 Hello guys, welcome to another vlog. If you're new here and you don't know me, my name is Sam. Oh, I'm just blowing my camera. This is something that's long, long overdue. I have been trying to get to this point and wanting to do this since 2014, over seven years now. And I finally am just like, fuck it. I just can't do this anymore. So I have been on birth control pills since I was 17 years old. I am now 29, so it's been 12 years. And I originally got on it just for pregnancy prevention. I didn't have any issues with my period. I, you know, had a completely... I first got my period when I was 11 and always had a regular period. But I started becoming sexually active at 17. And so my mom was like, you should get on birth control. And then when I was around 21, I decided I like went through a period in my life where I was like, you know, didn't want to eat any processed foods. I was trying to be more natural and I just wanted to detox my body and I wanted to stop taking the pill. Especially because it, I found that it was like making me sick sometimes. Like if I didn't take it consistently at the exact same time every day, it would make me nauseous and throw up. So I just stopped taking it. I like finished a pack and then didn't start a new one. And shortly after that, I started experiencing a lot of weird symptoms. The first thing that I noticed was I never got a period after that. And I was really nervous. I took many pregnancy tests because I was like, oh my god, what's going on? Because like I said, I had never missed a period before in my life. Never even had a late period. So I was like, what's happening? And then I started noticing that I was putting on weight pretty quickly. Even though nothing had changed in my diet, I was, you know, eating pretty clean. I was exercising regularly. Nothing had changed. There was no reason why I should have been putting on weight like that. And then my skin started breaking out. I was getting a lot of like cystic acne, especially around my jaw area, which was very weird because I had never experienced that before. I also was just noticing that I was feeling really sluggish and tired all the time. I felt like there was just like this constant haze around me. Like I was just in a fog. I was starting to experience depression. I also noticed that I was like experiencing joint pain. I had like extreme sensitivity to colds. I think those were like the main symptoms. And I just like, just something didn't feel right. I didn't feel like myself. I wasn't feeling good. And what's so crazy to me is I never made the connection. I never thought that it had something to do with the pill or me getting off of it. I just felt like, oh my god, what's going on? So I made an appointment to go to my gynecologist because I felt like something must have been up with like my thyroid or whatever. And I explained all the symptoms that I was experiencing and she was like, it sounds to me like you have something called polycystic ovarian syndrome. And I was like, what are all these words that you're saying to me? What is that? And she was like, and it sounds like, you know, your thyroid could be off because that could be contributing to the weight gain and stuff. So she ordered like a full blood panel for me. So I went, got my blood taken and then based on the blood test results and based on my hormone levels, she diagnosed me with PCOS, which is polycystic ovarian syndrome, which at the time I had never heard of this term before. At this point now, I feel like it's become so common and it's talked about everywhere. So I feel like most people, even if you don't really know what it is, you've at least heard of it before. And to be honest, I don't even 100% know what it is. I've done so much research and I've asked my doctor so many times and I feel like I never really get like a clear cut definition. And it seems like there's so many different types of it and so many different ways that people can be diagnosed, which is just weird to me. It just seems like it's something that's not that well understood and for something that's supposedly so common, they say that about 20% of women have it. It's weird, right? My doctor told me that it's something that you're born with and that most women don't experience symptoms of it until later on in life, usually in like their 20s. And there's different things that can kind of trigger the symptoms because it can kind of be like dormant in your body, I guess. And usually like once women have kids or get on birth control and then stop, that's when it can like trigger the symptoms. And the symptoms of it are a lot of what I described, plus some women will also like lose their hair, their hair will start thinning, they'll start getting facial hair from my understanding anyway. What it means is that you have cysts on your ovaries that release hormones, that mess with the other hormones in your body. But basically what it comes down to is you have a hormonal imbalance and hormones are very powerful and they affect a lot of what goes on in your body. They control a lot of things. And normally when one hormone is out of whack, other ones are gonna be as well. So yeah, she diagnosed me with PCOS and then she also said that my thyroid levels, my thyroid hormone was a little bit low. So she said that I technically had hypothyroidism as well. So then she referred me to go see an endocrinologist and that doctor then sent me for more blood work and he told me that my thyroid levels, yes, they were slightly low but it wasn't like dangerously low or anything crazy, it was just a little bit off. So he said that I could start taking a thyroid medication which would help me with my symptoms, but it was optional for me. It wasn't necessary because again, like my levels were just barely off, it wasn't anything that was like concerning to him. So I chose to take the medication because I figured I feel like shit and I didn't know, I think that's what it is. I was like so uneducated at the time and I didn't know what was going on and I had never heard other women talking about this before. So