A PMOS (PCOS) Roadmap: My Path To Remission & How To Find Yours (Episode #48)

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This is part two of Jess's PMOS (formerly PCOS) series. Last week covered what the condition is, why the name change matters, and how conventional medicine has failed women with this diagnosis. 

This week is the practical follow-up — organized around the primary goal of blood sugar regulation and insulin sensitivity (the metabolic component of the condition, and hence the new name). Jess also covers supplements, reducing your toxic load, and weaves her own two-year path to remission throughout.

 In this episode, Jess addresses:

• Why lifestyle changes/habits are the foundation for addressing PMOS
• What those lifestyle changes are, starting with the connection between blood sugar regulation and hormonal balance 
• Nutrition strategies specifically for PMOS: protein, fat, fiber, food pairing, meal timing, and why there is no one-size-fits-all diet
• Why resistance training moves the needle more than cardio for insulin resistance 
• How chronic stress and cortisol dysregulation drive PMOS symptoms — and what it actually looks like to address stress versus just manage it
• The circadian rhythm research specific to PMOS — why women with this condition might produce melatonin at the wrong time, and the connection to mitochondrial dysfunction
• Sleep as a hormonal and metabolic lever — what even one bad night does to insulin sensitivity and why consistency matters
• Supplements with evidence for improving PMOS: inositol, magnesium, berberine, omega-3s, vitamin D, and zinc
• Endocrine disruptors — where they're hiding and how to start reducing your exposure
• The order of operations Jess followed on her own two-year path to remission 

 This is the episode Jess wishes had existed when she was twenty-six with three diagnoses and no roadmap.

Connect with Jess:

• Instagram: @vitalbalancewithjess 
• Website: jessicatrone.com
• Email: vitalbalancewithjess@gmail.com

DISCLAIMER: The content shared in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, is not a substitute for the advice of medical doctors or practitioners and should not be used to prevent, diagnose, or treat any condition. Consult with a physician prior to beginning any fitness, health, or wellness regimen or routine.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Vital Balance with Jess, the podcast for women who want real life strategy, no BS conversations about women's health. I'm your host, Jess. While building my career as an attorney, I struggled with hormone imbalances, anxiety, metabolic dysfunction, and a healthcare system that left me with more questions than answers. So I took matters into my own hands. And here's what I discovered. The real magic happens when you get curious, start asking questions, and listening to your body like it actually knows what it's doing. This podcast isn't about weight loss, physical appearance, or rigid wellness routines. It's about agency. I want you to know just how much control you have over your everyday well-being. And I want you to experience stable energy, predictable moods, a sharp yet calm mind, and a body you can trust. Because when women are well, our homes and communities thrive too. Let's get started. Welcome to Vital Balance. I'm Jess. If you haven't listened to last week's episode yet, I'd really encourage you to go back and start there before diving into this one. Episode 47 was part one of this conversation. I covered the recent renaming of PCOS to PMOS and explained what the condition actually is, the role of insulin resistance and cortisol in driving the condition, why so many women have been failed by the conventional medical system, and a lot of my own personal story with it. This episode is going to build on top of that one. But to very quickly recap last week's episode, PMOS is the new name for PCOS. PMOS stands for polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome. PMOS at its core is a condition of hormonal and metabolic dysfunction. For most women, insulin resistance is the primary driver. Insulin sits higher in the hormonal hierarchy than your reproductive hormones, which means when insulin is dysregulated, everything downstream is affected. And there are different reasons for insulin resistance. Diet and nutrition is, of course, a big one, but chronic cortisol elevation from stress is another one, and cortisol sits above insulin in that hierarchy, which is why this condition is not just about what you eat. It is a whole system or whole body problem. Today is the practical follow-up: the how to. What can actually be done to address PMOS and work toward remission of your symptoms through lifestyle changes? Now, I do want to be clear, I am not anti-medication and I am not telling anyone to stop taking medications or stop working with their providers. Having a knowledgeable doctor is very important. But what I want to walk through today is what actually addresses root causes rather than symptom suppression. So I've broken this down into