PCOS? Testosterone levels?

[Esperantisto]

Hello there!

I've been on a ketodiet for several months now and while I was very successful in the first 2 months and went down from 38 to 33% BF, I stalled for the past 2 months.

I thought that I was doing everything right and eating approx. 1800 kcal (I'm 73 kg now = 161 lbs) so the amount seemed right.

When complaing about the stall, it was suggested to me that I might have PCOS and a disturbed hormone balance, e.g. thyroid hormone, fertility hormones (oestradiol, LH etc.).
I did have laser therapy in the past to remove unwanted hairs, but now I noticed thinning hair too.. plus I've had irregular periods in the past as well (am not keeping records as well now as I used to).
The only strange value was my testosterone level, which was 8,5 nmol/l and twice the accepted upper limit.
Apart from the thinner hair I'm not totally unhappy with that value as I have a bit more muscle than most women.
Do you know the 1st question of my doctor was whether I was using roids! I am def not doing that as I'm (obviously, with that BF-level) not a bb-er, just some gal who likes lifting weights and wants to shed weight off her body.
I'm going to the gyneacologist to have things checked over, but would appreciate some insight here from other women...

BTW, currently I've upped the food intake as from a calculation at www.caloriesperhour.com it appeared I was burning 3000 kcals/day (average) and had a too large deficit of approx 1200 kcal. Lyle McDonald himself suggested eating 2500 kcal!

Espi

[pammii]

i can really identify with you here Esp.

i was having problems aswell for the last few years, ive always been able to get my body fat below 10% and gain lots of size in training (when i was competing), but after a pregnancy i noticed a change. my weight went up (i lost the baby in car accident and fell into bad depression and ate more than i should have) and then i went on diets, i did drop my weight, but lately ive had a real struggle to lose more, and i had to wax my upper lip (i have black hair so i had to wax anyway lol) more regularly and a little down the sides near my ears. i was also getting a little more moody, periods were early or late and i fell into depression again.

so i got my levels checked, my testosterone was 4 times the upper level. and everything else was perfect. i went to an endocronologist and he poked and prodded. im now booked in to get lots more blood work done, and internal ultra sound on the pelvis to see if i may have pcos or tumors.

higher test levels can either be from your ovaries or the adrenal gland... my doc suspects its coming from both in me. he told me that there can be easy solutions like going on the pill or surgery.

i wouldnt put it off, i did for a long time to save myself the embarrassment of all those icky tests and check ups, you girls know what im talking about lol

but if i had of done it a few years ago then i wouldnt have to go through all this now and in doubt about whether or not i will be able to conceive again and not worry about weight.

all the best to you and keep us posted.

cheers
pamela

[Esperantisto]

Hi Pamela

I'm going to see the gyn on Friday and they are going to do an echo then.
I'd be wary of using a birth control pill as I'm not all that keen on lowering the test levels (it's only 2x the upper limit) but mostly because I hear a bcp kills your sex drive.
After many years of abstination (self-chosen celibacy) I finally have a bit of sex drive.. I don't want to see it disappear.

I just want an explanation why I'm stalling and was thinking of disturbed thyroid (they checked fT4, TSH but not T3), but this wasn't the case.

When I get the results back, I will try to remember and get back to the board!

Espi

[pammii]

i know what you mean about sex drive, one of the great things about the high test is that there is no lack of sex drive.... unfortunetly im abstaining from sex too lol three and a half years now and counting, mainly because i cant seem to find anyone thats worth the hassle :)

and i didnt have a prob with sex drive when i was on the pill when i was younger, but i did put on a few kilos. although its been about 5 years since ive been on the pill. i have heard though there are lots of new bcp's that have little to no side effects. the other women on here know more about them.

i thought it was my thyroid too, but all the tests (except t3 aswell) came back normal. its so frustrating huh?

all the best for friday, fingers crossed :)

p.s, i always get copies of test results from my doctor, i dont know about policies where you are but maybe you could keep them on hand too.

