6: How to improve your insulin and PCOS symptoms by managing your stress

This!  If you only listen to one episode over the next few weeks- THIS is the episode.  I can’t wait for you to hear this interview with Dimity because her story because it is so real and relatable.  Dimity is a super busy psychologist, flying all over Australia to work on some pretty harrowing jobs. Needless to say stress was HIGH.  But even though she was preaching every day to others about what stress does to the body, she had no idea just how much it was affecting her PCOS symptoms- especially her acne, fatigue and fertility. This doesn’t mean that she had to quit her job.  Instead, we just made a few critical tweaks to her diet and lifestyle and the symptoms she’d been told by her gynae were just ‘her normal’ started to resolve.  

Highlights, takeaways and quick wins:

• High stress and lack of sleep can cause our insulin to skyrocket- even when we are eating exactly the same diet. 
• Insulin is what causes our testosterone to rise which stimulates acne, contributes to infertility and weight gain
• We don’t have to eat perfectly to improve our insulin.  
• Hangry attacks are a real thing- and are likely a big sign that your insulin isn’t working properly. 
• Treating the root cause of PCOS can dramatically reduce the risk of pregnancy complications when you do conceive.
• Fertility: AMH test for egg count is a really inaccurate test, but often used by fertility centres to get you to spend money and freeze your eggs.
• Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association  showed that low AMH diminished ovarian reserve was not associated with infertility
• Actually they found that women with a low AMH have an 84% chance of getting pregnant within 12 months, compared with 75% of those who had a normal AMH.  
• Eating less and exercising more is very rarely the answer for PCOS weightloss. 
• Weight gain is not your fault- it’s generally due to insulin
• Weight loss will not ‘cure’ your PCOS symptoms

One of the most important things we did for Dimity was to identify that her insulin (the hormone that regulates our blood sugar) weren’t working properly and this was part of her PCOS ‘root cause’.  The second part was recognising that it wasn’t just her diet that was contributing to her high insulin, it was also stress. 

Up to 80% of women with PCOS have some insulin resistance which is contributing to their PCOS- so this is likely you too.  But you might not know this because you haven’t had the correct tests for insulin taken.  So I’ve created a download of the best tests for insulin to pick up early stage insulin resistance.

You can download those tests here:  https://thepcosnutritionist.com/resources/episode-6/ ‎