three steps. But the first step addresses five different methods to go about achieving that step. Before I start, I want to remind everyone that I am not a physician or a medical practitioner. So anything I say on this podcast should not be used to diagnose or treat any condition. This is for educational purposes only. Okay, step number one: regulate your blood sugar. Everything I'm going to discuss in step one is a lever for improving insulin sensitivity and stabilizing blood sugar. Okay, so these methods that I'm going to discuss are not a hierarchy within themselves. They are all important and they all compound each other. And the more of them you can address simultaneously, the faster you will see results. But they are also not all or nothing. So you can just start with one and take your time with it because addressing or improving just one of these factors could help quite significantly. Okay, so the first method is your nutrition, right? Which is probably what most of us expected to hear. Nutrition was the first thing I changed personally after I was diagnosed, or rather after I decided to accept that I had the condition. But this change in my diet did make an immediate and noticeable difference. Not because I found the perfect diet, but because I finally understood what my body was actually struggling with. And once I understood that insulin resistance was the core issue, I learned what insulin resistance is, how it manifests in our body. And then I learned why certain foods and certain ways of eating, as well as other lifestyle choices I was making, was making the insulin resistance worse. I grew up knowing very little about nutrition and eating in a way that was essentially blood sugar chaos. A lot of refined carbohydrates, very little protein, minimal healthy fats. So the first step for me when I started experimenting with how my body operated is that I switched to whole foods. So that means I completely eliminated processed foods or essentially anything that came in a bag or box. I also learned how to read, interpret, and understand nutrition labels, which you actually don't have to read very often if you're sticking to whole foods. But for instance, if you want to purchase, say, yogurt or cheese, those can be considered whole foods, but they do have nutritional labels. And yes, sometimes there are unsavory ingredients added to those items. So that is why you want to know how to read nutrition labels. So for instance, if I wanted to eat plain yogurt, I would check the nutrition label to make sure it was just plain yogurt only without any additives. This change made a very fast and impactful effect in not just my symptoms, but also how I felt. I had more energy and I was less anxious. And looking back, I was probably dealing with significant nutrient deficiencies. So there was probably a compounding effect of just getting actual nutrients into my body consistently for the first time. So I encourage you, if you're starting with this, to focus on whole real foods. Whatever you eat from a bag or box will likely have very few nutrients and is likely contributing to metabolic dysfunction because the vast majority of the time, whatever is in the bag or box is full of refined carbs that will convert to sugar very quickly in your body. Not to mention all the unsavory, non-food ingredients that are added to these products that your body likely doesn't even recognize as food and which is contributing to chronic inflammation. The foundational principle is this every meal is either stabilizing your blood sugar or destabilizing it. Practically, this means eating well-balanced meals, which I'm sure most of us have heard about well-balanced meals, but what exactly does that mean? Well, for starters, and most importantly, it means do not eat carbohydrates in isolation. Always pair carbs with protein, healthy fats, and fiber. Doing this slows digestion and prevents rapid glucose absorption. The order in which you eat your food also matters more than most people realize. Some people don't even know that. So eating your vegetables, so your fiber and your protein before your carbohydrates meaningfully reduces the blood sugar spike from those carbs. The fiber and protein create a buffer in the gut so that by the time the carbohydrates arrive, they're absorbed much more slowly. And so that release of glucose into the bloodstream is more like a slow drip rather than a hose on full blast. And then also consider what carbohydrates you're eating, right? So we talked about sticking to whole foods. So if you're sticking to whole foods, a lot of those carbohydrates are already naturally going to be the healthier, complex carbohydrates. These are the three most basic but impactful decisions you can make when it comes to changing your diet in a way that supports metabolic health. Number one, stick to whole foods and eliminate processed food. Number two, eat well-balanced meals. And number three, pay attention to the order in which you eat your food. As I often say on most episodes, we are bioindividuals. So aside from those three