228-SYNCPodcast_StoryUpdateMarch24

[00:00:00] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about the topic of self advocacy. And I figured there was no better way to do that than to share with you my own story, especially here in the last eight months, things that are going on in my life with my health, kind of a little update so to speak, but it will just show you and shine a light on the value of self advocacy.

[00:01:19] Jenny Swisher: So we’re going to be talking about where I am in my migraine journey and the things that I’m learning along the way. Let me just start by saying, though, that this is something that has plagued me my entire life, since the age of 14, actually. And in the last eight months, it has been absolutely debilitating.

[00:01:36] Jenny Swisher: I have recorded podcasts seated next to a trash can so that I don’t throw up because of the vertigo. I’ve taken way too many days off. I haven’t been driving at all. And my husband has been taking on so many home responsibilities, but I’m hopeful that we’re finally onto something. And I can’t wait to share this with you.

[00:01:53] Jenny Swisher: I actually believe that it might just affect many fellow women that are out there suffering from hormonal migraines. So quick backstory in case you’ve not heard my backstory before and I will make sure that I link up for you my very first podcast episode where I shared my story. I’ve actually had migraines since I was a teenager.

[00:02:10] Jenny Swisher: They would come on when I would drop to the sugar pill week on my birth control pack as a teen and they’ve sort of just always been there around my period. And before you ask, I have done all the nutritional things, trust me. I don’t eat any gluten or dairy or refined sugar. I seed cycle. I’ve reduced inflammation with my foods and environment.

[00:02:28] Jenny Swisher: All the things. But yet, the headaches always remain around my period. In my 20s, the headaches became chronic. And you name it, I tried it. From Botox, to anti seizure IV infusions, to I don’t know how many different preventative medications I tried and abortive medications that I tried, multiple neurologists and spinal specialists, I tried everything and nothing was working except a lot more pain.

[00:02:52] Jenny Swisher: I finally met with a functional medicine doctor whose office tested me in a way that no one has ever tested me before. She was looking at my hormones, specifically not just through blood, but also through urine and saliva. No one had done this for me yet. It was when I met with her the first time that I realized we were onto something with this functional root cause approach to my health.

[00:03:11] Jenny Swisher: She took me off of all of my pharmaceutical medicines and instead gave me some bio identical, yam root based progesterone cream. That progesterone cream changed my life. If you are a migraine sufferer and you’re a woman listening to this podcast, I highly recommend that you dig into more research on progesterone.

[00:03:29] Jenny Swisher: I’m also happy to have a conversation with you as well. Now I’m not to say, trust me, I’m not sitting here saying that every woman needs progesterone. That’s not what I’m saying. Everybody is individual and unique, but I’m just saying that it is something to investigate for yourself. Within three months at that time, I went from chronic migraines to just one or two bad days a month, which was literally life changing.

[00:03:48] Jenny Swisher: So many symptoms that I hadn’t noticed due to the debilitating migraines started to go away, and I regained my life. My husband and I could travel again. I could work again. I got my life back. Fast forward to 2020, when my youngest daughter was born at the tail end of the year, things took a massive shift.

[00:04:07] Jenny Swisher: Both of my girls are adopted, so it wasn’t necessarily a birth or pregnancy thing for me. At first, we just thought it was oxytocin, having a new baby, maybe messing with my sleep. My periods started to get lighter and they started to change. My headaches started to worsen. And around this same time, I made a phone call to my apothecary pharmacy.

[00:04:26] Jenny Swisher: And well, that’s where we’re actually going to pick up the story later. First we have to fast forward. Starting in early 2023, a good friend told me, Jenny, you know, you’re really complaining more and more about your dizzy episodes and headaches. Are you sure you shouldn’t get checked out? So I finally resorted to doing some further testing and another Dutch test.

[00:04:46] Jenny Swisher: which revealed high levels of progesterone and low levels of estrogen. My doctor claimed that she doesn’t supplement menstruating women on estrogen, so I went on the hunt for a doctor knowledgeable in bioHRT who would consider it. I started to suffer dramatically with the migraines in July. My family and I went on a 14 day trip vacation to our happy place on the beach, and I spent 11 of those days on migraine medication.

