Coming Off the Pill? Restore Hormone Balance and Deal With Headaches and Other Symptoms
Hormones and headaches are intimately related.
The Pill artificially stabilises your hormone levels to prevent conception.
The downside is that your own hormone production eases off while the Pill pumps its own recipe into your system.
Coming OFF the pill requires you to rebalance.
This can take time because the Pill's recipe gets stored in the body, and you must "wake up" your own hormone production, too.
Symptoms like headaches are evidence that there's lots of work to do.
Modern life demands that women soldier on, regardless of the natural fluctuations in their bodies that hormone changes bring.
This is absurd - we require different things at different times in our cycle: different amounts of rest, different foods, different exercise - different self-care.
Ignoring these is a recipe for stress.
Headache is our body's message to us that we're not paying enough attention.
Listening to your body more closely is essential.
When coming off the pill, start by being a little kinder to yourself.
Don't demand 100% "performance" at all times.
If you need to rest, rest.
If you feel sluggish - breathe, exercise, do yoga, sleep - whatever works best for you.
Your body isn't a machine - it's a complex, living system.
Don't diet straight after coming off the pill.
Do boost fresh and raw foods as much as you can; drink plenty of water; and decrease your intake of alcohol, refined sugars and caffeine...
or avoid them.
Vitamins help: B complex, C, D, and E.
An Eastern Approach? Chinese medicine can be useful.
Unlike Western medicine, which treats symptoms, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) targets the causes of problems and deals with the body as a whole system.
That's smart when the goal is re-awakening your own hormone production.
Theoretically, Chinese medicine practitioners work with the 'energetic" system - a system of meridians along which our life-force, called "chi" or "qi," travels - or seek to affect the body's operations the system via herbal remedies.
"Chi" is not just an idea: practitioners treat it like a substance that can be channelled, like electricity.
When chi flows freely, we feel vital and alive.
Feeling anxious about the needles? Think again.
Unlike the needles we associate with injections, these are hair-thin probes, expertly applied.
Across many years of treatments, I only saw them a handful of times.
And although sessions aren't entirely without discomfort (practitioners target areas where the chi isn't flowing well) they're generally relaxing.
Acupuncturists are experts in anatomy.
If you want to get pregnant, do tell him/her when s/he's taking your medical history: it will influence your treatment.
They also use massage and a number of techniques unfamiliar to Westerners.
My advice is to allow your practitioner free rein at first: experiment.
Raise your questions and reservations frankly.
A good practitioner will listen and make adjustments.
Acupuncture puts you in touch with your whole body, helping you re-connect with parts of yourself that you've forgotten.
Yet even if treatments didn't do ANYTHING else, an hour of uninterrupted "me" time with hands-on care in an era of machines and industrial medicine is worth having.
Does all this sound like hogwash? Maybe - but my experience of acupuncture treatment and its benefits convinced me, in my thirties, to re-think all I knew about health.
The result has been far better physical and emotional health than I'd ever imagined, and a better-balanced, happier life.
© 2011 Alexandra Brunel, all rights reserved.
The Pill artificially stabilises your hormone levels to prevent conception.
The downside is that your own hormone production eases off while the Pill pumps its own recipe into your system.
Coming OFF the pill requires you to rebalance.
This can take time because the Pill's recipe gets stored in the body, and you must "wake up" your own hormone production, too.
Symptoms like headaches are evidence that there's lots of work to do.
Modern life demands that women soldier on, regardless of the natural fluctuations in their bodies that hormone changes bring.
This is absurd - we require different things at different times in our cycle: different amounts of rest, different foods, different exercise - different self-care.
Ignoring these is a recipe for stress.
Headache is our body's message to us that we're not paying enough attention.
Listening to your body more closely is essential.
When coming off the pill, start by being a little kinder to yourself.
Don't demand 100% "performance" at all times.
If you need to rest, rest.
If you feel sluggish - breathe, exercise, do yoga, sleep - whatever works best for you.
Your body isn't a machine - it's a complex, living system.
Don't diet straight after coming off the pill.
Do boost fresh and raw foods as much as you can; drink plenty of water; and decrease your intake of alcohol, refined sugars and caffeine...
or avoid them.
Vitamins help: B complex, C, D, and E.
An Eastern Approach? Chinese medicine can be useful.
Unlike Western medicine, which treats symptoms, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) targets the causes of problems and deals with the body as a whole system.
That's smart when the goal is re-awakening your own hormone production.
Theoretically, Chinese medicine practitioners work with the 'energetic" system - a system of meridians along which our life-force, called "chi" or "qi," travels - or seek to affect the body's operations the system via herbal remedies.
"Chi" is not just an idea: practitioners treat it like a substance that can be channelled, like electricity.
When chi flows freely, we feel vital and alive.
Feeling anxious about the needles? Think again.
Unlike the needles we associate with injections, these are hair-thin probes, expertly applied.
Across many years of treatments, I only saw them a handful of times.
And although sessions aren't entirely without discomfort (practitioners target areas where the chi isn't flowing well) they're generally relaxing.
Acupuncturists are experts in anatomy.
If you want to get pregnant, do tell him/her when s/he's taking your medical history: it will influence your treatment.
They also use massage and a number of techniques unfamiliar to Westerners.
My advice is to allow your practitioner free rein at first: experiment.
Raise your questions and reservations frankly.
A good practitioner will listen and make adjustments.
Acupuncture puts you in touch with your whole body, helping you re-connect with parts of yourself that you've forgotten.
Yet even if treatments didn't do ANYTHING else, an hour of uninterrupted "me" time with hands-on care in an era of machines and industrial medicine is worth having.
Does all this sound like hogwash? Maybe - but my experience of acupuncture treatment and its benefits convinced me, in my thirties, to re-think all I knew about health.
The result has been far better physical and emotional health than I'd ever imagined, and a better-balanced, happier life.
© 2011 Alexandra Brunel, all rights reserved.