larger suggestions that I just said, those will work for all people. Beyond that, there are caveats and nuances that will come with each woman's diet when she's trying to manage her PMOS. For instance, some women do well with lower carbohydrate approaches, some do better with moderate carbs from whole food sources, which are typically going to be complex carbs rather than simple carbs. Simple carbs is really where you get into the issue with blood sugar regulation. Complex carbs are much better in that respect. A lot of it depends on your activity level, your stress levels, how insulin resistant you are to begin with, etc. The non-negotiable though is blood sugar regulation. How you achieve that may look a little different from how I achieve that. Pay attention to your own body. Accumulate data. If you're serious about this, I encourage you to listen to episode number 17, where I discuss two tools for measuring your blood glucose in real time. Those will give you insight directly into your body and how it is handling what you eat and how you're living. You can then use that data to alter your diet as necessary, as well as the other factors I'm gonna discuss when it comes to blood sugar regulation. Which leads me to strategy number two, resistance training. Movement is the second strategy for obtaining insulin sensitivity, and the type of movement matters, which is something I wish someone had told me earlier, because I spent years doing cardio and wondering why it wasn't moving the needle as much as I expected. So while cardio is a good way to utilize excess energy, so if you eat carbs and then you engage in cardio exercise, you will use that glucose you just ate as fuel. But what many people don't realize is that the majority of us are eating way too many carbohydrates and doing way too little cardio for that energy ratio to play out the way we think it will or the way we want it to. Resistance training, on the other hand, can go a long way towards actually combating insulin resistance. And here's why. Skeletal muscle is one of the primary sites of glucose uptake in the body. Muscles are glucose sponges. They keep glucose out of the bloodstream. And the more muscle you have, the larger that glucose absorbing capacity becomes, the larger your sponge is. So resistance training is much more effective at promoting insulin sensitivity than cardio. Don't get me wrong, cardio has a lot of benefits, especially especially cardiovascular benefits. I mean, pretty much all forms of exercise have benefits, but if your goal is to reverse insulin resistance, I would encourage you to skip the cardio and focus on resistance training. Now, I do want to briefly address HIT workouts. HIT stands for high intensity interval training because there is pretty solid evidence for this form of exercise to improve insulin sensitivity and metabolic function. And HIT exercises are sort of a combination of cardio and resistance training. And it typically requires getting your heart rate much higher than steady state cardio. Essentially, it's intense bursts followed by rest that creates a strong metabolic stimulus without that prolonged cortisol elevation that long steady state cardio can produce. There are some people who say that HIIT workouts are too stressful, and most women with hormonal imbalances shouldn't do them, especially if they have cortisol dysregulation. And look, this that might be true for some women. Again, we are all bioindividuals, and I encourage you to figure out what works for your body, but I also encourage you not to avoid HIT workouts because you've heard that or because you think they're too difficult. Yes, HIIT workouts are difficult and not all that fun. They're very challenging, but they're typically pretty short. And in most women, it can help them improve their metabolic health. Now, I wouldn't suggest doing a HIT workout every day, but even once or twice per week can be very beneficial. I employed HIT workouts into my routine when healing from PMOS, and it definitely helped me. And I'm almost positive I probably had some type of cortisol dysregulation. So again, don't necessarily let that deter you. I also want to give a shout out to yoga and walking. So these are obviously much gentler forms of movement, but adding these in addition to resistance training and other forms of exercise can help to move the lever forward even faster. Like I said, I did yoga five days per week when I was trying to minimize my PMOS symptoms, and I viewed it not so much as exercise, but as stress relief, which I deeply needed. Walking can make a big difference too, particularly after meals. Even a 10-minute walk after eating has been shown to meaningfully blunt the post-meal blood sugar spike. It's also gentle on our bodies, on our stress levels, and the research on it is genuinely impressive for something so simple. I mean, we as humans were designed to walk and move our bodies. The right exercise at the right intensity at the right times is what moves the needle. Perhaps most importantly, be consistent. Some movement is better