I felt very alone and I felt very like out of control with my body and I didn't like that feeling and I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea if these symptoms would ever go away on their own, you know, so I was like okay, if I can take a medication if that'll make me feel better, I'm gonna try that. So I got on level thyroxin, I believe it was called, but it was a very, very low dosage of it and he was just like yeah, so here's this pill that you have to take every day for the rest of your life if you know, if I wanted to. Again, the medication was optional for me and then my gynecologist told me that I should get back on birth control because the birth control pill was going to help with my PCOS and it was going to help with all the symptoms that I had and it was going to get my hormones back to where they needed to be, like get everything back under control and I was like great. You know, I wanted to get off of it in the first place and that's what started all of this and now I just, you're telling me I need to just go back on it. But again, at that point I just felt so defeated, I felt so terrible and I was like okay, whatever. If that's what you're telling me to do, that's what I'll do. So I got back on birth control, I still felt pretty shitty for quite a while and she, and you know, the doctor even told me it's gonna take months for everything to like get back to normal and then now on top of this, every time I would get my period I was getting really bad cramps. So I was like great. Every month I had to go and get blood work so that they could like monitor my levels, see where everything was at. Eventually over time I want to say it took a year or so. Everything finally was in the normal range and after a while my skin started to clear up. I started feeling a little bit better. Eventually slowly the weight started coming off a little bit and then at some point I had stopped taking the thyroid medication because again the doctor told me it was optional in the first place and so I was just like well this is where I'm at now, you know. I have to rely on the birth control because if I stop taking it, all of those bad symptoms I had before are gonna come back and this is just what I need to rely on now to keep my hormones okay. However, I knew that the birth control pill is a synthetic, it's synthetic hormones and it's just a band-aid on the issue. It's not actually healing my body. It's not doing my body any good. It's suppressing the symptoms which is making me feel better for the most part but I knew that I didn't want to have to rely on that forever. But then I changed careers and I moved and like a lot of different things were happening in my life and I kind of just put that off on the back burner and I told myself eventually one day I'm gonna get off these damn pills but for now I'm gonna stay on them because I just don't want to have to deal with all of those symptoms and stuff, you know. So that brings us to today. It is Sunday, July 25th. I've really just been getting to a point where I want to take better care of my mind, body, and soul and I just feel like I'm at a point now where I'm ready to just stop taking them. My therapist actually had recommended a podcast and through listening to this podcast, the podcast is the Betty Rocker show and in a lot of the episodes on the podcast she talks about hormonal health and she has a lot of interviews with different doctors that specialize in women's health and women's hormones. So through this podcast I discovered Dr. Sarah Gottfried and I also discovered Dr. Jolene Brighton and I have just been learning so much about how the female body works, how our hormones work, what the birth control pill is actually doing in our bodies, how it works and it's just been further confirming for me that I don't want to be on these pills anymore. And what's crazy is throughout everything that I've been reading and listening to recently, I'm kind of starting to question if I actually even have PCOS because there was never an ultrasound done or anything like that. The only thing that led to my diagnosis was the fact that my hormone levels were off and I feel like that's just also a symptom of getting off of the pill and the fact that I've always had regular periods before ever getting on the pill, I'm like I don't... I just... I don't know. There's some studies out there that talk about how the birth control pill has like less tumors on people's livers and just like a lot of stuff that I just doesn't sound good. It's not something I want to deal with. But also I've just found that I am always so low energy and I'm tired all the time. It doesn't matter how much sleep I get, how much I exercise, like I'm just always like... despite being a super anxious person, somehow I have this crazy anxiety but yet my mood and my energy level is always like low. And those are things that I'm working on through therapy but I really just feel like my hormones are affecting my mood and my energy and on top of that my body holds on to weight in those like hormonal spots like those hormone pockets if you will which is my lower stomach and my upper arms and even when I am at my fittest and I'm looking nice and toned everywhere else, those places on my body will not budge. No matter what I do, no matter what changes I make to my diet, it just will not go away from those spots. And this isn't like I'm not just doing this for weight loss you know or because of how I look but I'm like okay I'm hearing all of this information about what the pill does to your body and I'm relating to that. I'm seeing that happening to myself. When you're on birth control you're not getting a real period like yes I bleed every month but that's not an actual period. It's just like bleeding induced by the medication because I'm not ovulating so I'm not having a real period and my body is not producing hormones on its own and that just it isn't good. So I thought you know let me vlog this journey and my experiences. I am not an expert. I have no medical training. I'm you know I'm not a doctor obviously I'm