Dr. Gretchen Kubacky will be the featured expert this week on the PCOS Challenge Expert Webinar series.
Here is a description of her upcoming presentation:
Depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, infertility, and many other disorders are much more common in women with PCOS. In this PCOS Challenge Expert Series workshop, Dr. HOUSE will address the psychological issues and coping skills necessary for thriving with PCOS. Dr. HOUSE will also explain how to identify the most common conditions, suggest ways to find sources for help and support, and describe how to proactively manage your mental and physical health and relationships.
In this workshop, you will learn:
What a mood disorder is and what it looks like. Signs that you might be feeling suicidal. What every PCOS woman needs to know about infertility. Coping skills for relationships, medical treatments, and body image issues. How to be a proactive patient and get the help you need now.
Last week Dr. Doug Bibus honored us with a webinar on the science behind his blood omega-3 testing. His statistics regarding the many correlations between poor omega-3 status and health problems were profound. What particularly got my attention was how this issue may, in some interesting ways, be singling out military families.
Dr. Bibus shared that omega-3 fatty acids have become the subject of intense interest with the Department of Defense, given the fact that military suicides doubled between 2005 and 2008. If you think about it, the majority of deployments during this time have been to Iraq and Afghanistan, where seafood is not a staple on the menu.
Have you ever seen or eaten a military ration (aka MRE?). Many moons ago, my neighbor found some at a military surplus store, and for fun, we organized a dinner party around them.
Just look at that photo to the left. It is what our military eats, day in and day out. I don't see any omega-3's and I do see sugar and pro-inflammatory fats. The focus of these meals, understandably, has been to provide a concentrated source of calories (1250 per meal and 36% fat on average) in a small volume. And that need for calories has been a great dumping ground for surpluses of corn and soybean oil, industries subsidized by our own government.
Expose yourself to that kind of diet, stress, and sleep deprivation, day in and day out, for months on end…it's no wonder the incidence of suicide skyrocketed. I'm glad the DOD has decided to start to figure out how to fix it.
Zoom back over to Virginia Beach and San Francisco, where inCYST seems to have strong pockets of interest. As I sat there and listened to Dr. Bibus talk about the mental health aspects of omega-3 deprivation on our military, I couldn't help but wonder if these infertility pockets are somehow related.
These military couples aren't just dealing with infertility. They have very short windows of opportunity to do something about it. And if the hubs is coming home omega-3 deprived, it's likely not going to be something that's going to resolve, even with supplementation, in his short time at home.
Because those MRE's are so high in calories and fat, and because omega-3 health is all about ratios, it's going to take a pretty high dose of fish oil to overcome that imbalance.
Seems to me that one of the very best things any infertile couple also managing a military deployment might do…is be sure that somehow, some way, omega-3 fats are a priority. It's going to take the military awhile to figure out how to reconfigure those MRE's, let alone politically negotiate all that subsidized surplus pro-inflammatory fat out of them. You don't have to, and you shouldn't…wait for that. Be sure you figure out how to get your fish oil to your loved one.
Is depression an inevitable consequence of PCOS, or any other hormonally related diagnosis, for that matter? We know that the diabetic population experiences a rate of depression nearing 30% overall, which is significantly higher than the rate of depression in the general population. Women tend to suffer from depression, or it's lesser cousin, dysthymia ("depression light"), far more than men. The infertility that results from PCOS is yet another common cause of depression. Looking at all these causative health factors almost makes depression seem like an inevitability if you have PCOS, doesn't it?
However, it's important to remember that depression is not a thing — it is not a particular spot in the brain, an object like a tumor in your body, or even a set of cells that gets activated and can be turned on and off like a light switch. Depression is a concept — a construct that tries to define and systematize a sometimes vague set of symptoms that includes tiredness, loss of energy, loss of interest in things that once brought you joy, weight gain or loss, sleep difficulties, and even thoughts of suicide.
So, even if you have a diagnosis of depression or dysthymia, remember that you are not your symptoms. You are an individual who has a certain set of symptoms, but how you approach the management of those symptoms is subject to your individuality. Just as you must personalize other aspects of your PCOS treatment, you must personalize treatment for depression or dysthymia. This may include individual therapy, group therapy, support groups, mindfulness, meditation, dietary changes that support better brain chemistry, supplements, or perhaps antidepressant medications.
If you are feeling depressed, talk to your primary health care practitioner about your symptoms. They are not necessarily an inevitabile outcome of living with PCOS, and there are many ways to obtain relief. In a future post, I'll be discussing the prevalence of anxiety and anxiety disorders in women with PCOS, how depression and anxiety overlap, and what you can do to decrease your anxiety.
Gretchen Kubacky, Psy.D. Los Angeles, CA 90064 ph: (310) 625-6083 gretchen@drhousemd.com