than none, even if it's only a few minutes. Number three, sleep. Sleep is not just recovery. It is an active hormonal and metabolic process, and what happens or doesn't happen during sleep has direct effects on insulin sensitivity, cortisol regulation, appetite hormones, and more. Even one night of poor sleep meaningfully impairs insulin sensitivity the following day. And I can personally attest to this after wearing a continuous glucose monitor for three months. I was shocked how much of an impact sleep had on my body's ability to regulate blood sugar. Studies have shown that a single night of sleep restriction can reduce insulin sensitivity by as much as 25%. For a woman with PMOS who is already working with impaired insulin signaling, that's six that is significant. Chronic sleep deprivation compounds that effect and also elevates cortisol, increases ghrelin, which is your hunger hormone, so you're gonna be gonna feel a lot hungrier. It decreases leptin, which is our satiety hormone, and it drives carbohydrate cravings, which is why sleep-deprived women with PMOS often find themselves in a blood sugar and craving cycle, and it just feels impossible to break. Consistency matters here too, just like anything when it comes to our health. So if you're struggling with sleep, how can you change it? Well, for starters, going to bed and waking up at the same time every day anchors our circadian rhythm and regulates the hormonal cascade that depends on it. And most people aren't good at this. They will go to sleep at different times based on what they have planned or whether they want to binge watch something on Netflix, and they will wake up at different times depending on what they have planned as well. Typically, people sleep in on the weekends when they don't have to wake up for work or school, but unfortunately, this confuses our body and often does more harm than good. Minimizing light, especially blue light from screens in the evenings is really important to support melatonin production, right? And we want melatonin production, that's what makes us sleepy. Eating our last meal at least three hours before bed supports deep sleep because digestion is one last task that our body has to perform. Skip the alcohol, it impairs sleep severely. Keep your bedroom cool and dark. And lastly, taking magnesium before bed supports the nervous system, promotes muscle relaxation, and improves sleep quality without you know any dependency issues that might come with certain sleep medications. Also, consider adopting a wind-down routine that signals to your brain that it is time for sleep. All of these things I just mentioned sound pretty minimal and even easy, but it's doing them consistently and in combination with each other that will really improve your sleep. But also do give it some time. It might not happen right away if you are experiencing chronic sleep deprivation or have other sleep issues like insomnia. Bottom line, everything else you do will be less effective if your sleep is chronically disrupted. Number four, stress management. Okay, so initially at the start of this journey, I changed my diet. I started lifting weights and doing HIIT workouts consistently, and my symptoms improved significantly. And then I sort of hit a ceiling, and I stayed at that ceiling for a while, doing everything right and still not getting to where I wanted to be. And the missing piece, the thing that actually got me into remission of my symptoms was addressing my stress. This is gonna look different for everyone. Like I said in the last episode, the big lever here for me was quitting my job. I was in a work environment that kept my nervous system in a constant state of activation. And no amount of good nutrition or exercise was going to override what that was doing to my cortisol every single day. I know quitting a job is not an option for everyone, but I share this because I want to be honest about what it actually took for me. Now, I ended up keeping my job and working part-time, but I also changed the structure of my position. I eliminated the tasks that stressed me out the most. I worked many of my hours from home, which took me out of that stressful law office environment. But because I was part-time, I had hours left over to engage in activities that truly fulfilled me because my job did not. Now, again, I had a lot of flexibility. My boss did not want me to quit my job, and so she was willing to really work with me and change my position so that it was one I was willing to stay in. But because I had more time that wasn't devoted to my job, I was able to figure out what my body needed to de-stress. And that was yoga five times a week. I did a bunch of traveling with my husband. I took up gardening, I learned to cook, I spent way more time outside, which I'm sure made a big difference because I had literally been cooped up in that office building. And slowly my nervous system started to adjust, and then my insulin sensitivity improved, and my symptoms resolved in a way that they hadn't with diet and exercise alone. Like I said, when