Health Mysteries Solved

The Case:  Jenny went on the pill as a teenager to regulate her irregular and heavy periods. After 20 years on the pill, she decided to start a family. Going off the pill led to fatigue, insomnia, hair loss, acne, and when her periods returned after 3 months, they were painful, heavy and irregular. Her symptoms led her to suspect hypothyroidism but her levels came back normal.   The Investigation The first thing I did when I started working with Jenny was to run a full thyroid panel. While her TSH was normal, as her doctor had said, her free hormones were off. I knew that there had to be a connection between Jenny’s long history with birth control pills, her menstrual issues, and her thyroid but was the thyroid causing the issue or did the pill create a thyroid problem? To discuss this further, I reached out to Emily Sadri. She’s a board-certified women’s health nurse practitioner and midwife who runs a functional medicine practice for women in Cleveland, Ohio. She specializes in abnormal bleeding, perimeno