Shiny

Found this, but haven't found further info yet. http://mag.digitalpc.co.uk/olive/ode/hchembiol/LandingPage/LandingPage.aspx?href=SENIQm9kZS8yMDEwLzA4LzAx&pageno=Mw..&entity=QXIwMDMwNA..&view=ZW50aXR5

Very cool... but how do you GET them?

Sal, I think it's more saying that low dopamine can lead to Cushing's. I would assume that, once you HAVE Cushing's, you can't try to retroactively fix the cause. I don't know, though, because I can't read the link, only your comments. (link = broke) I do find this really, REALLY interesting, though, since I've had ADHD since I was like 2, and they've found that people with ADHD have lower levels of dopamine.

One of Dana's articles talks about CBG and estrogen.

I think the difference with the one I posted might be because of the amount of ACTH injected (1?g vs 0.25mg). I don't understand ACTH well enough yet to be able to speculate on that, though. I did find the saliva part incredibly useful, though (and I would assume it would hold true for urine, as well). I got my good high on saliva (not that my endo thought it meant anything, but that's beside the point). This article is about too little cortisol, but it says that free serum cortisol is better to measure than total serum cortisol, and the free serum cortisol was not affected significantly in the study I posted. So, I wouldn't say blood testing is out of the question with birth control! I'm really hoping to not be taken off if I ever find a good endo, partially because I'm on it for some very good reasons, and partially because I'm afraid of messing with my hormones even more right now. If it comes to that, though, I figure I'll ask for the progesterone only pills. Thought about implanon, but I'm not sure I want to try something with potentially funfunfun side effects right now. I can't take any side effects.

I've been looking for a more recent study, and I found this. They did still find an increase in blood cortisol levels, but saliva is completely fine to test on birth control. Link here Definitely printing this off to put in my "emergency" journal article stash...

Thanks for the link! The idea it could lower cortisol is very interesting... I'll have to look into this more. I wonder if they've done research on triphasic bc and cortisol...

Weird. Guess bc affects everyone differently. I did notice a huge improvement with cramping pain when I added progesterone cream to the mix, but I quit that when my nurse practitioner changed my bc for me (higher progesterone - I asked her for one that would be gentler on my system). The pain got a bit better, but still not great (also, progesterone at night makes me sleeeeepy, which was just plain awesome). Not being able to take ibuprofen when on the dexamethasone this time around was HELL. I'm very close to looking into how much insurance covers for an implant bc - progesterone only. I would imagine that not having any extra estrogen could only help. The progesterone only pill is really twitchy about being taken them same time every night, which is not good when my brain is seriously shot these days. Heather, that sucks that they wanted you to just "grow out of it." Geez...

That's interesting, because all my health problems seem to have started around the same time I started on bc (my last year of college). Can't really remember which came first anymore, though... plus, then, I didn't realize the weight gain was a problem. I had lost a little weight a year or so previously (I was working out more), so I figured I was just gaining a little back since I wasn't working out as much. When it didn't stop, and I developed more and more symptoms, we knew there was something wrong, but it's been hard to trace everything back now. Interestingly, I had a few of my symptoms in a very mild form during high school, but I don't think I would say with any confidence that it had started then. But, I don't know... this whole thing has been weird to figure out.

That was pretty much my point - birth control doesn't raise cortisol that much (just like it doesn't cause more then like 3 pounds of weight gain, if that!). I've been researching it because I don't want my doctors to explain away high cortisol because I'm on bc.

Effect of Oral Contraceptives on Cortisol Metabolism (from the Journal of Clinical Pathology) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1436049/?tool=pmcentrez