the ice in her 70's and landed on her butt and her elbow...her pelvis did not break, but she got a hairline fracture in her upper arm that didn't even require a cast), so we just sort of figured she was hunched up because she was so old.
Now, of course, I know better....she probably DID develop spinal osteoporosis, and this was why her back was so hunched.
Mom died a few days after her fall, during the night of Christmas
1996. They said it was heart failure, but we're pretty sure it was more
than that, thanks to that incompetent doctor mis-handling her meds, and
NOT TREATING her for the DT's.
Anyway, with the addition of the calcium/magnesium supplements added to my daily regime, I continued on with my usual healthy ways, being fit and active, dancing, hiking, biking, and working out in gyms here and there when I could afford it or had access.
Jump ahead in time again, but just a few months after mom died. Dad breaks his foot going to answer the telephone.
He is diagnosed with osteopenia.
Um....what?
DAD? Men aren't supposed to get this condition nearly as often as women do, so it's unexpected.
But, he smoked and drank his whole life, too. Later, he is diagnosed with bone cancer, and we suspect that maybe the foot was related to that? Dunno...maybe a combination.
We continue on our regime.
Dad dies. I plunge into adrenal insufficiency exhaustion, later am diagnosed with PTSD, and it takes years for me to get my cortisol levels to test normal again. What starts happening is my adrenals fire at super high levels at weird times, and don't really work at all at other times. I start to have a highly abnormal, over the top reaction to any stress.
In the process of healing from this, I am ordered by my doctors, medical and natural, to reconsider my vegetarian diet.
While they both agree that I am doing EVERYTHING RIGHT, having researched the healthiest way to eat to be strong, healthy, vigorous vegetarian, and to take the right supplements, they both admonish me that my adrenals and overall health will probably not return to normal unless I re-incorporate flesh-based foods into my diet.
So, over time, and with much research, I become an omnivore again. Hesitantly, but with a striking improvement to my health. I actually LOST about 15 pounds by going back to eating meat proteins.
Gradually, I am able to start back into my active lifestyle again...but it takes a while.
Jump ahead again. My sister has a medically necessary hysterectomy, and is plunged INSTANTLY into menopause.
Within a few months of this, she is diagnosed with osteoporosis. (EDIT 8/18/12: she has corrected me! She does NOT have osteoporosis!!! Like me, she has osteopenia!!!! Sorry for my mistake! Somehow I was convinced it was osteoporosis....)
Not osteopenia, but osteoporosis.
Um...What?
Out of curiosity, and a little fear, I immediately go to the health store where I used to work and participate in their free health screening day, and have a bone density test done. It's just one of those things where they look at the bones in your wrist....and my measurements are a couple of points ABOVE normal for my age.
My bones are AWESOMELY well mineraled. (my sister, by the way, has now been tried on at least two of the well advertized medications for osteoporosis....Fosamax, and I think Boniva....not sure what her last scan showed.)
Readers' Digest version: I continue on my regime, religiously, keeping always in mind that osteopenia and osteoporosis are in my genes.
A few years pass, I unexpectedly fall in love with David, and begin a long distance relationship.
2008, I decide to marry David and move to Oklahoma.
Oklahoma. What the hell was I thinking?
But I digress.
The more recent stress cascade starts here. This is where the repetition may come in...
He can't move to Chicago, because he doesn't have a degree, and his good job and nearly 30 years with the same company is something he could never replace in a new city.
My job, on the other hand, is transportable. I can do medical billing anywhere.
I put the condo on the market. The condo won't sell. The months stretch out into well over a year after the wedding....and I realize that I am doing to have to find a renter or remain 800 miles away from my new husband indefinitely.
In the meantime, I feel that I have to hide the fact that I'm preparing to relocate from my employer so that he doesn't find a reason to fire me (being afraid of that, and having to basically LIE about the biggest decision of my life by saying "gosh, we don't know yet," were both EXTREMELY stressful for me), and I am preparing to move away from everyone, everything, I have ever known, and change my life COMPLETELY.
Finally, a tenant is found, I reluctantly place my property in the hands of a total stranger, the resignation from work goes smoothly, and then the move happens.
God.
THE most awful stress of my life to date. Even worse than when my "significant elders" all died within a 3 year period, when my adrenals blew up the first time.
But I survive. I find a job, which turns out to be the WORST working experience of my entire life, but it's a job....and that's another story.
Then. About 12 weeks after I arrive in Oklahoma, my husband has a heart attack.
Um...What?
I can feel my "healed" adrenals UNhealing. My blood stream is CONSTANTLY filled with cortisol. Nightmares, panic attacks. It all starts again. Can't eat, can't sleep. Shakes, headaches....
I have to go to work because it's a new job, and I have no paid time off. It was AWFUL.