[00:05:09] Jenny Swisher: Just to get through it. I couldn’t wait to go home. I figured that this must be perimenopause. I was turning 40 after all. Maybe I just needed the estrogen support. But every time I would try estrogen, it would become problematic. I sought out multiple doctors outside of my functional medicine doctor, along with other outside apothecary pharmacist.

[00:05:29] Jenny Swisher: I saw a neurologist, OBGYN, Dr. Page, who’s been awesome in my journey. Two chiropractors, muscle testing doctors, and most recently a functional neuro chiro, who I plan to have on the show soon. She’s been helping me re stimulate my vagus nerve and focus on my nervous system. I can’t wait to dive into an episode with her.

[00:05:49] Jenny Swisher: So about to drive myself mad. I have found myself waist deep in research every day, trying to get to the root of what’s going on. Something just didn’t add up. Why had progesterone worked for 12 years and then stopped working? And then something so, so random happened just a couple of weeks ago. A friend on Facebook added me to a particular hormone health group on Facebook where the women in the group were dominantly progesterone users with unique experiences.

[00:06:17] Jenny Swisher: It just goes to show the power of community when you’re in a struggle. I dove into the group leaders research and guides and quickly discovered that there is another world to progesterone that I didn’t know. And yes, that’s me saying that I’ve had a hormone health podcast now for 200 plus episodes.

[00:06:33] Jenny Swisher: I’ve been certified in all the hormone health things, and I still have things to learn. And that my friends is where I want to pick up the story where we left off back in 2021. I had called my apothecary and asked for a refill on my 100 milligram progesterone cream and the pharmacist on the other line and I chatted about life.

[00:06:52] Jenny Swisher: We had become friends after all. I’d been ordering progesterone from them for 12 years. So I updated them about my newborn baby in the conversation She said something to me like have you ever considered switching your progesterone to the 200 milligram cream instead of the 100? That way you’ll be using less cream and you can lessen the risk of transferring to baby.

[00:07:11] Jenny Swisher: I thought that sounded like a no brainer so I asked my doctor to change the prescription which she did But that’s actually where my troubles would begin After applying the 200 milligram cream a few nights. I developed a rash on my skin Nothing crazy, but it was there. I called the pharmacy, and they said they would mail me a syringe of the carrier oils used to create the lotion of progesterone.

[00:07:32] Jenny Swisher: After all, we as women are not allergic to progesterone. That would be like saying I’m allergic to water. But the cream base could be problematic. I tried it, but we couldn’t recreate the rash. I called back a month or so later, asking if there was something different about the cream, but I was told no.

[00:07:49] Jenny Swisher: that it was mathematically the same. One syringe of this cream is equal to two syringes of the cream you were using before. So I reached out to my doctor complaining of the worsening migraines and anxiety and sleep issues and she told me to go up on my dose. That worked for a while until it didn’t, so we increased it again and again and again and again until I was at a super potent dose of progesterone.

[00:08:14] Jenny Swisher: In early 2023, the dizziness began. And by August, 2023, I was so miserable that my doctor recommended stopping it completely to try to get some baseline testing to see what was going on. When I came off of it, the symptoms got so much worse. Days spent unable to go for a walk or function around my house due to the vertigo, headaches untouchable by my migraine meds.

[00:08:36] Jenny Swisher: Come November, we would try to go back on the progesterone cream in hopes that my hormone receptors were better functioning and rested. But we quickly learned that things just went right back to how they were before. But in the last two weeks, since meeting this random person on Facebook who has dedicated her life to progesterone research, who herself has treated herself with progesterone for extremely painful periods, and whose mentor used progesterone to treat her seizures, I learned something pivotal in my journey.

[00:09:07] Jenny Swisher: I learned that a percentage of women do not tolerate higher potency progesterone creams and that the progesterone will actually flood the receptors for these women and symptoms are often worsened in these cases. So for the last three years, I’ve been increasing this super potent cream in hopes of getting better absorption and hopes of getting relief when it simply was never going to work in the first place.

[00:09:34] Jenny Swisher: Last week’s visit with my yet another new doctor, this time a neuroendocrine doctor, solidified that this is most likely what’s going on. In the last few days, I have made the switch back to my 100mg cream, and I’m already feeling so much better. Maybe not fully, so we’ll see what happens here in the next few weeks, but I’m confident that this is going to help.

