“PCOS – Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. A disease of too much insulin production and resistance to using that insulin effectively. PCO women often experience symptoms like facial hair, infertility, a tendency towards diabetes/high blood pressure/high cholesterol, acne, etc.”
Doesn’t sound pretty, does it?
For me, the worst part about PCOS was the frame of mind it put me in – I had it in my head that
1. I would always be overweight because the insulin resistance makes it hard for women with PCOS to lose weight.
2. Things would only get worse as I got older, and it was likely I would develop diabetes and heart disease, and maybe endometriotic cancer
3. I couldn’t have children.
I felt defeated, angry, cheated, guilty… like all of my bad eating habits as a child had negated any possibility for a positive future.
WHOA, mind melter! What a horrible set of ideas for a 24 year old girl to have in her head!
Of course, had I not made some serious changes to my lifestyle and nutrition, my future probably would have been pretty bleak.
Lucky for me, I found the Paleo Diet. Loren Cordain talks a bit about “Syndrome X” (diseases of civilization) in his book and touches briefly on PCOS, mainly saying that the Paleo Lifestyle should help individuals afflicted with issues with their metabolic hormones. Cool.
My doctor told me that the #1 thing I could do to help my PCOS was lose weight. Commence eye roll. I know.
She also suggested that going on a low-dose Oral Contraceptive might help keep my hormones in check, thus making it easier for me to lose weight. She prescribed Alesse, which I took for 3 months. Alesse was OK. I didn’t feel too messed up, but my periods came every 2 weeks. I mentioned this to her, and she made the decision to increase the dosage of the same ratio of hormones. I can’t remember exactly what that prescription was, but one week later I had an “aura migraine” – it looks like this:
AHHHHHHH! Imagine you are innocently working on a water color painting and all of a sudden this scintillating ORB appears in your vision. I thought I was having a stroke.
I concluded (and so did the doctor I saw at Syracuse University) that it was brought on by the hormone changes. So, we nixed the Oral Contraceptives.
She suggested Metformin to aid with my weight loss (I was still struggling), because it increases insulin sensitivity. No, no, no thank you. I hate taking meds- my mom had to do some major arm twisting to get me to take a Calcium Supplement (yeah, she has Osteoporosis, now I take Bone Up).
I was a little ways into my Paleo experimentation at this same point, but wasn’t seeing any results with weight loss (I was, however, feeling more energized and having less of a problem with binge eating). I later figured out that the reason the lbs weren’t coming off is because I was eating an excessive quantity of fruit, something I mentioned in a previous post.
Prescriptions aside, I tackled my nutrition to regulate the weight symptoms of PCOS.
Now I am facing a tricky situation. I am at a healthy weight, but my cycle is still messed up, indicating that my hormones still don’t function the way they ought to. This is KINDOF cool because I don’t get my periods very often (I must take progestrone 4x yearly to induce or i go back on the cancer watch-list). But, should I ever want to have children (and I’m assuming I will) my ovaries are gonna have some ‘splaining to do. I’m in the process of researching what I can do about this situation NOW and will update with my findings.
In the short-term, my PCOS is as good as gone. No insulin resistance, no excess weight, no acne, no *cringe* undesirable hair growth. So, for those of you who are struggling with some of the extremely unattractive symptoms of PCOS, you may want to give the Paleo Diet a try.
