PCOS: Understanding the Hormone Imbalance
Alright, let's talk PCOS – Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It's incredibly common these days, and sadly, we're seeing it in younger and younger girls, sometimes as young as 13, 14, or 15. We're even seeing girls start their periods as early as nine or ten. That's a lot of hormone imbalances!
In this post, I want to break down what we generally see with PCOS, how I approach it, and the steps we can take. It's important to understand that it's not just about lowering androgen levels.
Key Characteristics of PCOS
What do we typically see with PCOS?
High levels of androgens.
Toxic levels of androgen metabolites (how your body breaks down androgens, which are male sex hormones). And women aren't supposed to have a lot of those.
Multiple cysts (polycystic) on the ovaries, and sometimes in the uterus or fallopian tubes.
This can cause really painful periods, a lot of cramping, and heavy bleeding.
Taking a Whole-Body Approach
As always, I advocate for a whole-body approach. In most cases, it's safe to start with some type of androgen-blocking herb.
Saw palmetto is a big one, and you can use many of the herbs we'd use for men.
Other helpful herbs include nettle and pumpkin seed.
I often use a product called Testa Quench, but there are more affordable options. Some products are aimed at prostate health, but we're focusing on the herbs themselves.
It's important to be cautious about supplements that contain a bunch of minerals and nutrients because they're often in toxic forms or not easily absorbed. So, it ends up being expensive pee and poop. We want to customize our nutrients, but a herbal formula can be added in safely, as long as you're not allergic to any of the herbs.
My Approach to PCOS
When I work with a client who has PCOS, my steps are generally the same. The only difference is that I often add that herbal androgen support right away, because we often already know the high androgen levels are there from previous testing.
However, we still want to start with our foundation:
Organic acids testing
Blood work
Genetics testing
Why don't we just work on the hormones?
Why We Address More Than Just Hormones
The thing is, your hormones are out of balance because your body is under chronic stress. This stress can come from mental stress, toxins, pathogens, heavy metals – all of these things cause dysfunction in your detoxification pathways, and your body doesn't prioritize hormone function.
The Genetic Component of PCOS
There can definitely be a genetic component to PCOS. Some women are genetically predisposed to having higher androgen levels.
Besides adding supplements to reduce androgen levels (which takes time – at least three months, it's not a quick fix like medication), you need to do other things. You need to give your body the tools to heal because you're in fight or flight – you're running from a tiger, whether it's a mental tiger, a toxic tiger, or a pathogen tiger, or a combination of all of them. Your body is under stress.
To heal your hormones, you need to reduce the stress and repair the body.
Foundation Labs and Key Support
Our foundation labs help us do that – genetics, blood work, organic acids testing. I probably say that a million times: start there.
Also, get neurotransmitter support on board. Your brain needs to be balanced 100%. You've got to stop the fight or flight response. So, balance your brain.
Work on your detox pathways because that's a big issue. Your body isn't properly detoxifying your hormones. We see this on the DUTCH test.
It's critical to work on all three phases of detoxification: phase one, phase two, and phase three. You can find a complete breakdown of what each phase does in the appendix of my book, "Heal Yourself".
So, in these foundation labs, we're going to see how to repair the detox pathways, and we're going to support the brain. The thyroid also plays a big role; often, we see hypothyroidism or sometimes Hashimoto's combined with PCOS. There can be a plethora of things going wrong in the body, not just one thing. It's not just PCOS; there will be other dysfunction happening first, and the body is just like, "Hey, we can't think about reproduction right now," and things start to go haywire.
Supporting the Body's Repair Processes
So, we need to support the GI tract, give the body the tools to start to repair detox pathways, and to start to repair, you need to heavily focus on your mitochondrial function. We're seeing massive mitochondrial dysfunction since COVID. And guess what? If you don't have ATP, which is your body's fuel, you're going to repair nothing.
So, we need to do this pre-work before we even really start focusing on hormones. Once you've got that foundation support on board, you've been working on it, and you've got the herbal support on board for the high androgen levels, then it's time to run a DUTCH test.
I hope this blog post is helpful!