22 Apr Are You Suffering From PCOS?
Do you suffer from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)? It’s a common hormone disorder in women that affects 5-10% of women in their child-bearing years and the PCOS foundation states that less than 50% of women are diagnosed. This means there are MANY women that are walking around undiagnosed. PCOS can still affect you, even if you passed your child-bearing years. If you have PCOS, you can have a difficult time getting pregnant, have irregular periods, higher testosterone meaning more body hair, gain weight, depression, and more. Each woman can be affected very differently and have symptoms that another woman with PCOS doesn’t have.
Hormones are our communicators in our whole body. Read about what hormones are and how we can take care of them here. When a women is diagnosed with PCOS, it means the hormones have been disrupted in some way & it happens overtime. Years and years of hormone disruption can lead to these serious problems. Hormone disruption can stem from not getting the right nutrition in your body, toxic filled beauty products, stress, and more. It’s often a combination. Women also have an increased risk of getting PCOS if the mom, grandma, etc has it. (Don’t think that just because you have a certain gene means that you are meant to have those chronic diseases and there is nothing you can do. Epigenetics studies how important nutrition factors, environmental factors, can help support the genes to prevent these problems and turn “off” the genes that can cause these health issues. No fear! You are not doomed to have all these chronic diseases.)
It has been studied that women with PCOS have an increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. There are few studies that study women with PCOS and an increased risk of female cancers. There is a reason your hormones became disrupted to this point, so trying to find the cause & change your dietary & lifestyle habits can decrease your risk for further chronic diseases.
What Can You Do Naturally To Support PCOS
The goal to helping your PCOS naturally is to balance your hormones. You have to get your female hormones in check, as well as those male hormones in check. (Yes, as a woman, we will naturally have low doses of male hormones, which is fine. It’s when they are disrupted and we have too much of it is when it causes a problem.)
Lay off on all processed foods & wheat. Almost all wheat products in the grocery store are processed and are nutritionally void. Eliminating these will help reduce the risk of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
Stop using toxic beauty products. Many beauty products from soaps, shampoo, lotions, perfume, makeup, etc. have known endocrine disruptors that put a toxic load of chemicals into your body. If you don’t understand the ingredients of what is on the product, don’t use it. Focus on homemade, organic beauty products. www.ewg.org/skindeep is a really great place to check to see how toxic your current products are.
Dump the sugar. Don’t replace these sugars with artificial sweeteners either. If you do have something sweet, focus on natural sugars like raw honey and fruit. BUT, do not over do it. Your sugar intake should be a very low.
Intake plenty of omega-3. Omega-3s helps reduce inflammation, provide your body with essential fatty acids, and can help balance hormones. A study showed that omega-3s can lower the testosterone and help regulate female cycles. If you aren’t eating lots of wild-caught fish, start taking some cod liver oil. (Rosita is one of the only brands I recommend due to her transparency of the tests of the cod liver oil, the gentle extraction of the cod liver oil to preserve all the nutrients, and the quality of the wild-caught fish.)
Drink a cup or two of bone broth everyday. Read here about the amazing benefits of bone broth. Bone broth is filled with nutrients and essential amino acids that help aid in production & balance of hormones. It also helps rid all the excess hormones in the body, which creates the balance.
Add in probiotics and fermented foods. Creating a healthy strong microbiome is essential to creating that optimal communication in your body, immune system, control inflammation, helps absorption of nutrients, and more. Get a good quality probiotic and eat fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, raw yogurt, etc.
Your main diet should be full of quality organic meats and organic vegetables. Quality is important here due to wanting to reduce the toxic load in your body. Conventionally grown produce and conventional meat that is filled with hormones, antibiotics, and fed the wrong kind of food will lead you down a path of illness. Focus on quality & fill your body up with nutrients.
Exercise & Sleep. Plain & simple, giving your body a time to rest is essential to balancing hormones. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology shows that exercise can help improve inflammatory markers in PCOS. In an Oxford journal, a study showed that exercise can help reduce the risk of chronic diseases that come along with PCOS.
Start these lifestyle and dietary changes, so you can fall back in love with your health.
In Health,
Lahana Vigliano
