"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
The Chicken or the Egg:Polycystic Ovary Syndrome is a condition in which the ovaries malfunction, leaving a woman with irregular menstrual cycles, increased male hormone production, and resistance to insulin. The result is a syndrome of irregular periods, male-pattern hair growth, and often obesity. It’s really very poorly understood, but it gets a lot of press in women’s magazines. I’ve had patients bring in articles that suggest physicians ignore the syndrome to the detriment of their patients, and that suggest that women who have it should be on metformin. The women highlighted in these articles were also all told to lose weight with diet and exercise, a fact which isn’t given nearly as much attention as the drug therapy by the writers. The truth is, metformin, while it may be of some help, is still being experimented with in this syndrome. And truthfully, we don’t know all that much about the condition itself yet. A lot of our therapy is just conjecture and theory. We’re not even sure which comes first: the polycystic ovaries or the obesity. In fact, many women improve just with weight loss, as the London Times article notes. It doesn’t even take a special diet. It’s just a matter of watching the calories:
High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets are widely recommended, but two studies presented at the American Endocrine Society meeting in San Francisco in June suggest that it is cutting calories that matters, not the type of diet. The good news is that you don’t have to be sylph-like before you improve. “Losing 11/2 to 2st can make a big difference just to the way you ovulate.[There are fourteen pounds in one stone.] posted by Sydney on
7/31/2002 06:49:00 AM
0 comments