[00:09:56] Jenny Swisher: By the way, we also tested my AMH, which is ovarian reserve. I’ll have to do a whole other podcast on AMH. But per my doctor, I have another 10 plus years until menopause, and I haven’t even officially entered perimenopause yet. So the lower estrogen on my Dutch test is best explained by being indicative of those downregulated estrogen receptors from the progesterone cream that wasn’t uptaking the cells properly.

[00:10:21] Jenny Swisher: Holy crap. But here’s the point I want to drive home friends. Cause I could go nitty gritty with you on how I’ve came to learn all this about the progesterone. But here’s the point that I want to drive home. Nine doctors. And no one knew this. No one questioned it. No one asked about my progesterone dosages, or asked why I changed.

[00:10:40] Jenny Swisher: No one knew the unique absorption issue that exists in women with progesterone. This is mind blowing to me. I have now informed all of my doctors who simply say, well, that must be rare. But in reality, I’m in a Facebook group with over 20, 000 women who have the exact same issue. And so I have to share it here, not only because many of you have been asking how I’m doing and I want to give an update, but also because it might help you too.

[00:11:06] Jenny Swisher: By the way, if you are a woman suffering from migraines, progesterone, look into it. I’m telling you. Dr. B, who’s one of my many kindhearted doctors along the way, said to me every single time I came in for an appointment. He said, I can’t wait to see what you do with this struggle and how many women that you help once you’re through it.

[00:11:25] Jenny Swisher: I would sit in his office and just cry every time in pain, and he would put his hand on my shoulder and say, You’re going to do great things. This is a hard path, but it’s meant for you for a reason. And here we are. I’m not saying it’s the answer, but I do feel confident that this is a player. I’m learning so much about the other superpowers of progesterone along the way that likely explain why I have other diagnoses along the way.

[00:11:50] Jenny Swisher: For example, I was recently diagnosed with POTS. Turns out there’s a connection to progesterone. But had I not dug into it myself, if I hadn’t advocated it for myself, if I hadn’t believed that I wasn’t crazy, and kept asking doctors questions and kept researching, where would I be? In the last few months, I’ve turned down amazing trips from my company, amazing vacations with my family, my husband has taken on the family load, my business has had to sit idle, all because I was suffering.

[00:12:20] Jenny Swisher: And a stranger on Facebook may or may not have just changed my life with this information. And now that gets to be me. I’m the stranger on Facebook for someone else who is about to change their life. I truly believe that. God gives us pain so that we can turn it into our purpose, my friends. So even if this isn’t my full answer, I know that I’m well on my way because I’m learning something new every single day.

[00:12:49] Jenny Swisher: There are things out there that even modern medicine and functional medicine don’t know about my body and I can’t wait to keep learning. So this is my update for you. Every week people are like, what’s going on? Are you still suffering from the migraines? Like how are things going? And so I wanted to do an update but I wanted to make sure that you understand the power of self advocacy.

[00:13:09] Jenny Swisher: Whether you’re struggling with migraines or something else, maybe it’s infertility or irregular periods, painful periods, PCOS, endometriosis, trouble sleeping, anxiety issues, whatever you’re going through, I’m here to tell you that you know your body the best. And if you can advocate for it and just continue to ask questions and continue to put yourself in the communities and environments with people who might just know a little bit more, who might be able to link you to the right information, it could be amazing.

[00:13:37] Jenny Swisher: Everything. It could be everything having to do with your quality of life. I know my quality of life is improved not only by these women that I’m meeting who I can’t wait to bring to the podcast just to teach you more and more about these superpowers of progesterone and the vagal nerve and the nervous system and all these things that I’m learning about for myself, I want to bring to you.

[00:13:55] Jenny Swisher: And I guess that’s the point, right? I guess the big man upstairs has known all along that this struggle I’ve been going through pretty much my whole life. Was meant for me because he knew that I’d be sharing it with you. All right, my friends, I hope this touches you in some sort of way.

[00:14:10] Jenny Swisher: I hope that you’ll share this out with your friends and family. If you know someone who struggles with migraine specifically, please have them reach out to me. I’d love to have a conversation and get them pointed in the right direction. But as always, I thank you so much for tuning in and for subscribing.

[00:14:23] Jenny Swisher: And we’ll talk again soon. Have a great week. Bye bye.