It's a quiet day around here, and I am cleaning up papers. I found a chart I prepared several years ago, in which I listed the commonly recognized symptoms of PCOS, and did literature searches to see how often these symptoms appeared in other medical diagnoses. The diagnoses that occurred most often were epilepsy, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorder.
I don't really know what this means, except that maybe we're not always looking at the right places when we try to understand the syndrome. Maybe we're not correctly connecting the dots.
I sent this to a PCOS researcher who didn't seem very excited about the information at the time. I am not a researcher, and I will never have the laboratory that can do this research. So I am posting the information hoping that someone who can…will pick up where I left off and do some creative work on behalf of the women with PCOS.
One comment I WILL make, is that I don't entirely believe PCOS is caused by insulin resistance. It is a very
prevalent symptom, but correlation does not always equal causation. I don't think we would say that insulin resistance causes epilepsy or bipolar disorder. I do wonder what function insulin resistance plays in an imbalanced system, as the body wouldn't have that mechanism if it didn't have a need for it.
I know, I know, I'm stepping away from conventional wisdom on this one. I just think we need to think outside a much bigger box for the most profound answers to the PCOS mystery.
I wonder sometimes if insulin resistance isn't a way for the body to shuttle glucose to a brain and nervous system that are overstressed, since that system is so dependent on glucose for fuel.
The letters after each symptom denote which of (E) pilepsy, (B) ipolar disorder, and (A) nxiety disorder has been reported in peer-reviewed research to be associated with that particular symptom.
Acne E, B
Infertility E, B
Irregular periods E, B, A
Decreased sex drive E, B
Obesity/rapid weight gain/difficulty losing weight E, B, A
Acanthosis nigricans E
Male pattern baldness/alopecia E, B, A
Hirsutism E
Binge eating E, B, A
Intense cravings for sweets E, B, A
Anxiety E, B
Insulin resistance E, B