Polycystic Ovaries and the Sugar Connection

In recent years we keep hearing (mostly from women) more and more about the condition called polycystic ovary syndrome. And it's not for nothing: 10 to 20 percent of women of reproductive age around the world suffer from it. It's the most common endocrine condition in women.

And over the past decade there's been a 65 percent rise in women diagnosed with the syndrome. What's going on, when almost every "disease" is on a constant upward climb?

Polycystic ovary syndrome is a state of multiple follicles on the ovary, which gives them a polycystic appearance. The side effects usually come with weight gain, acne, ovulation problems, and an excess of male sex hormones that lead to excess hair growth and difficulty getting pregnant.

According to Western medicine it's considered a disease, but in the eyes of Eastern medicine it's more like irritable bowel.

In other words, when an expert doesn't know exactly what's going on, they create a prognosis. Western medicine is based primarily on the male body, so doctors — especially male doctors — don't have enough of a grasp of the female reproductive system.

One of the practitioners explains this at length in our women's health course, so you've probably also heard that it's unclear why it develops, and that there's no solution.

The only thing women with the syndrome are offered is birth control pills.

But why do so many women develop the syndrome in the first place? Well, beyond the fact that we all live industrialized, stressed lives and feed on processed foods — which create some kind of illness in all of us —

according to a study published in 2018, there's a direct link between insulin resistance and diabetes and polycystic ovaries. Or in other words: a sugar-based diet.

Insulin resistance is the inability to absorb and store sugar (glucose) properly, which is why insulin and glucose levels in the blood rise. Insulin is a critical hormone for the female reproductive system in the reproductive years.

When we live with so much glucose in the blood, all the metabolic functions in the body are impaired. And in women, this has a significant effect on menstruation and everything connected to the monthly cycle.

For the past hundred years we've been consuming so many foods that are empty carbohydrates, which break down rapidly in the blood into sugar — among them white flour and various kinds of sugar, in almost every food we eat. This creates ongoing inflammation that leads to polycystic ovaries and new diseases all the time. We're harming ourselves, but we've normalized consuming them to the point where most people don't even consider giving them up.

We've convinced ourselves that sugar is just calories, but sugar is responsible for most of the health damage we've gotten used to, and we don't make the connection. And very few are the ones who would recommend, or even consider, giving up sugar completely for the sake of their health.

Even though polycystic ovaries are something you can "live with," in my opinion it's a shame to normalize discomfort in any situation — and certainly when it touches the monthly cycle, since the cycle is an indication of health and of the feminine essence, which isn't taken seriously enough in our era.

A lot of my content actually focuses on women. The day before the above article went out in the newsletter, I got a message from a woman wondering whether I didn't think it was strange or arrogant for a man to create content for women's health.

She brought up gynecologists who thought that because they know everything about medicine, they therefore know everything about the female body, too.

I'm a health researcher and I know how to make accessible knowledge that, sadly, neither women nor men make accessible enough. And because so many women have sent me messages over the years with questions about the pill, polycystic ovaries, endometriosis, period pain, missing periods, nutrition for women, illness and recurring illness, I decided to take the initiative and create the most meaningful content I could.

I created a course on women's health with three women who specialize in women's health — and so I know things that, unfortunately, a lot of women don't know. So far the course has been changing the lives of the women who take it.

So does it seem strange to me?

That I help women because I chose to research and do things that a lot of women can do and don't? No. I'm proud of it.

Isn't it strange that, instead of taking in the content with curiosity and appreciation, there are women who'll go looking for what's wrong with a man who wants to help another person? (In my eyes there's no question of gender here at all.)