[freaker]

I'm not going to get into hormonal issues here although I do know a pretty fair amount about that since my dad's an OB/GYN and I worked in his office as a file clerk for almost 5 years. I think your fat-loss slow down was due directly to the diet. I'm not sure of the exact nature of your diet as there seems to be so many variations on keto, but what happens when you are on a low calorie diet where you don't eat many carbs is this: Since glycogen is your body's preferred source of fuel, if your glycogen stores are low(which they will be on a ketogenic or Atkins diet), your body will strip the nitrates off your free amino acids and covert the backbone of the amino acids into glucose to replenish glycogen stores. Alot of people think that your body will go for the fat when your glycogen stores are burned out, but it's much easier for your body to make glucose from protein. Couple that with the caloric deficit and your body is in starvation mode so it doesn't want to hold on to muscle because muscle takes a lot of energy to maintain. So once your free amino acids are depleted, your body breaks down your muscle to create more free amino acids and your metabolism continues to drop. My advice would be to add some healthy complex carbs to your diet. Optimal fat loss occurs when there's enough carbohydrates to produce glucose to feed your glycogen stores so your body doesn't have to rob your free amino acids to create glucose, but also when there's not so much glucose in your system that you end up having a glycogen spill over. You might want to read my bb.com article that explains an ascending protein/decending carb diet, works much better than Atkins or keto for fat loss, and it's not just for bodybuilders either.

[Esperantisto]

FYI I'm on a TKD/CKD-type of diet
Meaning: I'm at induction levels of 20-30 g carbs/day but have 25 g of carbs for working out or 25 g for a spinning class.

I also junk/carb up in the weekend. I've limited my carb ups a bit as it led to a huge weight gain every weekend which would only come off by the next Friday (2 forward 2 back rather than 2 forward and 1 back).
Perhaps I should up the carbs to maintenance level of approx. 100 g/day and only junk mildly in the weekend?

Espi

[Esperantisto]

An update.. I have been to the gyneacologist who examined my vagina and made an echo of the ovaries. There were a bunch of eggs clustered together, but he didn't really say whether that was a matter of PCOS or not.
He asked me to get my blood tested (again) and as he wanted to see cortisol levels as well, I decided to be tested on Wednesday rather than Monday, as I work out on Monday night but on Wed morning.. there are going to be 2 tests of cortisol you see... one at 8 am and another at 4 pm.

Testosterone, LH, FSH are going to be tested again as well as 2 byproducts of male hormones DHEAS and androsteendione. I understand that with raised test levels, DHEAS levels will be raised as well?

Espi

[buffboi]

your doctor may not be very upto date on PCOS cos apparently a lot of them aren't and mis diagnose it. Your symptoms sound very similar to my girl friends who definitely has PCOS although it took her docs until she was 35 to discover it even after having had fertility treatment to have her daughter...thery treated the infertility without discovering the cause! bloody useless. Anyway here is a useful website full of other women's expereinces of PCOS plus lots of helpful info www.soulcysters.com

[Esperantisto]

Originally posted by freaker
My advice would be to add some healthy complex carbs to your diet. Optimal fat loss occurs when there's enough carbohydrates to produce glucose to feed your glycogen stores so your body doesn't have to rob your free amino acids to create glucose, but also when there's not so much glucose in your system that you end up having a glycogen spill over.

Hmm you might be right.. but it doesn't need to be complex carbs though..

Today I tried a different approach. For 2-3 months I was ingesting a keto shake (whey protein with quark (yoghurt like cottage cheese) and cream) and eating a bit of extra carbs as licorice.
As I seem to be sensitive to excess lactose, I dropped the cream.
But I had no liquid alternative to fat other than gross oil, no thanks..

so I thought to eat nuts, but I can't do that during a workout.. and doing it afterwards was impossible, as I felt to tired to even eat.

