Ever since I lost weight and got FHA I have been craving sweets , chocolate and overall unheksthy stuff like crazy. When I start eating anything I can’t stop and I’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced this and if it eventually stopped for them?
Thanks in advance
How long did it take you to recover your period? What did you do? How much weight did you have to gain (if at all) and did you have to regain more weight that you had before you lost your period?
Thanks in advance
Hey everyone,
I’m trying to understand the exact metabolic timeline of lean PCOS and early insulin resistance.
Has anyone here happened to get blood work done before you ever had symptoms (when you felt completely fine/healthy), and then compared it to your labs after you developed symptoms or got diagnosed?
Specifically, I’m curious about how markers like Fasting Insulin, glucose, a1c, c peptide, estrogen, testosterone, free testosterone , AMH, DHEA-S, and SHBG shifted for you. Did your fasting numbers look totally perfect and normal before things flared up, or did you have hidden post-meal spikes first?
If anyone has their old lab numbers to compare, I would love to see how they changed!
Thank you!
Hey everyone,
I’m trying to understand the exact metabolic timeline of insulin resistance.
Has anyone here happened to get blood work done before you ever had symptoms (when you felt completely fine/healthy), and then compared it to your labs after you developed symptoms or got diagnosed?
Specifically, I’m curious about how markers like Fasting Insulin, glucose, a1c, c peptide , AMH, DHEA-S, and SHBG shifted for you.
Did your fasting numbers look totally perfect and normal before things flared up, or did you have hidden post-meal spikes first?
If anyone has their old lab numbers to compare, I would love to see how they changed! Thank you!
Hey everyone,
I’m trying to understand the exact metabolic timeline of PCOS and early insulin resistance. Has anyone here happened to get blood work done before you ever had symptoms (when you felt completely fine/healthy), and then compared it to your labs after you developed symptoms or got diagnosed?
Specifically, I’m curious about how markers like Fasting Insulin, glucose , a1c, testosterone, free testosterone, estrogen, AMH, DHEA-S, and SHBG shifted for you. Did your fasting numbers look totally perfect and normal before things flared up, or did you have hidden post-meal spikes first?
If anyone has their old lab numbers to compare, I would love to see how they changed! Thank you!
What’s your option on them - do they cause a big glucose or insulin spike? Also do these bars with artificial sweeteners cause insulin resistance over time?
Thanks in advance
How were your hormones before your diagnosis? And what was your lifestyle (exercise, sleep, diet etc) before being IR?
Is there any way to prevent IR
If someone has very mild insulin resistance that doesn’t show in blood tests under neomal circumstances- how would their blood results be a day after a binge?
Also another question - I’ve been eating a lot of processed sugar last few months thinking that my high exercise volume would even the sugar out. Just recently I found out that table sugar gets split into glucose and fructose and overloads the liver.
How reversible is it? And also why are some kinds of insulin reistnace chronic (when you have to cut out carbs for good or insulin would spike) and other types temporary (where body recovers and can handle carbs well again)? I would really appreciate it if someone could explain me the difference and tell me how one can know wich IR they got.
Thanks in advance
I quit vaping 33 days ago and I relapsed yesterday and today. I smoked one 1.2k vape and I’m super disappointed in myself since it was so hard to stop in the first place.
I went through withdrawal (psychological withdrawals and physical hunger) the first two weeks but after that I stopped thinking about it until I smoked at a friends house yesterday.
I want to quit again - I don’t have any vapes at home anymore but I’m afraid if I will have go through withdrawal again?
What can k expect? Thanks in advance
Did the fat distribution change when you regained the weight?
I’ve read taht sweeteners in protein bars, puddings etc can change the microbiotics in our gut and make someone more insulin resistant - is that true? What do you think? Thanks in advance
Im doing blood draws every 6-12weeks to keep an eye on my hormones but I’m not quiet sure what hormones have to increase first for recovery to happen.
Is it LH? E2 ? Or first of all FSH?
Thanks in advance
Hi everyone! I’d really appreciate hearing your personal experiences with hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA), especially what the very beginning looked like for you and how things changed during recovery.
I’m curious about things like:
- What were your very first symptoms/signs of HA ?
- Did your period suddenly disappear out of nowhere, or did your cycles gradually get longer, lighter, more irregular, etc. before stopping?
- What did your bloodwork look like around the time your cycle started changing or disappeared? If you remember, what were your estradiol/estrogen, LH, FSH, progesterone, AMH, thyroid hormones, etc. like?
Did you have any other symptoms at the time (feeling cold, sleep changes, low libido, fatigue, hair/skin changes, mood changes, etc.)?
Once you started recovering, what changed first? Did you notice symptoms of increasing estrogen or ovulation before your period actually returned?
How long did it take before you ovulated again, and how long until your first period returned?
What specifically did you change or do during recovery (food/calorie intake, exercise, weight gain, stress, sleep, etc.)?
Did your first few cycles look different from your cycles before HA? For example, were they longer or irregular at first?
If you had repeated blood tests, how did your hormones change throughout recovery?
How long did it take until you felt like your cycle/hormones were genuinely back to normal?
I know everyone’s experience is different and that personal stories aren’t medical advice. I’m mainly interested in hearing detailed timelines and experiences from people who have actually gone through HA and recovered (or are currently recovering).
Thank you so much to anyone willing to share their story! ❤️
2 months ago my hormones were fine - more than fine, they were really really good. I had no cysts on my ovaries and my period was always regular.
