I am curious how others have gone since posting here. I have followed the RRAFing for about 18mths and have felt a bit lost. I have just recently had some saliva tests that show estrogen dominance, low progesterone. low cortisol and that explains a lot for me. My main issue has been sleep problems and the other symptoms didn’t seem as much an issue. I think because I had been RRafing and being very compassionate on myself and not taking on more that I could do, I seemed to handle it and yet it was not OK really. I just feel tired a lot, lack enthusiasm, odd headaches, being a cranky mum, leaky bladder and just feeling low.
So I have gone back to checking my temps and noticed that my temps are now higher 37 (98.5ish) ? 37.2 (99) after lunch and dinner and even bedtime. I don’t ever recall having that high temps when I first checked early in RRAFing. So I am quietly excited that at least these temps are higher. Wakeup temps were around 36.4 (97.5) till ovulation then 36.6 (98). Even these are up a bit as I recall much lower numbers around 36.1/36.2 (97).
Ironically my sleep has gone bad again (frequent wakeups, light sleep )and I notice it is worse in the second half of my cycle (progesterone likely). When I had the saliva testing I was given some recommendations to help balance the hormones and yet I do wonder how much it is to do with improving my metabolism. The recommendations increasing fibre, reduce saturated fat, increasing phytoestrogenic foods, increasing cabbage family, exercise, losing excess fat mass to help the est dominance. I do question some of these.
So for now I keep trying to improve my metabolism and my day to day routines and trying to follow intuition on some of the other things. There certainly are some catch 22 like others have mentioned.