So as of today I tried to include carbs to the shake. I opened a tin of pineapple in light syrup (about 80 g of carbs/tin) and combined this with 50 g of whey powder into 2 shakes.
I downed one before leaving home and cycling to the gym (takes about 40 mins, esp. in a howling front wind as I had today) and felt energized upon arrival. I ate a bit of extra carbs durng the workout and felt better than ever before...

I did a very good workout (managed 12x 72 kg in final set, while I had done 4x 72 kg just 2 weeks before as a max, last Wednesday I had 5x77 kg in my final set).
I was able to do a very satisfactory spinning class and drank the second bottle then..

As I was worried about excess carbs, i decided to do a depletion training on the home trainer for 24 mins (30 s on 120-140 rpm, 90 s on 80 rpm and when I couldn't sustain that after 14 mins, I switched to 60 s on 110-115 rpm and 60 s 80 rpm).
I was surely depleted of glycogen at the end as I cycled home ever so sluggish... surprisingly I had enough energy at the end to do a mini-sprint in the final kilometer when fat burning mode really kicked in...

So, you may have been right.. I will stick to low-carbing throughout the day but will definitely increase carb intake prior to my workouts (I always started ingesting them too late)

Espi

[sab]

I also junk/carb up in the weekend. I've limited my carb ups a bit as it led to a huge weight gain every weekend which would only come off by the next Friday (2 forward 2 back rather than 2 forward and 1 back).
Perhaps I should up the carbs to maintenance level of approx. 100 g/day and only junk mildly in the weekend?

Why not just do a carb up for 24hrs every second weekend?

If your at 33%bf then I don't think a weekly carb up would be necassary.

[Esperantisto]

Why not just do a carb up for 24hrs every second weekend?

If your at 33%bf then I don't think a weekly carb up would be necassary.

Perhaps so, but I was afraid that I'd not be able to keep dieting when I wouldn't have a 'cheat'day. But my interest in high carb food diminished a great deal, and except for last week when I got into a carb feeding frenzy after eating 2 bananas absent-mindedly while waiting for my dinner I've been fine (the bananas weren't eaten in the weekend and I hated to throw them away).

Seems that a better approach would be to keep low-carbing, but eat enough throughout the day (perhaps even increase intake of carbs to approx. 50-70 g/day on non-workout days?) and concentrate intake of carbs around workout and not have 50 g for working out plus spinning class, but around 100 g in my whey shake.

Espi

[Belle]

PCOS is generally something that is caused by a raise in androgens such as testosterone as you said and the hair thinning comes from the elevations in hormone DHT.

Have you had an ACTH stim test to find out what your bodies reaction is to elevated ACTH? I ask that question because it is really important to eliminate adrenal problems as well as thydroids when you have these symptoms as you could have a very mild case of CAH or LOCAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia or late onset cah) which can cause such problems as you have at present. LOCAH is very common in spanish and jewish people and also eskimos. Mainly when people present with problems in adulthood, it is with raised testosterone levels and also PCOS and other gyne problems as well as possibly a deepening of the voice. Sometimes you may also not have a good immune system and not recover from really bad illnesses to quickly like the flu and it can progress to pneumonia.

It is generally connected with lack of cortisol, and because you cannot make the amount that the body needs, the remainding cholesterol is shunted further down the metabolic pathways and converted to 17 Hydroxyprogesterone and other male androgens from there on out. My son has the type that is very serious. He doesnt make any cortisol at all and was diagnosed at birth due to an adrenal salt wasting crisis. The LOCAH type can present from teens up to late 50's depending upon the severity but it affects fertility. So I would definately get that checked out if I where you and ask your Doc for an ACTH stim test.

Best,

[thibrnr]

you might try a website called www.soulcysters.com they have alot of info about PCOS.....also about.com has alot of info about thyroid and other conditions that can cause your symptoms.....good luck....