CSN-CommunityPost-PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) and Diabetes

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) afflicts millions of women. It has been termed as a form of prediabetes because the situation has much in common. What can we get from the polycystic ovary syndrome story?

What is PCOS?

 Polycystic ovary syndrome is a condition of hormones. Based on how PCOS is explained, somewhere from 5% to 20% of American and European females have it. It is the common reproductive hormone disease of women of childbearing age and the number one reason for female infertility.

PCOS is commonly diagnosed when a woman has:

• Very irregular or absent periods.`

• Elevated male sex hormones can lead to male pattern hair growth on the face and body, with hair loss and acne on the head.

• Ovaries with high numbers of "cysts," which are groups of follicles assumed to produce eggs. Inside PCOS, the eggs aren't released, and the follicles continue growing and clump into cysts.

Some other symptoms include skin discolorations, painful periods, depression, mood swings, lack of sex drive, and fatness around the waist. It's an unpleasant situation, affecting appearance, mood, general health, and fertility. It's also connected to heart disease and diabetes.

Diabetes and PCOS very similar

 Same Type 2 diabetes, polycystic ovary syndrome, usually begins with insulin resistance. In research, 50% to 90% of women who have PCOS are insulin resistant. As per the American Diabetes Association, insulin resistance leads the body to produce high insulin levels, just as in early-stage Type 2 diabetes.

In many women, insulin stimulates the production of male hormones like testosterone. The male hormones lead to facial hair, acne, and baldness and may suppress the female hormones that release eggs in the ovaries. Other hormones look disturbed also. In conclusion, women with polycystic ovary syndrome usually can't get pregnant.

Investigators in Australia found that females who had PCOS were 3 to 5 times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than females who didn't have PCOS. As per other research from the Medical College of Virginia, up to 27% of premenopausal women with Type 2 diabetes are also diagnosed with PCOS.

Polycystic ovary syndrome has also been linked with Type 1 diabetes. Around 25% of women with Type 1 have PCOS, according to one research.

 What causes PCOS? 

How do women with this situation become insulin resistant in the initial place? Several seem to have it at birth or even in early childhood.

In Type 2 diabetes, as in obesity, specialists like to blame patients for not exercising and overeating. You can't say that about PCOS. Because a disorder of one-year-olds can't be blamed on laziness or overeating, what makes this insulin resistance and other hormonal disturbance?

The three documented causes of diabetes are genetics, eating refined carbohydrates, and exposure to environmental chemicals.

Research from Alabama found that a sister of a woman with polycystic ovary syndrome has about a 32% chance of having it. Her mother has roughly a 20% chance, compared to less than 10% chance for the study's average woman. So there is a genetic factor.

Genes give you a tendency, though. Something has to set it off, and researches show several chemicals that may be involved. According to Natural Health Solutions for PCOS, organic pollutants such as PCBs and triclosan, plastics, for example, bisphenol A, and heavy metals may disturb hormones. This can occur to a baby in the womb and stay with her for a lifetime.

The same chemicals are strongly linked with fatness and diabetes. They are sometimes referred to as EDCs (endocrine-disrupting chemicals) or EHDs (environmental hormone disruptors), and there are a lot of them.

Diabetes, PCOS, and obesity are the best thought of as environmental conditions. It may be that fatness develops to store chemicals like bisphenol A out of the bloodstream.

Diet is also essential. Refined carbohydrates, which include white flour and sugars, seem to promote both PCOS and diabetes.