PCOS! Is It Going To Be You Now??

We have all had our times of being on a strict diet for a while and then binge-eating after depriving ourselves of some mouth-watering food. Most of us think it is alright to binge eat because you don't go through the guilt of it after having restrained yourself from eating those foods for a while. But, have you wondered if this eating behavior can have any effect on your health?

PCOS was once thought to be a disease common in only obese or overweight women. But then, I met a few friends who had a normal BMI (normal weight for height) and still had PCOS. This got me thinking- Is it only body weight and genetics that cause PCOS or is it something more? So, I took this up as a topic for my thesis and found a striking difference in the diet and lifestyle patterns between women with and without PCOS.

PCOS or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is a hormonal disorder which is characterized by irregular menstruation. In my study, I used 60 subjects (30 with PCOS, 30 without PCOS) to assess their diet and lifestyle patterns. I found that more than half of the women with PCOS indulged in binge eating or emotional eating. The exercise frequency and regularity was also found to be very different in both the groups. Another important observation was, though few subjects were underweight or had a normal BMI, they had an apple-shaped body type that put them at a higher risk to develop heart diseases.

Your body secretes insulin in response to what you eat, what exercise you do and several other factors. Binge eating brings about a change in the levels of insulin and other hormones in the body. This increase and decrease in the insulin levels, whenever there is a change in the eating habits and lifestyle patterns, can make the body to start reacting in different ways and in some people, will show up as PCOS. In severe cases, medicines are required to correct the hormone levels. But in most cases, exercise and diet will suffice.

To conclude, PCOS is a common problem seen among a lot of women today. There is no single cause for this disease. There are several factors that can trigger off this condition, and make it difficult for a woman to control her weight, conceive or prevent herself from developing other diseases like diabetes.
As the saying goes, prevention is always better than cure, are you ready to make lifestyle changes today?