Swaying under special circumstances Part 3 PCOS
Swaying under special circumstances Part 3 PCOS
PCOS, or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, is a very common condition believed to be suffered by 1 out of 10-15 women (and this number may actually be higher because many people have some symptoms of PCOS without having the condition full-blown). It occurs when hormones get out of balance in a woman’s body and can affect fertility negatively.
This hormonal imbalance can create challenges for swaying both pink and blue – for pink, PCOS not only makes it harder to conceive, but actually causes your hormones to shift in a way that favors boy conceptions, while at the same time making it more difficult to follow all three of the TTC girl diets. For blue, PCOS can make it tougher to conceive and the medications often prescribed for PCOS can make you more likely to conceive a baby girl and gaining weight on a blue-friendly diet may aggravate PCOS. But don’t despair, there are ways that we can tweak the sways for both genders to help you stay healthy and conceive the baby you’ve been dreaming of.
:crawl:What is PCOS?
PCOS occurs when the body develops a condition called insulin resistance. Normally, after you eat a meal, some of your food is converted by your liver into glucose, a very basic, chemically uncomplicated sugar that provides easy to use energy to the cells. This causes the amount of glucose in your blood****** to skyrocket. But your body doesn’t use glucose well alone; it needs a second chemical, the hormone insulin, to be able to metabolize the glucose. Insulin helps glucose make it into your cells where it then can be used as energy. In addition, insulin bundles up extra glucose into a form called glycogen, which it then stores for later use. This process keeps your blood sugar from getting too high.
Unfortunately, after a lifetime of eating foods that provide the body with massive doses of glucose (refined carbs and sugar, eating excessive calories) our cells start to get a little bit “deaf” to the effects of insulin. They don’t respond to it at regular levels any more and your body must begin to produce more and more insulin to compensate for that. Lifestyle factors such as being overweight, constant snacking, and lack of exercise exacerbate this problem.
Over time, the pancreas, the organ that produces insulin, gets tired. It just can’t make enough insulin to cope with this situation and extra glucose builds up. Your blood sugar stays high all the time, makes it extra hard for your body to lose fat, makes it easier for your body to store fat, and this road eventually leads to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, blindness, nerve damage, and kidney disease.
In terms of fertility, the excess glucose triggers an odd chain of events. High insulin levels stimulate the ovaries to make extra testosterone. This excess testosterone causes the signs and symptoms related to PCOS (see below), can stop you from ovulating, and can make the eggs you do ovulate, lower in quality and less likely to produce a viable pregnancy.
:crawl:Why do we get PCOS??
Well, that’s a pretty stupid design, isn’t it?? The very thing we need to provide energy to our cells, can actually go haywire and render us infertile, even eventually KILL us!
PCOS, like Type 2 diabetes, is considered a “disease of civilization” meaning that humans in their native environment, probably didn’t get it (we’ll talk more about this below). PCOS was not even described by the medical establishment until 1935 and it was a rare disorder. Yet it is currently so widespread that many doctors no longer refer to it as a disease and consider it more of a genetic variation. In fact, it may be that 75-100% of all women would eventually develop PCOS if their diet and lifestyle promoted it strongly enough. Some women just seem to develop it more easily than others, and particular ethnic groups and the women in certain families are much more likely to develop PCOS than the general population. Some evidence indicates that the youngest woman in a family of mostly brothers may be more likely to develop PCOS than others are.
:crawl:Evolutionarily speaking, then, is there any POINT to PCOS?
Medical research is beginning to conclude that when a condition is widespread throughout the general population, that usually means that condition carries with it some sort of survival benefit that in humanity’s native environment; aided in survival and/or passing down genes to future generations.
PCOS is no exception – if food was scarce and you frequently went for days or even weeks without a good meal, the person whose body was the best at keeping blood sugar elevated for longer after eating and hanging onto every calorie it could in the form of fat, had a distinct advantage over the skinny mini’s who immediately burn off every scrap they put into their mouths.
Even higher testosterone itself carries with it survival benefits – a person who may need to struggle for survival, and even fight over scarce resources, NEEDS to be able to make testosterone. Testosterone in small amounts is imperative for building and maintaining muscle mass, and testosterone in women has been linked to higher sex drive as well. So if one person’s body was a little better at keeping T levels adequate even in times of scarcity, that person would have an advantage for competition for mates and resources, and may be interested in mating when others with lower T levels are not.
Beyond that, some genes are more functional in males vs. females but both genders still carry the genetic blueprints even if they are less important for one gender. An example would be nipples in men – they don’t strictly need them, of course, but since women DO need them, both sexes still develop them, just in different forms. PCOS may be a vestigial form of some metabolic process that is highly important to male survival, but in women serves either no purpose or one that is much less important.
One other side effect of PCOS that is important to us here is ~warning~ nothing other than my own speculation. It occurs to me that in a time of famine, if very little meat was available and people were subsisting largely on pure carbohydrates, the tendency would be for many more girls than boys to be born…maybe even exclusively girls if things got bad enough. If a culture turned its back on meat all together by choice or circumstance, and went entirely vegetarian, over time this could lead to drastic imbalances in the gender ratio. In this scenario, it would then be a “genetically smart” strategy to be able to produce an excess of sons. So if one woman’s body takes a sudden excess of carbs and exchanges them into testosterone and then has 2 sons instead of 4 daughters, those lads may then have a very large genetic advantage – even IF due to PCOS, the woman was only able to achieve half the number of pregnancies! PCOS may be one mechanism by which Mother Nature balances gender ratio and part of the reason why gender ratio hovers at 50-50 regardless of a culture’s diet.
:crawl:How do I know if I have PCOS??
The symptoms of PCOS include acne, weight gain (particularly the “apple” shape), trouble losing weight that may get worse when you eat a lot of carbs, hair growth on places like the face, chest, and neck, thinning hair on the top of the head, irregular, infrequent periods, bleeding between menstrual cycles, repeated ovarian cysts with pelvic pain (your doctor will see these cysts on ultrasound), and frequent positive OPK even when you’re not ovulating. MANY if not all women have some of these symptoms some of the time and do not have PCOS and others have no visible symptoms other than unexplained infertility but DO have PCOS.
For a real diagnosis, you must have your doctor run a series of blood tests that will measure your testosterone level, your blood sugar, your insulin levels, cholesterol, blood pressure, (for a complete list see PCOS) and also to rule out other things that can cause similar symptoms, like thyroid conditions. You will most likely also need a pelvic ultrasound to check for ovarian cysts (and just a warning to those who have never had this done, it is an internal exam and an ultrasound wand must actually be inserted into your vagina…this is a lot less scary than it sounds and the techs are very kind and sensitive to your feelings.)
It may be a good idea to have these tests run before you sway (especially if swaying for pink) if there is ANY doubt in your mind as to whether you have PCOS or even just mild insulin resistance, because the IGD, FGD, and “crash and burn” variation of LE Diet where people focus more on empty carbs, may aggravate PCOS and make it less likely to get your DG if you attempt to follow it. (The whole-grain, high-vegetable variation of the LE Diet is actually quite good for PCOS as is the HE Diet, with a couple of minor changes we will discuss below.)