just a normal person just trying to feel better and just learn about my body and I just want to share my experience for other women out there if you're going through something similar so that you can relate to this and also so that I don't feel as alone going through this because I know that once I stop taking the pill my hormones are going to be all over the place and those symptoms are probably going to come back. My mood's probably going to be all over the place so hopefully if I can vlog it I will feel like I have a support system that's there with me. So um Dr. Jolene Brighton who I mentioned before she has a book called Beyond The Pill and she has a whole website with a bunch of information so I've been referencing her website and I also downloaded she has a free pdf with um like a nutrition guide because that's the thing like there are certain supplements and foods that I can be eating that will help my body naturally balance my hormones so I'm going to do that so hopefully those symptoms that I had before won't hit me as hard and then I also had heard about the Elani knew what they have like these balance supplements that are supposed to be good for naturally balancing hormones so I placed in order for those so those should be arriving later this week and I'm hoping that all of that stuff will help me. I have one week left in my birth control pack I think I'm going to just finish the pack have my like medicine induced bleeding and then after that I will stop taking it and we'll see what happens. Hey guys so it is a week later exactly one week later since the last clip that you just saw and last night I took my last birth control pill ever I wanted to just finish the pack that I was already on because I'm not sure if it actually makes a difference or not but I figured I may as well just finish the pack go through like the usual cycle rather than just like stopping in the middle I should bleed because I know technically it's not a real period but you know I should get my period in the next few days normally I get it like on Wednesday or Thursday and I started taking these supplements from the brand Elani knew this is not sponsored I bought two bottles of this actually with my own money they were kind of expensive they were like $50 each I've been reading a lot of really good things about this online it has really great reviews and I actually saw that sml xo she's another youtuber she just recently did a video talking about how she's been off the pill for a year now and this is what she used to help balance her hormones and she said that it helped a lot and she noticed a big difference so I'll put a link in the description to these if you want to take a look at them and read like you know the ingredients and nutrition facts and everything but it says balance is strategically designed to support hormonal balance weight management complexion and fertility enjoy restorative sleep improve energy levels and more so I mean that sounds right up my alley and it sounds like exactly what I need so I'm hoping that between that and then I'm also following Dr. Jolene Brighton's post birth control plan as far as my nutrition goes and I'm also going to be exercising regularly just going on some walks and maybe doing some strength training and I'm going to keep you guys updated I'm thinking maybe once a month once every other month depending on how everything goes what symptoms I have I'm gonna update you guys let you know what's working for me what my symptoms are oh I also am planning on going and continuing to do facials once a month and hopefully that will help you know combat any hormonal breakouts that I might get I'm just gonna try to really like stay on top of everything I'm excited for this journey I'm excited to detox my body and hopefully just start feeling better more naturally and just get my body back to doing what it's supposed to naturally do but I am a little nervous because I don't know how my symptoms are going to be this time around and you know it's a little scary I feel like I finally got my skin recently at a point where it's looking really clear and really good and I'm you know I'm just nervous of course you know I don't want to feel bad but I also I'm not gonna lie like for vanity purposes like I'm a little nervous about like the actual physical changes that might happen too so I wanted to just show you guys a little um shot of what my body looks like too because since I mentioned how I feel like my body holds on to fat in like the hormonal pockets I wanted to just show you like exactly what everything is looking like right now this whole journey is not just about weight loss of course but weight and my body composition and where my body is holding on to fat is a symptom and a side effect and then that way maybe you know over time we can kind of compare and see if things are looking any different so you can see like the most fat on my body is really on my upper arms like my tricep area and then my lower stomach and then you can also see that my stomach is just really bloated pretty much all the time it doesn't matter how much or how little I eat it doesn't matter what kind of foods I eat it doesn't matter if I'm like using the bathroom regularly like it just pretty much always is bloated and like sticks out like that and it just feels very uncomfortable too so and I know that that is supposed to be a side effect of like being on the pill and just you know hormones and all that stuff so that's where we're at that is what I'm doing so that's going to be it for this first video I'm gonna have a whole playlist with all of these videos to make it a little easier to find if you want to like watch the entire series and follow along on this journey make sure that you're subscribed to my channel and comment down below and let me know are you on birth control have you gotten off of it are you planning on getting off of it what have your experiences been like what are your symptoms thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you in another few weeks and I'll let you know how it's all going wish me luck bye