What exactly is PCOS?

I was recently diagnosed with PCOS. I had a vague understanding of what it meant for me but it was not enough. I had to do my own research and thankfully I've come out of it with a lot of knowledge I didn't have.

If you're one of the many women that leave their doctor's office thinking "PCOS? How did I get that and why was my doctor so vague?", don't feel bad, I've been there.

Chances are your doctor gave you a textbook definition of what PCOS is, and that's not necessarily easy for all of us to understand. After years of dealing with this, I decided that women, like myself, needed to find a place where they could find information about PCOS from someone that's experiencing the same things they are.

Mentioning PCOS or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome would probably fly over most people's heads, yet most don't know that if affects anywhere between 4-12% of women in the US.

According to the National Institutes of Health there are three(3) criteria that need to be present to diagnose PCOS:

1. Irregular/Missing menstrual cycles (periods).

2. Excess in male hormones or androgens.

3. Lack of medical reason for the above symptoms.

If you're wondering why cysts are not part of that list, it's because not all women with PCOS have cysts. If was just the name it was given because they saw cysts in many of the women treated, along with some of those mentioned above. I will go into symptoms in another post. Now...what causes these symptoms? According to the array of books I've read about PCOS, Insulin is the culprit!

Quickly, let's take a look at what insulin does for and to the human body:

Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas that allows your body to use sugar (glucose) from carbohydrates in the food that you eat for energy or to store glucose for future use. Insulin helps keeps your blood sugar level from getting too high or too low.

If you have more sugar in your body than it needs, insulin helps store the sugar in your liver and releases it when your blood sugar level is low or if you need more sugar, such as in between meals or during physical activity. Therefore, insulin helps balance out blood sugar levels and keeps them in a normal range. As blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas secretes more insulin.

If your body does not produce enough insulin or your cells are resistant to the effects of insulin, you may develop hyperglycemia (high blood sugar), which can cause long-term complications if the blood sugar levels stay elevated for long periods of time.

Insulin resistance is a huge issue for women struggling with PCOS. I found that even when my doctor tells you that you do/don't have insulin resistance...they're not always right, and there are some ways to deal with it that are better than others.

I'll post more on Insulin Resistance at a later time, back to PCOS.

No one knows what exactly causes PCOS. In general, they just treat the symptoms, and very poorly in most cases, providing us with little hope on how to address everything we're dealing with.

I hope this blog can serve as a means for those of dealing with this to find ways to work through this.

#pcos