June 30th, 2010
Whenever you go to a supermarket or one of those giant discount warehouses, be ready to be tempted by free samples which could derail your efforts to lose weight for better management of PCOS symptoms.
Delicious foods are even more likely to trigger overeating when you come across them unexpectedly.
One free sample may OK. But it tends to excite the taste buds and makes you feel hungry when you didn’t before, leading to you accepting further offerings.
Try to avoid them altogether and reward yourself with a healthy snack when you get home.
June 29th, 2010
As we said last week, success at losing weight to improve management of your PCOS symptoms is essentially about gaining self-control. But the latter is just another skill that can be mastered, like playing tennis.
To achieve self-discipline, try giving up something small but significant. For example, drop a regular habit like eating an afternoon snack or reduce the number of coffees you drink each day by one.
Another idea is to have a month when you ban yourself from putting anything off to another day, whether it’s paying the bills or emptying the dishwasher.
It could become a good habit to adopt, which, in turn, will hone your willpower to complete a difficult but eminently achievable goal like losing a certain amount of weight that you have in mind.
June 28th, 2010
Women with high blood-sugar levels face a greater danger of developing cancer than men, according to new research.
High blood sugar is a classic symptom of PCOS-linked pre-diabetes. The latter condition, which is reversible, can develop from unhealthy diets containing excess sugar, salt or fat and is linked to a range of different cancers in each gender.
Swedish scientists funded by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) examined blood sugar levels in 274,126 men and 275,818 women from Norway, Austria and Sweden with an average age of 44.8. They then followed up a decade later to see how many had developed or died from cancer.
Their report said: “Significant increases in risk among men were found for … cancer of the liver, gallbladder and respiratory tract, for … thyroid cancer and multiple myeloma and for … rectal cancer. In women, significant associations were found for … cancer of the pancreas … urinary bladder cancer and for cancer of the uterine corpus, cervix uteri and stomach.”
Lead researcher Dr Tanja Stock added: “The results suggest that, for women, the higher the level of sugar in the blood, the higher the risk. For men, there was still an association, but it was weaker.”
June 25th, 2010
A new, nine-year study has shown that participants who ate the most fried food increased their risk of PCOS-linked metabolic syndrome by 25%, compared with those who ate the least.
More surprisingly, the risk of developing heart-damaging metabolic syndrome was 34% higher among those who drank just one can of diet soda a day, compared with those who drank none.
Scientists are now intent on discovering whether the result is due to some kind of chemical in the diet soda or if there is a hitherto unsuspected common factor among diet soda drinkers.
