February 8th, 2009
Kat Carney, the #1 Soulcyster and founder of www.soulcysters.net covers a research article on the prevalence of mood disorders among women with PCOS that appears in the January 2009 issue of Fertility and Sterility. It’s very positive that greater attention is being focused on these serious PCOS side effects – Catherine, PCOS Support blog Editor
By Kat Carney
www.soulcysters.net
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The prevalence of depression and anxiety among patients with polycystic ovary syndrome is high and warrants routine screening and aggressive treatment, investigators report in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
In a previous study, Dr. Anuja Dokras, at the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues identified high rates of depression (35 percent) among women with PCOS, substantially higher than the 10.7 percent rate among the comparison subjects. The current report is a follow-up to that study to determine the persistence of mood disorders and the incidence of new mood disorders.
Sixty of the original 103 women participated in the second survey, conducted an average of 22 months after the first survey.
The prevalence of depression increased to 40 percent. Fifteen percent had panic syndrome or other anxiety disorder, and 23 percent had binge-eating disorder. Fifty-seven percent (34) of the study subjects were affected by at least one mental health disorder.
The authors note that there were 11 new cases of depression. Of the 20 subjects diagnosed with depression at the early assessment, 5 (25 percent) still had major depressive disorder, despite ongoing treatment.
“The high prevalence rate of depression and persistence of new cases in this population suggests that initial evaluation of all women with PCOS should also include assessment of mental health disorders,” Dokras and associates advise.
They recommend that physicians administer the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders Patient Health Questionnaire (PRIME-MD PHQ) to their PCOS patients because it screens for eating disorders and anxiety, as well as depression.
They also suggest that patients be referred to dermatology and for weight loss counseling, since hirsutism, acne, and excess weight associated with PCOS may contribute to the emotional problems.
SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, January 2009.
http://www.soulcysters.net/mood-disorders-common-polycystic-ovary-syndrome-270599/
Read more about PCOS and Mood Swings at:
http://pcos.insulitelabs.com/PCOS-and-Mood-Swings.php
January 21st, 2009
By Dr. Nancy Dunne and Bill Slater
PCOS Review
Jan. 16, 2009
A recent study of women with PCOS at the UCLA School of Medicine has shown that the hormone insulin is directly related to the severity of hirsutism. Hirsutism is the presence of excessive facial and body hair.
The higher your insulin level, the more severe the hair problem. Unfortunately, women with PCOS are very likely to have insulin levels that are abnormally high. So it’s no surprise that hirsutism is a problem.
If you have an issue with abnormal facial or body hair, you’ll want to lower your insulin levels.
So how do you do that?
The first step is always to improve the quality of your diet so that your body does not have to produce so much insulin. This is extremely important because PCOS women tend to over-produce insulin in response to the standard American meal. Your meals need to be different, as we describe in our PCOS diet book.
www.ovarian-cysts-pcos.com/book
Second, you’ll need to make exercise part of your daily routine. Exercise helps you to control insulin.
Third, you can take supplements like chromium, which helps insulin do its job, and thus you need less insulin. This is why chromium is included in our d-pinitol formula.
www.ovarian-cysts-pcos.com/store/pinitol
Fourth, you can take pharmaceuticals such as metformin, which also help you to get by with less insulin. But a problem with metformin is its side effects.
Read the full article here.
www.ovarian-cysts-pcos.com/news73.html#sec2
January 5th, 2009
PCOS Health Review
By Dr. Nancy Dunne and Bill Slater
Laser therapy is commonly used to control unwanted hair growth. The laser energy damages the hair follicle and thus reduces hair growth.
One problem with laser treatment is that it does not always work. However, new research suggests that taking metformin (Glucophage) may improve laser treatment results.
It appears that the metformin reduced insulin resistance, which in turn reduced the rate of hair growth.
If you don’t want to take metformin because of its side effects, there are other healthy ways to
reduce insulin resistance and thus get better results if you intend to do laser therapy for facial or body
hair.
