The frustrating part is, we as women, may not know we have it and when we do find out, we're told it's treatable, but there is no cure.
To make matters worse, there is so much controversy over what actually causes it that doctors do not know how to prevent it. Then when you do your own research, you find information that is confusing or overly simple.
An example of the overly simple solution is - "exercise and lose weight."
Now, exercising is great advice. Everyone, regardless of their condition, should be exercising regularly. However, I personally tried exercising while still eating in accordance to the SAD (standard American diet) guidelines. For about six months, I would wake up at 7AM - eat a breakfast of cereal with milk and fruit with coffee or tea. Spend time with my family as we watched the morning news. After it went off, I would run on the treadmill until I had gone 2 miles. Next, I would work out on the Wii - at this time I was doing a 20 min a day premade weight loss program via EA Sports Active. (Please note, I was drinking a lot of water at this time too). After the 20 min work out, I would finish off my morning with about 15 - 20 min of Yoga. After my work out, I would eat an egg and yogurt or chocolate milk and some unsweet mint tea. I would then work on chores or whatever else I needed to do for the day. Then at lunch, I'd have whole wheat skinny bread with jalapenos and cream cheese, cooked in butter with some fruit juice and some tomatoes. Then I'd get ready for work. At work, I'd have whatever snack the kids were having. It was usually some form of "healthy" chip and yogurt or cheese with juice or milk. After getting home, it'd be dinner time and my parents would have some dinner made and it would always be white starch with some sort of vegetable and a good bit of meat with it. All of it was cooked in oil or butter depending on the meal. Then I'd spend the evening with them and go to bed about 9PM or 10PM and read until I fell asleep.
Now, I did lose some weight - about 25lbs total I believe and I did look a little better, but it wasn't sustainable.
Here's a picture of me when I was doing all this:
While I did lose weight, my PCOS symptoms did not improve at all. I'll go into the issues in a moment, but I wanted to address the sustainability part. When I moved back in with my husband, we continued to eat the way I had been at my parents. I believed this was healthy and wanted to keep it up. However, I started working more and didn't have time to exercise like before, so you can imagine that my newly somewhat smaller self ballooned up once I had to stop all the exercise. I ended up gaining all of the weight back and then some in spite of me still eating "healthy."
Hopefully now you can get an idea of what I've already tried based on the overly simple and completely logical advice. Hopefully, you can also understand my frustration. From that point in my life until today, I have tried every bit of advice possible. The ultimately lead me to Kym Campbell who I will discuss in another blog later on. I want to get to the point here about what PCOS is. Here we go!
What is PCOS?
According to WebMD the definition of PCOS is as follows:
Polycystic ovary [or ovarian] syndrome is a problem in which a woman's hormones are out of balance. It can cause problems with your periods and make it difficult to get pregnant. PCOS also may cause unwanted changes in the way you look. If it isn't treated, over time it can lead to serious health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease.
The complete article can be found in this link.
PCOS is a hormonal balance that affects 1 in 10 girls and women from ages as young as 11 to women in their 40's. Many different sites will tell you different age ranges, but from what I've read those are the youngest and oldest ages I've found.
So what are the symptoms?
Since they had a larger list of symptoms, I used belmarrahealth.com; you can click the link for the full article.
Most common:
- Weight gain
- Fatigue
- Hirsutism (unwanted hair growth): hair growth may appear on the face, arms, back, chest, thumbs, toes, and abdomen. Hirsutism is a result of excess androgen.
- Thinning of hair on the head
- Infertility
- Acne
- Changes in mood
- Pelvic pain
- Headache
- Sleep problems
I'm not sure why these were not listed, but you can also have PCOS but no ovarian cyst. Insulin Resistance is another symptom of PCOS.
Every symptom varies depending on the woman and I believe you have to have at least 3 of them to be diagnosed. For me, it was my insulin resistance, high testosterone levels and no period.
In conclusion, PCOS is one of the most common causes of infertility in women and while it's treatable, there has not been any recorded cure. In the next article, I am going to shift topics and focus on the whole food, plant based movement to tie it in with PCOS and why this is something I'm willing to try to combat my PCOS.
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