Fat, Spotty and Hairy – Sod’s Law Right?! Or is it PCOS?

If you look around, the description above fits many people. They can be mildly overweight to quite big. Look at their skin and its usually not great. Hairiness is a little harder to detect as it so easy to get rid of these days. Maybe this describes you. It feels terribly unfair that not only does the person have to put up with the extra weight, but why the bad skin and all that hair (except where you want hair)?

PCOS

This description funnily enough affects both sexes– again, look around you. In women or girls, it most commonly Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome or PCOS. In men, there’s no equivalent term for it but part of the problem is still the same. This means that management is not all the same, but along similar lines. Its quite a bad problem as to the average person, someone with these symptoms can come across as being self indulgent (with food), lazy (with skin care and hair) and joyless. Very unfair as it certainly is not true.

The classic PCOS person is overweight, hairy with bad skin. The not so classic ones- probably the more common ones may have amongst other things:

normal weight to underweight
acne
oily skin
dandruff
thinning hair or hair loss
horrible PMS (the b*@$ from hell to you!)
erratic periods to absent periods
cysts on ovary (not as common as you’d think!)
slightly miserable personality or tendency for depression or feeling down
multiple miscarriages
infertility

Some people exhibit none of this obviously and it only becomes obvious upon having multiple miscarriages or have other fertility issues. A lot of people think that it settles upon hitting menopause but it doesn’t as the main hormone involved is Insulin- which is produced throughout life. The main problem with PCOS is actually suspecting it. If you read this and it resonates with you either for yourself or for someone you know, its a big step forward. The average person with PCOS is usually missed as most doctors are trained to pick up the obvious clues. My mentor trained me to assume that everyone has it until proven otherwise. A really good way to approach it I feel as quite frequently blood results come back normal- but what we’re interested in knowing is the ratio of the hormones in relation to one another; not in relation to a set criteria.

This blog is mainly about wanting to put the word out there, to get the bells ringing and to make you think twice. In another blog I’ll cover what we can do to help ourselves and when you need to consider getting help. Research it more- there’s a lot of information out there and feel free to share in our comments.