Here are three ways to reduce insulin resistance (and hirsutism) in a healthy fashion:
* Consume a diet that reduces insulin resistance, as described in our book.
* Get a lot more exercise.
* Take selected supplements that reduce insulin resistance such as d-pinitol.
Read the full article here: www.ovarian-cysts-pcos.com/news72.html
To subscribe to PCOS Health Review ; www.ovarian-cysts-pcos.com/pcos-subscribe.html
December 10th, 2008
By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD
Toronto Sun.com
Dec. 10, 2008
Thanks to support of Sun readers, Scarborough mom dares leave her house after 17 years of hiding away.
When she walked through the doors at the Sun, I didn’t recognize her.
Stephanie had changed beyond recognition. And not just on the outside.
When I first wrote about her back in May, Stephanie had been virtually house-bound for 17 years.
The Scarborough mother of four suffers from a medical condition that causes extreme hirsutism.
When I interviewed her in May, Stephanie, 35, had a full beard.
She suffers from polycystic ovarian syndrome, a hormonal illness characterized by irregular or no periods, acne, obesity, and excess hair growth.
Women with PCOS are at a higher risk for obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and uterine cancer. There is no cure.
Some women have a very mild form of the condition. Stephanie has the acute version.
As she told me, tearfully, at the time, she wouldn’t even go to events at her children’s school. Kids can be cruel and she feared her youngsters would be teased because of her appearance.
Stephanie first contacted me when I wrote about the government funding sex change operations.
Her young life had been destroyed by her medical condition, yet OHIP wouldn’t pay the estimated $6,000 in laser hair removal treatment she needed. She tried painful bleaching, waxing, shaving and other methods. They simply made it worse.
I was overwhelmed by the response of my readers. Support, and offers of cash came from right across the province. Barbara Harrison from the Spa Club in Ottawa contacted me to offer Stephanie free laser hair removal treatment.
She has now started that treatment with Kim Duignan at the Spa Club branch in Pickering. They have provided free treatments every week since June.
Now she is transformed. She’s all smiles and no longer hides behind long hair. She was even brave enough to pose for Sun photographer Alex Urosevic.
With stories like this, it’s usual to have “before” and “after” pictures. We have no before pics, because Stephanie wouldn’t have her photo taken “before”.
The only photograph we had of her was taken 20 years ago. Her hair is now in a stylish bob.
“I cut my hair. For me that was a part of hiding my face. I kept it long for all these years, so this is a huge, big deal,” she explained.
Eight months ago she wouldn’t answer the doorbell. Last week, she had enough confidence to attend a family wedding. This summer, she took the kids to the zoo.
Her oldest son is playing guitar in his school’s Christmas concert. For the first time, Stephanie plans to attend. From now on, she will go to all the concerts.
So far, Stephanie has had 17 laser hair removal treatments. By October, she could see they were working.
“The women at the Spa Club are the most beautiful women — inside and out,” Stephanie told me.
“These people are so compassionate, so understanding. They have seen me at my worst and they can’t believe that the government wouldn’t help me.”
Stephanie emphasizes there are other women out there who have the same condition. None get help from OHIP to deal with this heartbreaking syndrome that makes life so unbearable for them.
Stephanie is getting by with help from family and friends who’ve stuck by her. One picks her up and takes her to Pickering every week, another takes her out to lunch.
Her youngest son, Lucas, likes to stroke her soft face.
Now Stephanie wants to get her life back to normal. She’s looking for work. She wants to play hockey.
“I don’t want to look like a movie star,” she told me back in May. “I just want to be normal.”
Thanks to the Spa Club and the outpouring of support from Sun readers, she’s getting her wish.
“You gave me this opportunity and I am not going to blow it,” she said.
At this time of year, we all make lists and check them twice. We throng the malls looking for just the right gift. For Stephanie, the greatest gift was simply to be able to go shopping, without people staring.
Sometimes, the greatest gifts, are the simplest things of all.
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/christina_blizzard/2008/12/10/7692091-sun.html
