PCOS healthcare is broken and here's how we can fix it.
You deserve more direction than "lose weight, here's birth control, and come back when you are trying to get pregnant."
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Hey there Voice Finder,
I have lots of new readers and want to properly introduce myself. Mucho gusto 🤝
I have spent the last 25 years helping people with PCOS lower insulin, balance blood sugar, and advocate for better healthcare. I also wrote the anti-diet book, Find Your Food Voice. I want you to know my opinions about PCOS, healthcare, and how dieting to promote weight loss is messing with all of it.
PCOS healthcare is broken and I am on a mission to change it. Here’s what I wish you knew so we can change it together.
Diets harm people with PCOS.
Assuming that PCOS can be fixed by reducing carbs, intermittent fasting, keto, or other diets neglects key research insight—and it treats people with PCOS as a math problem that can be “solved.” Long-term dieting worsens insulin and inflammation and also predicts binge eating. Even more, diet recommendations prevent access to health care and contribute to the oppression of higher weight people with PCOS. People with PCOS should not have to practice an eating disorder like anorexia nervosa to earn healthcare provider attention, praise, and care. I fight to end the normalization of disordered eating to treat PCOS.
People with PCOS are not just women.
Everyone with PCOS matters, not just women with PCOS. Nonbinary people and transmen live with PCOS too. I use inclusive language like “people with PCOS” rather than “cyster” or “women with PCOS” because everyone deserves to have a place to tend to their PCOS and feel welcome there.
People with PCOS are more than their ovaries.
I do not assume that all people with PCOS want to increase fertility or decrease androgens. Typical PCOS recommendations—such as “come back when you’re trying to get pregnant”—reinforce misogynistic and transphobic beliefs that people with ovaries are valued just for reproductive purposes. People with PCOS are valuable because of their humanity, not their ability to reproduce.
Weight-based discrimination in PCOS care needs to stop.
Everyone deserves access to reproductive medicine, gender-affirming surgery, and other health care interventions. Making weight-based decisions about who gets care is common health care practice…But it’s discriminatory and harms health.
People with PCOS deserve to be believed.
People with PCOS often explain they’re trying to exercise more or cut back on food—only to be faced with disbelief from their health care provider. I believe people with PCOS when they say they’ve tried. I lift up their concerns even if I don’t see them or understand them. We need to stop dismissing people with PCOS and stop minimizing their pain, fatigue, and other experiences.
PCOS is a chronic condition and cannot be cured.
While social media influencers may have “fixed” certain PCOS symptoms by eliminating a food group or using a special supplement, this is the exception, not the rule. Promoting these fixes minimizes the fact that PCOS is a chronic, lifelong condition that worsens with age. These supposed remedies also cause shame in those “still” suffering after following the directions. While some interventions can improve symptoms—such as increasing access, decreasing oppression, nutrition therapy, stress management, and movement—they do not cure PCOS. I do not promise a cure. Instead, I provide a safe space to explore options to make living with PCOS symptoms easier.
Now what?
What did I miss? Some things yet to unpack include:
Did you know there are zero FDA-approved medications to treat PCOS? Maybe we can start there?
Maybe we can change diagnostic criteria so you can be any age and still get diagnosed? I am 👀 at the midlife folks with undiagnosed PCOS. I know you are struggling!
Can we stop calling it a reproductive disorder?? It impacts so much more than the ovaries!
Tell me in comments what else we need to fix about PCOS healthcare.
If you want more, I invite you into PCOS Power. It’s my membership teaching you how to lower insulin, balance blood sugar, and better understand PCOS. Expect zero diet recommendations and instead ways to increase energy and decrease cravings sustainably. You will gain insight into which supplements to take, which labs to ask for, and have access to me to ask any questions anytime.
Listening to: