The typical symptoms of PCOs comprise weight gain, missed periods, and struggling with getting pregnant. Other symptoms also include acne and excessive hair growth. Often, women with PCOs seek treatment for infertility. Now, before you start getting depressed about PCOs, you should know that you can actually reverse this condition by making certain lifestyle changes.
Read on to learn more.
What Are the Main Symptoms?
You need to have some of the main symptoms to get diagnosed with PCOs. We are referring to hormonal imbalance with high male sex hormones, which are also referred to as androgen. You should also have the symptom of irregular periods.
The third symptom is cysts in the ovaries. On that note, if you suspect that you have PCOS, you should look for a gynecologist oncologist near me so that you can get formally diagnosed.
Other symptoms that might suggest that you have PCOs are heavy acne, heavy periods, skin tags, male pattern baldness, or hair thinning. You can also expect a darkening of the skin and difficulty losing weight.
Serious Health Issues Linked with PCOs
As a female, you should know that PCOs are not only a health issue if you are trying to get pregnant. As a matter of fact, PCOs can cause a variety of other health issues as well, such as sleep apnea, depression, and tumors, which can worsen into cancer.
Also, you might have PCOs and get pregnant – but – even if you do, you are at a higher risk of having a miscarriage or delivering your baby prematurely. It wouldn’t be wrong to state that PCOs don’t only affect your health, but it affects the health of your baby, too.
Potential Causes of PCOs
You might be wondering about the potential causes of PCOs. The thing is that there is typically a lot of confusion surrounding PCOs and what causes it. Many women who are diagnosed with PCOs are typically told that they will have to live with PCOs and that they will only be able to manage the symptoms.
The truth is that you aren’t stuck with PCOs for the rest of your life, and you also don’t have to rely on medication for your entire life to effectively manage your PCOs. Of course, meds and drugs can help improve your symptoms, but they do not necessarily address the main cause of your PCOS.
What is the Primary Cause of PCOs?
You might be surprised to know what exactly lies at the root cause of your PCOs. The root cause hints only to one thing, which is insulin resistance. Now, you might already know that insulin is a hormone that is responsible for decreasing your blood sugar and effectively storing glucose inside cells. Every time you have food, your blood sugar tends to rise, which in turn causes the pancreas to pump out insulin.
Subsequently, insulin resistance happens when the insulin levels are elevated for an extensive period of time. What happens next is that your cells stop responding to insulin in an ideal way, which leaves you with elevated insulin levels. What happens next is that high insulin causes the symptoms that are actually linked with PCOs.
What is the Ideal Scenario?
Ideally, every month just before your ovulation, you should experience a big spike in estrogen, which is made from testosterone. However, the high insulin levels in our body block the ovaries from converting it, which is why you don’t experience a spike in estrogen levels.
This aspect also indicates that the higher insulin levels then prevent you from ovulating, which is why the eggs remain inside your ovaries and turn into cysts. Consequently, you are left with higher testosterone levels.
How to Address Insulin Resistance?
Now, the main question is whether there is a way to address insulin resistance and reverse PCOs. As you already know, the root cause of PCOs is insulin resistance, which is why you must address it first. What you will want to do is lower your insulin levels because when you lower your insulin levels, your cells will become more sensitive to it.
The golden key to reversing your PCOs is to adopt healthy lifestyle choices that can help keep your insulin level as low as possible.
Step #1: Reduce the Intake Carbs
You might have heard about the importance of a low-carb diet for weight loss, as it has become immensely popular in the last few years. Nonetheless, if you want to reverse your PCOs, you might want to decrease your carbs intake, too. You might be surprised to know that a majority of people have undiagnosed insulin resistance, and the reason why you should consume as few carbs as possible is because carbs are prone to stimulate insulin the most.
While carbs spike insulin drastically, protein only spikes insulin moderately, whereas fat doesn’t spike insulin at all. So, if you want to control your insulin levels, you should reduce your carbs intake and replace it with better and healthier food choices, such as a low-carb ketogenic diet.
Step 2: Mindful Eating
You might have heard before that you are what you eat, and when it comes to controlling your PCOs, you should be mindful of what you eat and how you eat it. On that note, if you cannot really quit carbs altogether, you might want to switch your order in which you consume certain elements of your meal.
Instead of consuming carbs first, you might want to consume carbs at the end of your meal, which means that you can consume carbs after you have consumed your non-starchy veggies and proteins.
Step #3: Live An Active Lifestyle
Another thing that you can do that will help you tremendously with PCOs is to live an active lifestyle and work out. When it comes to working out, you will want to focus on lifting weights and building muscles. While your food choices are the most important aspect when it comes to creating insulin resistance, you must focus on exercising your muscle cells as well.
Exercising is important for body strength and increasing your muscle mass. When you focus on building muscle mass, you are essentially enabling your body to store more glucose. Why, you might ask? Well, the thing is that your muscles are where most glucose is stored without getting turned into fats. So, if you have more muscles, you will have more space to store excess glucose.
