Wednesday, January 19, 2005

interesting article

So I just did a pubmed search for "hypothalamic amenorrhea" AND gonadotropins. Found lots of good stuff. Maybe even a few articles that could butress my case for gonadotropins as a treatment of my underlying cause of infertility, rather than an infertility treatment per se. Talk about splitting hairs.

Anyway, there's also a really good article that talks about HA here. They compare body weight, fat %, other physical characteristics, hormone profiles and eating habits and psychological profiles between women with HA and normal controls.

Some very interesting stats. Women with HA got their periods later (as I did), have a lower fat percentage (I was down to 16.5% although I think I'm back up at ~20 again), lower BMI (I'm definitely going up here - I'm now at 21.7, was at 20.5 a couple of months ago)... have a diet much lower in fat (16% for HA vs. 30% for normal)...

I'm going to try using fitday to track the percentage of my diet that comes from fat versus carbs. I think that is almost certainly something that is true of me, and another thing I can work on changing on my own.

My nutritionist did suggest adding olive oil to pasta sauce when I eat that. I haven't yet because I naturally rebel against adding fat to my diet - BUT MAYBE THAT'S MY PROBLEM!

Oh - another thing this article says that hits home - "Psychological assessments by Berga et al. (7) and Giles et al. (8) indicate that women with FHA are perfectionistic overachievers". Describes me to a T. Continues on to say "with low self-esteem (7) and an inability to cope with daily stresses (7, 8)" which I don't think describes me, but who the hell knows at this point. Would one symptom of being a perfectionist overachiever be the inability to admit to low self esteem and inability to cope? Could be.

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