cortisol is chronically elevated, it directly impairs insulin sensitivity. You cannot fully resolve a downstream hormone problem while an upstream one is driving it. Practically, you know, and especially for someone who can't quit their job, addressing stress means an honest audit of what in your life is keeping your nervous system activated and what you actually have the power to change. It might mean protecting your sleep as a non-negotiable. And sleep and stress, you know, I just talked about sleep, but sleep and stress go hand in hand because you're more adaptable to stress when you've had the sleep your body needs. Addressing stress also means building in genuine recovery, time in nature, creative outlets, connection with people you love, movement that feels good to you rather than punishing, practicing and strengthening your faith, whatever that looks like for you, being part of a religious community if that's something that you're interested in. The point is that who you are and how you live your life is not separate from your health. It's part of it. Okay, moving on to number five circadian rhythm health. I want to give this its own section because I think it is not only underappreciated as a piece of the PMOS picture, but Simply not known by the vast majority of people, including most doctors and health experts. But based on research I've done, as well as a few female health practitioners that I follow and learn from, I believe circadian rhythm biology belongs in this conversation. Your circadian rhythm is your body's internal 24-hour clock. It governs sleep and wake cycles, yes, but also hormone secretion, metabolism, immune function, cellular repair, and mitochondrial function. Nearly every process in the body has a circadian component. And when that rhythm is disrupted by inconsistent sleep schedules, artificial light at night, not getting enough natural light at the right times, eating meals at the wrong times, shift work, or even chronic stress, these all can lead to disruption of the circadian rhythm, and the downstream effects are widespread and significant. There is emerging research specifically on circadian rhythm disruption in women with PMOS, and one study in particular caught my attention. I read this on PubMed. Compared to women without PMOS, women with the condition produced melatonin later in the day, meaning their biological clock had shifted later. And when they did start producing melatonin, they secreted it for a longer period of time. So obviously, that meant further into the morning hours. And that timing mismatch, melatonin lingering when cortisol should be starting to rise at the beginning of the day, likely explains something that so many women with PMOS report, waking up feeling tired and unrefreshed even after a full night of sleep. And it's not just poor sleep quality, it may be a fundamental dysregulation of the circadian timing itself. And here is what I find most compelling about this. Circadian rhythm disruption impairs mitochondrial function. And I think mitochondrial dysfunction may actually be at the root of PMOS in a way that the research is only beginning to explore. Mitochondria are not just the energy producers or the powerhouses of our cells, as you may have learned in school. They are central to insulin signaling, to steroid hormone production, to how cells handle oxidative stress. And if the mitochondria aren't functioning well, nothing downstream will work optimally. And perhaps it will operate dysfunctionally. I want to do a full episode on this at some point because it is a genuinely fascinating area, but I mention it here because I think it reframes the condition in an important way. So what is supporting circadian rhythm health actually look like in practice? Get morning sunlight as early as possible after waking up. Even on a cloudy day, the light you will get from the sun is far more powerful than indoor lighting for setting your circadian clock. Try to get it ideally within 30 minutes of waking up. This will trigger the hormonal cascade that wakes up your body and starts the cortisol curve on the right timing. Keep your sleep and wake times consistent, including weekends. Minimize artificial light at least two hours before bed. Eat in alignment with daylight hours as much as possible, front loading your calories earlier in the day and finishing your last meal well before bed. And spend time outside during the day, not just in the morning. Daylight exposure reinforces your circadian signal and supports melatonin production at the appropriate time in the evening. And it's also really helpful to watch the sunset if at all possible. Now, a lot of these sound familiar because I mentioned them in the section on sleep, right? Which makes sense. The two would go hand in hand. None of these habits I just mentioned are complicated. They're free, but I would say that they can be pretty inconvenient, which is why I think most people don't do it. But unfortunately, consistency is important with this strategy because that's what the circadian system responds