The relationship between cortisol and estrogen - Part 4

Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), the “master stress hormone” and the Greek Chorus

By Maggie McCarey

THE GREEK CHORUS: Each of us has a Greek chorus inside our heads, every waking and sleeping moment of the day.  Unbeknownst to us, they call upon our  hypothalamus to coordinate their reaction to everything we do.  Most often they are messengers of doom.

 

THE HYPOTHALAMUS: Vanessa Bennington describes the hypothalamus in What You Don’t Know About CRH Can Kill You. She says: Our hypothalamus is the control center. It receives messages from within the body that tell it if we are indeed in stress, and then the hypothalamus coordinates the actions needed for the body to react. Our emotions, skin temperature, pain level, and electrolyte balance are all things that the hypothalamus compares to our baseline. Basically, the hypothalamus functions as the epicenter for the mind-body connection.  http://breakingmuscle.com/health-medicine/what-you-dont-know-about-crh-can-kill-you

 

Now, while we think of stress as negative, it is also positive: emotions and memories evoked at a wedding, for example, the thrill of a winning lottery ticket or receiving an unexpected compliment, a cool drink on a hot day. And, a stressful event can be contradictory like watching the Olympics, and feeling both joy and sympathy, when another country  falls behind your country’s team. Butterfly surges in the tummy are perfect happy examples of the hypothalamus at work, too.

TRANSLATED: you are what you fear; what you hate; what you sing; you are what you love; what you need; what you pray ….YOU ARE WHAT YOU BELIEVE because your emotions trigger your hypothalamus to receive all external stimuli, without judgement,  and then to send it on to the appropriate department, like your tear ducts to make water, the vocal chords to sing or scream, the hands to clinch, or the feet to run.

HOW THE GREEK CHORUS CAME TO BE:  They are the sum total of our reactions to everything we have ever encountered outside our bodies perfect, as well as our genetics. If  what you felt at any given moment, was only one or even a dozen emotions, life would be grand, but that is not how we live, particularly in this age with the world, good and evil, at our finger tips. We have layers of complexity coming at us all of the time: commutes in insane traffic, our workload, a multitude of relationships to maintain, technology to learn, 15 hour a day schedules multiplied by the number of family members we have, financial burdens, climate change, sickness, childhood trauma, fear of flying, dating, divorce, boredom, rain, drought, no food in the fridge, tires to buy, fear of death, and desire for salvation, all heading to the hypothalamus (clearing house) at the same time.  As a result of selectivity, some members of the chorus dominate; others are silent. There’s just not enough time in a day to cope with all of it.

 

CHRONIC STRESS and CORTICOTROPIN-RELEASING HORMONE (CRH):  Corticotropin-releasing hormone is also called the “master stress” hormone.  It is released by the hypothalamus in response to stressful stimulation. Do you see where this goes?  Again quoting Bennington: CRH functions as both a hormone and a neurotransmitter. CRH’s role as a hormone is to stimulate the anterior pituitary glad to release adrenocorticotropin hormone (ACTH). ACTH then reaches the adrenal cortex in the adrenal gland, which causes the synthesis of cortisol as well as several other hormones. So, when a stressful situation occurs, CRH goes up and eventually stimulates more cortisol production.” http://breakingmuscle.com/health-medicine/what-you-dont-know-about-crh-can-kill-you 

 

If you are chronically stressed you will also be chronically over-stimulated and you will make high levels of cortisol  so that daily living will trigger and affect your body perfect like a wrecking ball coming at you.  Bennington says:  “Chronically increased cortisol levels …can lead to all sorts of issues like the redistribution of fat from the thighs and buttocks to the abdomen and upper back, insulin resistance, fluid retention, high blood pressure, decreased immune function, muscle and connective tissue wasting (joint pain, anyone?), and inhibited peptide and hormone production. Absolutely 0% of that is good for health or fitness.”

Chronic Stress?  That’s the full Greek Chorus singing Mozart’s Requiem on a loop day after day.

If you read the first three blogs on cortisol and estrogen, you may have just raised your cortisol a little….but there is more.

UNTIL WE BECOME AWAKE ENOUGH TO TRUST OUR HIGHER SELVES AND THEIR INNATE ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE WITH OUR BODIES PERFECT, WE WILL NOT ACHIEVE PEACE WITHIN. NEITHER WILL WE ACHIEVE DETENTE  WITH OUR FAT AND SELF-LOATHING ILLUSIONS.  CHRONIC STRESS WILL CONTROL OUR LIVES UNTIL WE CAN HEAR  THE GREEK CHORUS’ KEENING FOR ITS LOST MOTHER AND RETURN TO SELF AS ONE WHO IS STRONG AND WISE.

