About

Hi there! I’m Lizzie and I’m the person behind this blog (go to my about page to see my profile picture). I’m in my 30’s and like most people recent events have been a bit of a curve ball but just not down to COVID-19! I live in the UK, I have a long term boyfriend (he assures me he will propose one day!) and 2 cats and I am also a secondary school science teacher. As you may have already seen I have been diagnosed with PCOS back in 2008, I have had blood tests positive for thyroid antibodies (likely to develop into Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis at some point) since 2011 and most recently I have been tested for and diagnosed with Coeliac disease in 2020. 

There are two main reasons I have set up this account. The first being accountability – I want to get to a stage of being well again. This isn’t about being skinny or even having a body that looks good. It’s about being able to go about day to day life and live as I want it to and not feeling like I’m either losing my cognitive function or like I’m about to fall asleep at the drop of a hat either. Weight-loss will be a bonus. I can struggle with motivation from time to time and hopefully this will be a part of keeping me consistent through these times and the changes I am in the process of making.

A bit of a back story for you. My PCOS was diagnosed by my GP back in 2008 just before my A-levels via blood tests alone. She put me on the pill. I had an ultrasound done by my uni GP in 2009 and this is when my diagnosis was confirmed again. My entire PCOS journey is for another post. I have always struggled with tiredness and always had low iron levels, this led to 2011 my GP testing my thyroid and telling me I had thyroid antibodies and will potentially will develop Hashimoto’s thyroiditis – something I keep being monitored for – again a tale for another time. Fast forward to about October 2019 time I got hit with overwhelming exhaustion, cognitive changes and feeling run down and getting every bug under the sun. It got to about November and I tried seeing a GP I couldn’t get a GP appointment until Christmas Eve, coincidently I booked mine for New Years Eve instead. I happened to be in the surgery one day and asked if there was anyway I could be seen sooner – I got an advanced nurse practitioner appointment in late November and managed to have some blood tests done due to a shut down for Norovirus at the time! As it came to my GP appointment on NYE I already new that my blood tests hadn’t particularly shown anything (my TSH was out of whack but not out of normal range). Feeling a bit lost and not knowing where to turn next I started to look into functional medicine (again I will explain more in another blog post but basically they look beyond what is considered normal range) and it turns out the GP I was booked in to see is also a functional practitioner part time. She was convinced it would be my thyroid we even filled in the questionnaire from the British thyroid association, again ticking most of the boxes for that! She also explained that being at risk to 1 autoimmune disease meant that I was more likely to develop another and so she wanted to test me for Coeliac disease too. Well I did not see this coming at all! So anyway armed with yet more blood tests off I went. Now my GP surgery allows us to see our blood results online, my T3 and T4 (thyroid hormones) were fine still had high levels of antibodies, low in vitamin D, iron was on the low side, my calcium isn’t quite where it should be, my vitamin B12 was fine. Again a couple of deficiencies but nothing to explain my symptoms. Queue more forlornness but my Coeliac test had to be sent away so I knew I still had that to wait for. On the 5th January my results were in – I was positive for the Endomysial antibody IgA test and my TTG numerical result was above 250 (this is a lot of medical jargon – just take from this it was positive). On the 8th I spoke with my GP and was told it was Coeliac disease. Now I pushed for my endoscopy, the outcome for me is still the same but our NICE guidelines state this is the gold standard for diagnosis and I wanted to be sure that I had the proof to make my wellness journey with medical professionals run smoothly. I had my endoscopy done 18th March just before lockdown took over and COVID-19 went completely rampant. I honestly didn’t think that I would hear anything due to the worsening situation so decided to take the gamble and go gluten-free (the only treatment for coeliac disease). Luckily on 2nd April I had a letter from my consultant informing me my biopsies had come back positive for Coeliac disease and to go on that gluten free diet. 

The second reason why I have started this blog is to help provide support and information to others. I just want to preface with is I am in no way a medical professional, a lot of this is based on my experiences and research I have looked at based on other people who work within these health conditions. You should always seek advice from a medical professional before undertaking any major changes especially if you are on other medications. I am part of a lot of support groups out there, mainly for my PCOS and Coeliac disease, some thyroid groups but I find myself providing a lot of the same information over and over again. It can be a mind-field for the newly diagnosed trying to wade through all the information Dr Google has out there. Some of it is dangerous and just outright tactics to make money from people. There is also a lot of conflicting advice out there. I want to be able to provide a base of information for people to use and try and implement some of the suggestions from this blog. If eventually I am able to form some kind of career from this then amazing ,but my upmost goal is to help and support people foremost. This is the main reason why this is in the public domain and not just in a personal journal, I want to take you on my journey and then build up supporting people from there.

The second reason why I have started this blog is to help provide support and information to others. I just want to preface with is I am in no way a medical professional, a lot of this is based on my experiences and research I have looked at based on other people who work within these health conditions. You should always seek advice from a medical professional before undertaking any major changes especially if you are on other medications. I am part of a lot of support groups out there, mainly for my PCOS and Coeliac disease, some thyroid groups but I find myself providing a lot of the same information over and over again. It can be a mind-field for the newly diagnosed trying to wade through all the information Dr Google has out there. Some of it is dangerous and just outright tactics to make money from people. There is also a lot of conflicting advice out there. I want to be able to provide a base of information for people to use and try and implement some of the suggestions from this blog. If eventually I am able to form some kind of career from this then amazing ,but my upmost goal is to help and support people foremost. This is the main reason why this is in the public domain and not just in a personal journal, I want to take you on my journey and then build up supporting people from there.

The main topics I will of course talk about are: PCOS, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, hypothyroidism and also coeliac disease. There will be features on all of these topics, some will have dedicated days or months to awareness. Others will be a series of blog posts that link together as sometimes a blog post can easily go off on a tangent or it could be a lot of information for one post. But I will also be talking about more general topics and how these may link to these health conditions and wellness over all. Things like, nutrition, recipes, exercise, sleep, stress and how this can affect our bodies, the affect our environment can have on our wellness, general lifestyle blogs and also about self care. 

So yes I think this is the end of my blog post for now – if anyone has any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the comments below. I look forward to bringing you my next blog post soon!