The Hemp Connection + women's health tips

Are you depressed because of your weight? Or are you depressed because you're depressed?

It's not uncommon to read blog posts, tweets, and chat room conversations in which women with PCOS describe their depression, and attribute it to the weight gain and appearance that their PCOS has promoted. It can be easy to blame the discomfort, fatigue, restless, and anxiety that depression provokes, on tangible and unwanted physical changes

A recent study helps to verify what I've believed all along…that depression, like hirsutism, weight gain, and infertility, is another condition that PCOS has potential to create. It is not the result of other symptoms associated with PCOS.

Here's the study.

Thirty women with PCOS and thirty women without PCOS participated in this study. All subjects had similar BMI's/weights. Only women who were not on any psychotropic medication were included. Women with PCOS scored higher on an anxiety scale than women without PCOS. They also slept less, worried more, and experienced more phobias than women without PCOS. Weight was not associated with any of the symptoms, except for sleep.

In other words, regardless of your weight, you can be depressed if you have PCOS.

If you attach or blame your depression on your weight, your appearance, or your infertility:

--you can set yourself up for an eating disorder…if you actually lose weight and discover it didn't change how you feel.
--you can feel even worse if you spend time and money on cosmetic surgery, only to realize you don't feel as good as you hoped you would.
--you can put yourself through the tremendous stress of infertility treatment, and get the baby, only to discover that you still feel depressed, and now you've got a baby who isn't sleeping through the night who is dependent on you.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the inCYST program is very helpful at reducing anxiety and depression. So in addition to helping you normalize your weight, reducing the progression of testosterone-related programs, and increasing your fertility, it helps you to feel better. It literally rebuilds your nervous system so it can reduce the influence depression can have. And in rebuilding the nervous system, it helps to balance hormones so that symptoms can lessen.

We like to focus on feeling better, since we know that in women who do, the other problems tend to fall into place. That's not to say that being anxious about your PCOS doesn't worsen when you focus on your symptoms, and that when you learn better coping skills you won't feel even better. Gretchen Kubacky has done a great job of discussing that here, on her blog, and on PCOS Challenge.

It's just that you want to be sure you're tackling the core cause of the problem, and not simply putting band-aids on the symptoms. Nothing can be more frustrating than investing all your time, resources, and money into diets and medical procedures, only to feel the same or even worse once you've done so.

Anxiety and depression symptoms in women with polycystic ovary syndrome compared with controls matched for body mass index

REFERENCE
E. Jedel1, M. Waern2, D. Gustafson2,3, M. Landén4, E. Eriksson5, G. Holm6, L. Nilsson7, A.-K. Lind7, P.O. Janson7 and E. Stener-Victorin8,9 Anxiety and depression symptoms in women with polycystic ovary syndrome compared with controls matched for body mass index

1 Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden 2 Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 3 Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA 4 Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden 5 Department of Pharmacology, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 6 Department of Metabolism and Cardiovascular Disease, Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 7 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Institute of Clinical Science, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 8 Department of Physiology, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Box 434, 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden

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Are you depressed because of your weight? Or are you depressed because you're depressed? + women's health tips