We have to become good parents to our bodies, break through their pain in order to parley with lipedema. Our bodies do talk to us and they will cooperate with us when we are calm. They only want to be loved as they are.

Sneaking a poorly known medical condition into fiction

By Tatjana van der Krabben

Lipedema: a poorly understood yet common condition that causes the legs, hips, buttocks, and sometimes arms as well to swell with fat and fluid. Diet and exercise help manage the condition, but won’t make it go away. The swelling changes your appearance, is painful, and hinders mobility.

I devote a lot of time to raising awareness for lipedema, a condition I have myself. Some days, with social media already flooded with requests to share messages etc., you just can’t help but wonder: what else is there? On a sunbed on a gorgeous beach in the Caribbean, that question collided with another one: could I write fiction? I love writing different formats and fiction was still on my writer’s bucket list.

The clash of both questions was a happy one. Ideas started to come to me and evolved around a main character who conveniently has lipedema. Like many aspiring authors I was initially more like a perspiring author. It can feel silly to say out loud that you want to write a book, even after having published non-fiction already. Any book lover can tell you that a book is A Big Deal and writing one equally so.

In April/May 2013 I planned to go to New York and that location was firmly planted in my brain. The main character chose to stay there, so to speak. In May 2013 I was in Schenectady, New York and told Maggie McCarey, a friend, co-blogger with Lipese, and author, about my plan to write a book about a character with lipedema and asked her to be my editor*. From that moment on I truly felt like an aspiring author. I frantically took notes and pictures of locations I wanted to use. In June 2013 I started writing and in August I threw out what I had written so far. Idea vs. reality: a not so lucky clash.

I picked up the pieces and started over, writing nights. The setting was still New York City, but the lipedema became less prominent. First and foremost I wanted it to be a good book, not something that had to evolve around lipedema. After all, that’s not how we lead our lives. This condition gradually infringes upon our lives, but it doesn’t define you. Lipedema is something intangible until you – finally – figure out what it is. You may even take the symptoms for granted until someone points out this isn’t ‘normal’, which happened to me. It’s also how I worked it into the book.

Lipedema is not the plot, nor a key factor. Then why bother bringing it up in the book? I just hope this book will reach people who simply take an interest in the book itself and then casually learn a little bit about lipedema. In the end it will also make the main character, Anne, a little easier to understand; she’s not lazy or passive, but in fact she’s slowed down by pain and fatigue a lot of the time, which she, like so many of us until finally diagnosed, takes for granted for lack of answers.

WELCOME… will be self-published as an ebook. I haven’t even attempted to interest an agent or publisher. This is a story I want told as it is, including and specifically with the references to lipedema symptoms like subliminal messages. That’s the lipedema advocate in me. Also, for each book sold, $0.50 (of $3.99 sales price) will go toward lipedema research. I wanted to be free to make these decisions.

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WELCOME… - Anne, a 22-year-old dreamer, gets invited to stay in an upscale Manhattan apartment by her aunt, a wealthy widow with a zest for life. All Anne needs to do in exchange for a rent-free stay in New York, is to watch her aunt’s cat for six months while she enjoys an extended vacation in the Caribbean.

It looks like a sweet deal, and a great opportunity to escape failing friendships and an overbearing mother. Anne eagerly commits to the cushy job, but soon learns the arrangement is too good to be true…

Stay tuned for release info via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TatjanaWrites/

* Although the book was written with the help and support of Maggie McCarey, it is not a project by Lipese. Since this project does aim to raise awareness and research funds for lipedema, it has been granted a blog entry on this platform.

Irene’s naked truth about lipedema

By Tatjana van der Krabben

Recently Irene Captijn started a website to raise awareness for lipedema. I’ve known Irene for some time and have worked with her on another lipedema awareness project: the Dutch lipedema film We want to keep moving. Like she had her heart set on making that film, she was passionate about this website. She had my attention in no time with a beautiful picture of her in UV body paint, a creation by Liliana Hopman, with the slogan: Are you brave enough to see my naked truth?

Time to have a chat with this amazing lady about her new project!

How did you discover you have lipedema?
Unfortunately it took a long time before I found out. I was always a little heavy. All my life I’ve been dealing with my weight and my being overweight. I saw one dietitian after another, but they always told me the same: “I don’t know what it is; your diet looks fine.” And so on. I had an obvious pear shape; the excess fat was all on the legs and hips. After my two pregnancies I couldn’t fit into regular pants anymore, not even plus size pants. I stuffed my legs into self-made, wide-leg pants and I can’t even sew!

