Use Food as Your Medicine!

“Beautiful Banting Baby” I really like Gabi’s story because it is simple, clear-cut PCOS. But like every other story, there’s always a twist… I knew Gabi well, she had been my patient and friend a few years back in 2009, looking to lose a bit of weight in her early 20’s. We both lived in Mozambique at the time. Gabi had been on the pill consistently since she was 18 years old. In early 2016 when Gabi and Hugo got engaged, Gabi decided to get off the pill as Hugo and her wante

Figure 1 Keto Diet In early 2010, when I was diagnosed with PCOS (officially, because I knew something was off for a while), I didn’t know what a Keto (Ketogenic) Diet was. In fact, I probably only learned about Keto after I had my second child, 4 years ago. The name “Keto”, anyway. I was well aware of what a strict low carb diet was, and I did follow one to help conceive. I didn’t follow this diet under anyone’s recommendation. I just thought that if losing weight was going

On my last blog I alluded to the fact that some women, maybe MANY women, with PCOS could help or reverse their condition through dietary and lifestyle modifications. This is not new to the medical community, and most women with PCOS have tried to do just that. It is a known fact that when women with PCOS lose a bit of weight, their condition improves. One of the other most common symptoms of PCOS is irregular menstruation and anovulation. When women with PCOS lose a bit of we

The current conventional PCOS treatment focuses on managing the patient’s individual signs and symptoms. The specific treatment prescribed will include medications and/or lifestyle modifications. This is called disease management. At any one time a patient might be on 2 or more medications (Figure 1) and trying real hard to “eat less and move more” in order to see metabolic and reproductive improvements. Figure 1 Polypharmacy My goal, whether through IDM (Intensive Dietary Ma

PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) is a syndrome whose diagnosis is given by exclusion. A "Syndrome" is defined as “a group of symptoms that together are characteristic of a specific disorder, disease, or the like”. Often in medicine when something is characterized as a “syndrome” it is also a “diagnosis by exclusion” which is defined as “a diagnosis made by excluding those diseases to which only some of the patient's symptoms might belong, leaving one disease as the most likel

Below I will list the most common signs and symptoms of PCOS presented to clinicians and their prevalence in women with PCOS. As noted before, PCOS is the most common endocrine (hormonal) condition of women of reproductive age, presenting with metabolic and reproductive concerns. Also noted, is the importance of establishing the proper diagnostic protocol to determine who and how many women are afflicted by PCOS, and thereafter the appropriate treatment plan. In PCOS, “..as m