Dave has a stent inserted into a cardiac artery, and gets a list of medications to take.
Dave comes home from the hospital on the day before my first Christmas Eve away from my family and home (aside: Christmas Eve has always been THE most important day of the year in my family).
The discharge instructions say if Dave has ANY chest pains, to bring him immediately to the E/R.
Okay, no problem.
There's a blizzard the next day.
Literally. 14 inches of snow fall in about 8 hours. This hasn't happened in Oklahoma City for a century. The entire city is completely shut down. NO cars can get out of the apartment parking lot, much less down the street. EVERYTHING is at a stand still.
What am I supposed to do if Dave has a chest pain?
Ambulances can't even get through because the entire area is completely shut down. No one can get anywhere.
How would you feel? Multiply that by about a thousand due to my adrenal condition having come back full force.
But he didn't have a chest pain. Things start to calm down a bit. I changed jobs in February. I survivie.
Then, Dave has to go back into the hosptial in April for another angio because of mild chest pains.
It's scheduled in advance, so I don't have to call in to take time off from my new job. The cardiologist gives him the all clear, but he spends 2 days in the hospital.
Turns out to be panic attacks related to his previous experience. The doctor probably SHOULD have just done a stress test, but he wanted more money than that.
Things start to calm down a bit.
Then, I have a breast cancer scare in May. They find something on my mammogram. It requires further mammograms. Then it requires an ultrasound. I basically freak out.
It was a cyst.
Things start to calm down a bit, many months pass. I start to even out a little in how I feel.
Then, we decide to buy a house last spring. More stress, but kind of GOOD stress.
We start having real problems with our upstairs neighbors at the apartment in the weeks just before we move out. They key my car because Dave reported them to management when the husband was beating the wife at 3 am. I guess she liked being beaten to a pulp in the middle of the night.
Stress.
We move. More stress... but we LOVE THE HOUSE!
Things start to calm down a bit.
Dave has chest pains in July of last year. I have to call in at my relatively new job and take him to the E/R. He lands back in the hospital for another 2 days. NO cardiac involvement can be found. NO reason at all can be found. The upshot, though, was that he got a new doctor whom we both really like.
But still. Stress.
A month later, just as things are starting to calm down again....my condo tenant, who has been acting really strangely for several months, notifies me at the last possible moment that she's cancelling our lease agreement.
This story doesn't need to be told again, it was only a year ago, and there are still posts in this blog about that living hell.
I will point out, though, that this was the culmination, or peak, shall we say, of these 3 or so years of constant, and I do mean constant, stress. The effect of this episode breaks the back of my adrenals.
I start having full blown symptoms. I have to quit dance, I can barely function at work. It was an awful, awful few months for me. Dave tried to take over, but there were things he could not do because I had not arranged for him to have power of attorney over my real estate investment in Illinois.
Anyway, I go to a doctor to try to get help. She prescribes me a medication that I turn out allergic to...because I am very sensitive to medications. I decide that I just have to deal with this on my own.
Then...things start to calm down a little once I get a new tenant.
Months pass. Things stay pretty calm, I stop having the panic attacks every 10 minutes, the nightmares decrease, the tremors stop, my appetite returns. This is all documented already...sorry...but sometimes, it's therapeutic to discuss it.
I still have an over the top physical reaction to even minor stress (ask Dave how I react when he's driving and we almost get in a wreck), but I feel a lot better.
Jump forward to this past Thursday.
I get my first baseline real, "official" bone density test, and am diagnosed with moderate osteopenia.
Um... What?
Not borderline, not minor, but moderate.
I'm pre menopausal, still on monthly hormone medication that replicates a normal menstrual cycle, and I have done EVERYTHING RIGHT for at least 15 years, if not longer.
This, in and of itself isn't really all that stressful...but....I DID find it somewhat discouraging!
I get on line and start the research. Apparently, high levels of cortisol (adrenal stress hormone) in the blood wears away your bones. You literally DO eat yourself up inside.
SO, clearly, it seems that the stress is to blame. THAT's my theory, anyway.
Thankfully, osteopenia is reversible.
More research....need to find out what ELSE there is that I might not have been doing for the past 15 years that can add strength back to my bones.
The moral: Let this be a warning to anyone out there who tends to suffer from chronic stress, no matter the cause. Do everything you can to protect your bones!
Don't smoke, Don't consume caffeine, Don't over consume alcohol, Don't drink pop!
DO participate in weight bearing exercise on a regular basis!
DO take calcium supplements, especially if you are allergic to dairy like me, and you do not consume enough calcium in your diet!
DO take other mineral supplements, such as magnesium, boron, and zinc!
DO supplement your vitamin D if you don't get at least 15 minutes of sun exposure, WITHOUT SUN SCREEN, every day of the year.
DO RESEARCH and EDUCATE YOURSELF!
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