to. It is a rhythm and it needs to be reinforced daily or almost daily to stay calibrated. Okay, so the first step was balancing blood sugar, and then I went through a bunch of methods for how to go about achieving that. Step number two is supplements. While supplements will never be the first step I discuss when it comes to health and how to improve it, some supplements can be supportive and help move the needle if you already have the foundational steps dialed in. Supplements are by no means a substitute for everything I just walked through. If the nutrition isn't there, if you have disrupted or a lack of quality sleep, if you have unaddressed stress or you're not moving your body, no supplement is going to fix any of those things. I say this because supplements are often the first thing women reach for because they feel more manageable than the harder work of changing habits. But start with the habits, right? And then layer in the supplements. That said, there are several supplements with solid evidence specifically for PMOS that are worth knowing about. Number one is inositol, and this is probably the most researched supplement for PMOS, specifically a combination of myoinositol and Dchyroinocitol. Inositol is involved in insulin signaling. It acts as a secondary messenger that helps cells respond to insulin more effectively. Multiple studies have shown it improves insulin sensitivity, reduces androgen levels, supports ovarian function, and improves menstrual regularity in women with PMOS. It is one of the first supplements I would recommend to someone newly navigating this condition. It also helps with improved sleep quality in some people. Number two is magnesium. Magnesium is involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions in the body. And for PMOS specifically, it plays a direct role in insulin signaling and glucose metabolism. Magnesium deficiency is significantly more common in women with insulin resistance. It also supports sleep and cortisol regulation, so it does multiple jobs simultaneously. Magnesium glycinate and magnesium L3Nate are typically the preferred forms, but I actually take a magnesium that has seven different forms in one pill. Number three is berberine. Berberine is a compound found in several plants and has been studied extensively for its effects on blood sugar and insulin sensitivity. It activates an enzyme that improves glucose uptake, reduces glucose production in the liver, and improves insulin sensitivity through a mechanism that has been compared in some studies to metformin, which metformin is the drug that people with type 2 diabetes are typically prescribed to help with blood sugar regulation. Berberine also has anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties. I take it personally and have seen it make a real difference. However, it is worth discussing this one with your provider, particularly if you take any medications, as it can interact with some medications. It's also a supplement that is best to cycle on and off of. So I take it for a couple of months and then typically stop for a month or two. Number four is omega-3 fatty acids. Now, I don't love getting omega-3s from a supplement form because it's really hard to find a good one. I think eating fish is the best way to get your omega-3s. But EPA and DHA from fish oil are anti-inflammatory and help with PMOS because it minimizes chronic low-grade inflammation. They also improve insulin sensitivity and support cardiovascular and brain health, which matters for everybody, but especially given the increased cardiovascular risk associated with PMOS long term. Number five is vitamin D. The vitamin D deficiency is more common in women with PMOS than in the general population, and that is saying a lot because the general population is very deficient in vitamin D. And I really wonder whether this ties directly into the circadian rhythm component I just discussed. This is something I did not know about when I was trying to heal my PMOS. I did not know proper light exposure had anything to do with it. But vitamin D is crucial for pretty much all areas of our health, for our cells and particularly our immune system to function properly. Get your levels tested so you know where you're starting from and then supplement accordingly. But also, do not be afraid of the sun. I cannot stress that enough. I mean, don't go out and get sunburned, be smart about it. But demonizing the sun has made us as a society very sick. As always, please discuss any supplements that you want to take with your medical provider before taking them, especially if you are pregnant or taking any medications. Okay, the last step is to reduce your toxic load. So this step is the last thing I addressed in my PMOS journey. By the time I started paying serious attention to my toxic load, I already had nutrition, movement, stress, and sleep pretty well dialed in. However, our toxic load is not something to scoff at, so I don't want to make it sound unimportant. It can be the last element some women need to truly heal. Also, some of us are exposed to a lot more toxins than other people. And honestly, it's unavoidable and gets worse every day. Chemicals are just becoming more and more common, and we as humans don't take stewardship of this planet as seriously as we should, in my opinion. So this is just a hard topic to tackle, essentially. And I want to start with a common culprit, which is endocrine disruptors, which makes sense, right? Because we're gonna care a lot about that when we're talking about a hormonal condition. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the body's hormonal signaling. They can mimic hormones, block hormone receptors, and or disrupt hormone production and metabolism. And they are found in conventional skincare and makeup, household cleaning products, plastic food containers, non-stick cookware, fragrances, and more. The exposure to these chemicals is cumulative and chronic. So no single product used sparingly is probably gonna derail your hormones, but the problem is the daily exposure to dozens of these chemicals over years, which adds up. And for a woman with a condition already characterized by hormonal dysregulation, reducing that load is worth doing, right? So the ones worth knowing about parabens in personal care products, which have estrogenic activity, thyates in plastics and fragrances, which disrupt androgen signaling, BPA, and it substitutes in plastic containers and canned goods, PFAS, which is PFAS, also known as forever chemicals. This is often located in nonstick cookware and food packaging, but also unfortunately in clothes now. Um, it is associated with thyroid disruption and metabolic function. Perhaps worse conditions, we don't truly know. Um, but the problem, the reason they're called forever chemicals, is because it is very, very hard to excrete them from the body once they've been consumed. It's very hard to detox from these. And lastly, synthetic fragrance, listed typically as fragrance or perfume on labels, those can also contain dozens of undisclosed hormone-disrupting chemicals. So I personally ditched all toxic skincare products and household cleaners years ago. I switched to non-toxic makeup and skincare over a decade ago. But really, it's more than that. We want to consider everything we're putting in our body, on our body, and just what we're exposed to. So even the water we drink, do you drink tap water? If so, have you tested it to see what's in it? A lot of city water has unhealthy levels of heavy metals, pesticides, and other chemicals. We tested our well water when we moved in, and while it was actually quite clean water, there were still some things that we wanted to filter out, so we invested in a filtration system. With regard to personal care products, remember the skin is permeable, so what you put on it will enter your bloodstream. So, how can you know what is safe to apply? I like the Environmental Working Group, they're a really great resource, and they have a database called Skin Deep. And you can find that at ewg.org. They will rate personal care products by ingredient safety. I use it all the time. And then lastly, in the kitchen, switching away from nonstick cookware and using stainless steel and cast iron, and then also trying to store your food in glass rather than plastic, is another really high impact swap, in my opinion. Okay, so this has been a really long episode and I've covered a lot. So let me zoom out here for a moment. The order I would suggest tackling all these things I just mentioned, if that's something that you want to do. Based on my own experience and what I've seen work with clients, start with one of these steps to get your blood sugar regulated. Pick the one that sounds most manageable to you and give it time. My symptoms improved meaningfully within the first year, but like full, what I would consider full remission of my symptoms took closer to two years. So this is not a short timeline, but it is real and lasting. I know some of you listening are in the thick of it right now. Maybe you've been newly diagnosed, maybe you've been managing this for years and feel like you've tried everything. Or maybe you don't even have a diagnosis yet, but something in these two episodes is making you wonder. This condition is complex and real, but also manageable. And I am proof of that. If you want personalized support figuring out what your body specifically needs, whether you're dealing with PMOS or you are just trying to get your hormones and metabolism working more efficiently, a free hormone clarity call is a great place to start. The link is in the top of the show notes. Thank you so much for being here today. Until next time. Thanks so much for tuning in to Vital Balance with Jess. If you loved this episode, it would mean the world if you would leave a review, share it with a friend, or hit subscribe so you never miss a dose of real talk on women's health. Remember, you have more control over your health than you've been told, and sustainable change is possible. Keep listening to your body and showing up for yourself. I'll see you next time.