Then I did some restrictive eating , lost a bit of weight and my period disappeared. My ovaries are full only cysts and my doctor diagnosed me with PCOS.
He told me to be careful with gaining weight (which I wanted to do since I thought I had HA) - now I don’t know what to do.
What if I always had pcos but the diet triggered the symtoms? Everything was great until I did the diet
I’ve always had a super regular cycle and good hormonal balance.
A few months ago I started losing weight by restrictive eating - at first my first two periods were a week late (which never happened before) now my period is completely gone.
I stopped restricting and went to the dr today. My hormones and ovaries etc were fine 2 months ago - now my ovaries are covered with cysts + my period is missing.
Doctor told me there is nothing I can do and I should be cautious with gaining weight since I have a higher risk of metabolic diseases with pcos.
I wanted to gain a bit of weight and stopped exercising (gym 4x per week and running 30-50km per week) - but if it’s probably pcos then I won’t stop and keep going.
Does anyone have any advice?
I just want to get my period back like it was before my restriction.
Is there and other reliable way to diagnose early IR without an OGTT Kraft test?
I read that in the early stages Insulin and C peptide can stay normal during fasting periods but overshoot after eating.
Thanks in advance
2y ago I had these results:
A1c: 5.7
Glucose: 71
Insulin: 10
C peptide: 2.0
1y ago:
A1c: 5.5
Glucose: 79
Insulin: 4.2
C peptide: 1.1
2months ago:
A1c: 5.4
Glucose: 79
Insulin: 2.6
C peptide: 0.8
Am I still insulin resistant? I still eat carbs, sweets etc - just changed my lifestyle and exercise more. Should I be cautious?
Im 19y old and during my finals 5 months ago my always super regular period was 4 days late, the next cycle was 7 days late and now this cycle I’m in won’t end. I’m at around day 50 for the first time in my life.
During my finals I ate less and lost some weight but I still ovulated (even if it was a bit late). No at the beginning of this cycle I had symtoms of ovulation but I still wasn’t eating enough so i think I didn’t ovulate and now I won’t get my period. I started eating enough and do less exercise, I have no stress anymore but for some reason nothing is happening.
I used to know my body so well now i don’t know anything. Also I read about bone loss etc which doesn’t sound good either.
Was anyone able to get their cycle back regular?
Does anyone have any advice or timeline how they recovered?
I’m wondering what each of these blood-test markers- insulin, fasting glucose, HbA1c, C-peptide, total testosterone, free testosterone, SHBG, DHEA/DHEA-S, etc - actually tells you, and how they relate to insulin sensitivity. Which results or patterns/ numbers would suggest that someone is insulin-resistant or starting to move in that direction or insulin sensitive?
And does insulin, c peptide etc after blood test being done during diet/ a day after exercise make it unreliable?
Also, is it relatively common for people to experience temporary periods of reduced insulin sensitivity/ high testo because of factors such as weight gain, diet, inactivity, stress, puberty, or other lifestyle changes, and then return to normal insulin sensitivity once those factors improve?
I’m almost 20 and I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I’ve always been someone who thinks, “I’ll get over it.” Whether it was unhealthy habits, self-harm when I was younger, or other things, I always eventually stopped, so I never believed I could develop an eating disorder. Even now, I don’t really believe I have anorexia… but at the same time I can’t ignore that my behavior looks a lot like one.
This all started during my final exams a few months ago. I was studying all day, barely sleeping, and unintentionally started eating less. I lost some weight, and the skinnier I got, the bigger my old body started to look to me, even though I never thought that before.
Around the same time I developed really bad health anxiety because of a PCOS/prediabetes scare from years ago that was later taken back by my doctor after repeat testing. Ever since then I’ve become obsessed with food, insulin, hormones and calories.
For the last three months I’ve counted every calorie. I even have a notebook where I write down my daily intake, exercise and net calories. My whole day revolves around trying to stay “even.”
The weirdest part is that I never used to binge. Now I either restrict all day or eat huge amounts of sugar, chocolate or ice cream, panic afterwards, and immediately go back into a deficit to “fix” it. Then I binge again. It’s like I’m stuck in a cycle that I created myself.
My period has made everything worse. I always had perfect 28-29 day cycles with obvious ovulation. During the first two months of dieting my ovulation was delayed by about a week, but once I started eating normally again it happened, so I convinced myself I could keep dieting because “my body recovers anyway.”
Then I repeated it for a third cycle. I restricted around the time I think I should have ovulated, and this time it never seemed to happen. I’m now around cycle day 50, which has never happened in my life.
I’ve finally been eating more normally for the last few days, and my cervical mucus has changed from being extremely dry to becoming wetter and thicker, which makes me hope my hormones are waking up again. But then I overate by about 2,000 kcal over the last few days, and my first thought today was that I need to diet tomorrow to undo it- even though another part of me knows that restricting again could make my hormones and period worse.
I genuinely don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I’m terrified that I’ve permanently damaged my body, that my period will never become regular again, that my hunger will never normalize, or that I’ll somehow develop insulin resistance because of all the bingeing and restricting. My health anxiety has become overwhelming, and I spend hours Googling hormones, PCOS, insulin, and calories.
Has anyone else started out thinking, “I don’t have an eating disorder, I’m just being disciplined,” and then realized later that it had become something much bigger? How did you finally break out of this cycle?