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| Part 1: Breaking the Cycle | Part 2: The Low GI Way |
Breaking the cycle
POLYCYSTIC Ovarian Syndrome, or PCOS, is more common than you think. In fact, Verity, the UK's self help group for women with the condition, estimates that up to 2.5 million women in the UK suffer from it.
Snippets of information about the condition pop up in the press every now and again, usually when a celebrity is said to have overcome the illness to achieve a much longed-for pregnancy or to explain weight fluctuations. It has been claimed that Victoria Beckham, Kym Marsh and Jools Oliver are famous sufferers.
But despite these high profile cases and the fact that it is one of the most common hormonal disturbances among pre-menopausal women, the truth behind PCOS remains relatively confined to those who know they suffer from it — and it seems even they can be sometimes misled.
The tiny follicles that grow on a woman's ovaries, which gave the condition its name, don't seem to cause problems themselves. It is the other, more obvious symptoms that usually drive the sufferer to see her GP in the first instance: weight gain, difficulty conceiving, mood swings, excess facial and body hair, adult acne, irregular periods or lack of energy.
Endocrinologist Professor Nadir Farid, a leading expert in PCOS who practices in London and Hertfordshire, explains that polycystic ovaries are actually a feature of a deeper problem — insulin resistance.
"Insulin resistance is the metabolic plague of this age," he says. "Some estimate that up to 50 per cent of people might be insulin resistant, so it's a major problem in our society today."
So why has this problem begun to emerge in modern times?
"Our genes were designed for survival in the Ice Age, when we were seeking food for most of our days and in the end ate very little.
"More recently, we are eating lots of food, including refined carbohydrates, we are not doing a whole lot of exercise and we're stressed. These factors have conspired to make many of us insulin resistant."
So Professor Farid seeks to treat the underlying cause of PCOS rather than the follicles on the ovaries themselves. "It is not a disease of the ovaries," he clarifies. "It is a disease of the whole body and the ovaries are just like alarm lights saying 'give me a hand!'"
He is visited by women who suffer from a range of unexplained complaints from minor to major, including non-recuperative sleep, in which the sufferer sleeps for several hours and yet awakes "feeling as if you have run ten miles"; hypoglycemia, causing the heart to 'flutter' between meals; sugar cravings and stubborn weight around the middle — despite, perhaps, vigorous exercise and careful calorie counting.
But the professor does not believe in treating insulin resistance and, in turn, PCOS, through invasive operations. His approach, the result of many years of scientific study by renowned specialists from around the world, could almost be seen as holistic. By encouraging busy, working women to manage their stress ("our advice for them is to find half an hour or an hour to themselves where they can just chill out") and to adopt a low Gl (glycemic index) diet, he has achieved fast and long-lasting results.
Reproduced with kind permission of Limited Edition Magazine.