>
>From the reading that I have done, insulin resistance plays a role in
>Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and a recent paper states that about half
>of all people with PCOS respond well to insulin helpers, like metformin
>(Glucophage).
>

I've got both Graves and PCOS and I just jumped on the Glucophage
bandwagon. I'm thirty-six years old. For years, doctors have been testing
me for all sorts of conditions (but especially diabetes or thyroid) that
would explain why a woman in her teens or twenties would be seriously
overweight, with a relatively active lifestyle and moderate eating habits.
Test panels were always just fine and I felt okay, mostly. I started losing
some hair in my mid-twen
ties, which I attributed to a bad perm and grad
school stress, at the strong suggestion of the university health clinic. At
age 28 (before I even heard of Graves) I finally got diagnosed with PCOS.
The only way I got diagnosed was that I stopped having cycles entirely and
THEN some irregularities magically showed up in hormone levels. (They told
me I had the testosterone of a prizefighter, for one thing, which is
probably an asset in my job.) I got what was the standard treatment for
PCOS at that time- birth control and spironolactone. The meds didn't seem
to work that great but I noticed some improvement. I was happy just to have
some reason for why I didn't feel entirely well.

Two years ago my obgyn did yet another screening TSH test and it came out
at .004. After getting T3/ T4/ antibody/ uptake/ ultrasound/ FNA tests from
an endo, I was told that I had Graves and a benign nodule, but that

everything was fine, and monitoring was the way to go. I had a good half
dozen hyper symptoms, but just like with PCOS, none of them really stood
out. Six months later the T3/T4 levels reached the magic treatment
threshold and I got pushed into doing RAI. The endo's reasons for doing RAI
were typical, but my real reason for accepting the treatment was not being
able to stand being hot all the time and worrying about my new higher blood
pressure. In retrospect,that was pretty stupid.

My follow-up 6 months after RAI showed every lab test right in the middle
of range- no replacement necessary and I was feeling great for the first
time in years. The endo cut me loose and told to come back in a year. Two
months later I crashed. I was exhausted, confused, slurring speech, losing
sensation in my extremities, sleeping 16 hours a day and freezing under
five blankets. I asked to see the endo and they insisted that I go g
et a
TSH test before bothering her. The TSH level was over 450 and that got the
endo's attention, enough so that I briefly became an interesting case to
show her students. I missed a month of work, spent months getting a T4
regimen balanced enough to function, and still didn't feel great.

I keep getting tired, especially mid-morning and mid-afternoon. When the
brain fog lifted, I started hitting the internet and found this site and
some others on PCOS too. After reading some of the recent research about
PCOS and insulin resistance, it finally dawned on me that I was crashing
after meals and that my "healthy" meals were loaded with carbohydrates.
With my newfound chronic health problems, years of dieting, and a history
of heat disease and high cholesterol in the family, my diet was light on
protein.  Experimenting with low-carb meals showed me that I didn't get so
tired afterwards, so I started try
ing to get tests done for insulin
resistance from my obgyn- I already knew the endo was a lost cause. Obgyn
finally said the (wrong) test results were fine, so I went out and found
another doctor who was ready to try Glucophage with me. In the two months
that I've been taking it, I have noticed that I don't have the big energy
crashes so often. However, the PCOS crowd on the internet also seem to
think that Glucophage is the magic weight loss bullet too- I've seen no
signs of that. Seems to me that the stuff would cost more if it could work
those kind of miracles.

It would be so nice to have a health care professional who could reconcile
more than one health problem at a time and who looked at the whole picture
of your health. I think that I got a whole lot sicker than I needed to be
because nobody bothered to sit down and ask the simple patient history
questions that could have revealed a lot. Moving around wit
h college, grad
school and jobs for 15 years meant that I didn't have a regular doctor for
any length of time, so maybe there wasn't much chance of anybody (besides
me) noticing a gradual decline in my health. A friend of mine has a good
internist who also teaches diagnostic methods at the local med school, but
she has declined to accept new patients for nearly ten years. So, until I
find a better solution, I will keep doing the legwork myself. If the
unithroid doesn't do it for me and they yank my prescription for
Glucophage, the internet will be my drugstore.




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