One day, in the school’s playground, a mother approached me and gently brought up that her mother-in-law had legs just like mine and that she had lipedema. After I returned home I immediately googled that word and found Tilly Smidt’s website. My legs were exactly like the legs in the pictures I found on that website. My family doctor was not convinced and assumed it simply was a name someone had come up with for fat distribution that described a pear-shape as opposed to an apple-shape, nothing more. Luckily, my doctor was willing to refer me to a dermatologist who gave me a diagnosis on the spot. I was actually happy about the diagnosis. There was a reason for my shape. It wasn’t lack of effort or discipline that caused me to be overweight. Unfortunately that happy feeling didn’t last…

Where did you get the idea to be a body paint model?

I do notice my health is taking a turn for the worse, despite everything I do to manage my lipedema. But the most important reasons for my activism are my daughters and the fact that they, too, have lipedema and already in an advanced stage. My brain is on fire for the cause because I feel someone needs to shout out for attention. It’s not really in my nature to be the center point of attention, but when it comes to lipedema I’m very passionate. 

I’m sick and tired of being labeled fat and lazy by the doctors I encounter and that they refuse to treat me ‘until I start making the effort and lose weight’. To a degree I get it; I work in healthcare myself and I, too, was raised with the notion that being fat is all your own fault… Society sees me as a fat woman who really let herself go, but the feeling of injustice in this matter sticks and stings, unfortunately. I’m so ready to be finally met with a some understanding and insight. If raising awareness could be done at a larger scale, somewhere a group of doctors could get their wake up call from it and start focusing more on the causes of lipedema. At this point we don’t even know what the cause is! Research is incredibly important and unfortunately research is currently being conducted at such a small scale. There are so many women who need help NOW.

I always said I would even go naked if that’s what it takes to get attention for this miserable condition. And that opportunity is exactly what crossed my path: at work I met a young lady who spontaneously started to talk about her mother, Liliana Hopman, who placed third in the 2015 global bodypainting competition with UV body paint. She showed me pictures and BAM…the idea was born.

You created a website about lipedema. What kind of information can people find there?

I’ve worked as a doctor’s assistant for years. I’m well aware of the perception of most doctors: 10 calories in and 50 calories out is the road to weight-loss. Period. There is no other way. When too heavy you overeat and exercise too little. There are no other options in their mindset; it’s what they were taught. Through my website I want to offer different information. It’s basic and limited to a description of lipedema, where to get diagnosed and information on self-management. I limited myself to bit-sized information on purpose: doctors are not interested in reading lengthy texts to start out with. Especially not about women dealing with excess fat. After all, they assume to already know the answer to that problem. By keeping it short, odds are more in your favor they’ll actually read the information.

The site links to the more elaborate websites that are already around. That way you can get to more detailed information if you like. The website is also for women who believe they may have lipedema. I’m aiming for a short, accessible website, keeping all the information in one place and the opportunity to go more in-depth by clicking the links to other websites.

 What do you hope to accomplish through your new website?
Awareness! At some point the earth was believed to be flat, right? Perception can change and knowledge can expand! Well, big legs (and arms) are not always the result of overeating and laziness. This notion needs to sink in. We need our own Pythagoras among doctors to prove this, who could help open the eyes of other doctors to another reality.

If the website would inspire 1 family doctor to refrain from labeling his or her patient as obese, but keep an open mind and refer that patient to a specialist, I would consider my 'nude mission' to be a success. I also hope that women who do not know yet what is wrong with their legs, or women who do know, but want to inform others, will use the information on the website.

Most attempts to raise awareness in reality evolve around informing friends and relatives of patients. You would rather target doctors. Can you tell us more about that?

Informing your own circle of friends and family is incredibly important. But like with our Dutch film, if you’re not careful, you keep targeting the same circle of people. Who takes time to look at that film? Those most likely to are the patient, their relatives, a neighbor, a friend, possibly a few therapists. But how do you go from there? If you take that route and target your own circle of friends and family via social media, specialists won’t see it, family doctors won’t and so forth. What I’m actually hoping for is that the bodypaint will provide a different angle and attract a new audience and seduce them into checking out the website. I feel it’s art. Let me rephrase that: it is art! I’ve started out promoting the website via Facebook. I do also intend to promote the site through different channels in the future; I’ll get to that later.

Should people be interested in collaborating with you or offering their help in some way, can they contact you?

But of course they can and yes, please! I can’t do this alone. I’m open to ideas and collaboration and possibly to a sequel to this bodypainting project. Sharing the website also helps a lot, of course. The site is available in both Dutch and English. This is the link to my contact details.