Hi, I’m Dr. Marc Sklar, the fertility expert, and welcome to The Fertility Blog. In this post, we’re going to be talking about 5 Ways to manage your PCOS. If you have PCOS then stay tuned until the end of this video where I share very useful information to manage PCOS and conceive. You can incorporate these 5 steps to improve your condition.

” PCOS or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome is a health problem that affects one in ten women of childbearing age. BUT PCOS is manageable and treatable.” Dr. Marc Sklar, The Fertility Expert

If  you have a PCOS and want to start taking control of your hormones, click here for more information about the ecourse that will change your PCOS life forever. The action plan for taking control of your PCOS, starting today.

1. Managing Your Exercise:

Exercise is a very important aspect to manage your PCOS. It improves insulin sensitivity, frequency of ovulation, cholesterol and body composition.

Often, women are told they have to exercise more. However, for many of you actually exercising more can make your PCOS worse. There’s really no right solution or no ‘one-size-fits-all’. We’ve got to find the right combination, individually.

If you’re a bit overweight and you need to lose more weight, then increasing and upping your exercise will be great for you. But if you’re one of those more atypical PCOS types and you’re rather on the thin side, then increasing and upping your exercise is really not ideal.

Pull back on intense exercise patterns that you might do like cross fit. Don’t go for intense exercises if you haven’t been doing them.

Rule of thumb: Exercise daily and for at least an hour every day. Consistency is the key.

You can just go for a walk every day, a light run, a great swim – anything like that, but you wouldn’t want to go for those crazy weight-lifting programs that you see out there.

2. Manage Your Stress:

Research shows that women with PCOS are more sensitive to stress than other women are. Research also shows that women with PCOS have a higher risk of an unsuccessful pregnancy than normal women do, so it’s critical for you to effectively manage stress.

When it comes to stress you got to find the key things that work for you and then do those consistently; exercise might be part of that. There’s got to be other things that you can do that are more relaxing and allow you to pull away from the day-to-day stressors and things that consume your mind like art or something like that.

 3. Manage Your Cycles:

If you have PCOS, high levels of androgens (‘male’ hormones) and excess insulin can disrupt the monthly cycle of ovulation and menstruation. In other words your periods may be ‘irregular’ or stop altogether.

You’d want to manage your expectations on what you want your cycles to look like. The ideal cycle that we’re opting for is about 28 to 30 days and that’s what every woman would ideally like when they’re trying to get pregnant but for some patients out there and many of you who have PCOS, that’s just not realistic.

It’s critical to look for consistency and predictability. Once we know that you’re always going to menstruate around day 40, we can start counting backwards. You can plan intercoure during ovulation. It makes everything much easier. So we’re going to look to manage our expectations on what a cycle should look like. It might be 50 days; it might be 35 days. We’re looking for regularity for you. That’s the most important thing.

4. Managing Your Blood Sugar:

Sugar wreaks havoc on the health of women with PCOS.

With the majority of my PCOS patients, managing blood sugar is going to be the key, because that has a direct impact on your ovarian health and follicular development in PCOS. You can manage your blood sugar by managing and controlling your carb intake and your sugar intake.

Of course carbs taste awesome; they fill us up; they make us feel satiated, but in reality we need to cut back on those.

This might be the hardest thing for you to do but it’s probably the most important! So, start to look at your carb intake and manage that and control that.

Take baby steps but really make a good conscious effort to start cutting those out and really focus on protein, fat and veggies

5. Manage Your Testosterone Levels:

If you have PCOS, your ovaries produce an excess of male hormones called androgens. Testosterone is one of the androgens. Excessive testosterone can lead to a number of troublesome symptoms, such as acne, excess body hair and fertility problems. So testosterone and androgens are a big deal when it comes to PCOS, Hence we’d want to make sure that those get controlled and managed. Exercising caution with alternative treatments, using conventional medicine, doing light exercise, and switching over to a low-carb diet can reduce testosterone level in your body.

Additionally, there are some things that you can do to start to decrease testosterone levels in the body and one simple thing is just increasing your intake of green tea. Make a nice cup of loose-leaf green tea, 2 or 3 times a day and then just sip on that. You can have it a little bit iced if you want, or not so warm and that should help as well.

It’s not the end-all be-all when it comes to detoxing or eliminating testosterone but it’s definitely a nice addition to your regular daily routine. Detoxification pulls extra hormones out of our body and start to excrete them.

Hopefully that gets you started on the right step!

PCOS is manageable. Adopting the right strategy can greatly help in reducing (and even curing) PCOS symptoms and in conceiving. I’ve helped thousands of women with PCOS,  I can help you too!

If you wish to manage your PCOS systematically and effectively, the PCOS ecourse I created for my patients can be the solution to your PCOS problems. Either you are trying to get pregnant with PCOS OR just want to control and manage your PCOS forever, this action plan specifically for PCOS is perfect for you. Click the button below to get started managing your PCOS!

Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Dr. Marc Sklar. Welcome back to Fertility TV. I work with couples from all over the world through my online fertility programs, my one-on-one private fertility coaching and locally here in San Diego in my fertility clinics, and one of the biggest topics that I go over and one of the most popular conditions that I treat is PCOS. So today I’m talking about the ‘Five Ways that You Can Manage Your PCOS’.

#1. Managing Your Exercise: This a big one because often times women are told they have to exercise more but for many of you actually exercising more is going to make your PCOS worse. there’s really no right solution or no ‘one-size-fits-all’. We’ve got to find the right combination of all of these things individually. some of these things are going to give you options like this one.

If you’re a bit overweight and you need to lose more weight, then increasing and upping your exercise will be great for you. but if you’re one of those more atypical PCOS types and you’re rather on the thin side, then increasing and upping your exercise is really not ideal. We want to actually pull back on that and specifically we want to pull back on this like really hard, intense exercise patterns that you might do like crossfit or something like that and I don’t necessarily want you to start doing those sorts of exercises if you haven’t been.

The rule of thumb here is that we want to exercise every day. consistency is key and that we want to exercise for at least an hour every day. So, you can just go for a walk every day, a light run, a great swim (I love swimming), anything like that, but I don’t need it to be this crazy weight-lifting programs that you see out there.

#2. Manage Your Stress: What I find often, especially with my PCOS patients is that stress throws off your hormones and specifically causes irregular cycles to occur more frequently. I have patients, they’re doing great, we’ve got their cycles regulated, they’re having regular cycles and then all of a sudden they come in and say, ‘Well I haven’t had a period in sixty five days.

I say, ‘Well what’s going on, have you changed anything?’ And they say ‘No’. I say ‘Well what’s your stress level’s like?” and they say, ‘Well actually this happened in my life and I’ve got school or whatever it might be and so I know for sure that stress directly impacts your hormone balance. We need to manage your stress a little bit more effectively than what you’ve been doing and more importantly again, like #1, more consistently over a period of time. aside from it throwing off your cycles it can also cause hormone imbalance.

So we’d really want to manage that stress. I know it sounds easier said than done but when it comes to stress you got to find the key things that work for you and then do those consistently and exercise might be part of that; that might be something that really improves your stress and stress management but there’s got to be other things that you can do that are more relaxing and allow you to pull away from the day-to-day stressors and things that consume your mind like art or something like that.

#3. Manage Your Cycles: By this I mean we got to manage our expectations on what we want our cycles to look like. The ideal cycle that we’re opting for is about 28 to 30 days and that’s what every woman would ideally like when they’re trying to get pregnant but for some patients out there and many of you who have PCOS, that’s just not realistic.

I have a patient right now that I’m working with that comes to mind – Jane. Jane, her cycles are more like 39 to 42 days, and she emailed me actually yesterday, was concerned like ‘Do you think this is an issue? What are we looking for? And for me it’s just more important that we’re looking for consistency and predictability. Just like the first two, we’re looking for consistency in exercise and stress management. In this one we’re really looking for consistency in your cycle.

So we know that you’re always going to menstruate around day 40. Then we can start counting backwards. You can plan ovulation; you can plan intercoursural ovulation; it makes everything much easier. So we’re going to look to manage our expectations on what a cycle should look like. It might be 50 days; it might be 35 days. We’re looking for regularity for you. That’s the most important thing.

#4. Managing Your Blood Sugar: With all PCOS patients, well I can’t say all, but many and the majority, managing blood sugar is going to be key because that has a direct impact on your ovarian health and follicular development in PCOS, and so what we want to do here when we talk about managing blood sugar is we want to manage and control our carb intake and our sugar intake, which are carbs.

So, I know they taste awesome – all the breads and pastas and grains. All those carb-filled things, they fill us up; they taste good; they make us feel satiated, but in reality we need to cut back on those. This might be the hardest thing I ask any of you to do but it probably it’s the most important! So, start to look at your carb intake and manage that and control that.

Take baby steps but really make a good conscious effort to start to cut those out and start to really focus on protein, fat and veggies.

#5. Manage Your Testosterone Levels:

I know this sounds a little bit strange. How can I manage my testosterone levels?

Well, testosterone and androgens are a big deal when it comes to PCOS. So, we want to make sure that those get controlled and managed. Without going and doing blood work you don’t know where your androgens levels are. But for most PCOS patients (not all), some aspect of elevated androgens and testosterone is an issue and we need to take that into account.

So, one is (and that’s why I told you rule #1 – to manage your exercise a little bit better) is that hard exercise – weight training, cross-fit, all those things that really push your muscles to that fatigue stage – that can actually build testosterone. So, we don’t want to do that. So we really want to cut back on that push of things.

Additionally there are some things that you can do to start to decrease testosterone levels in the body and one simple thing is just increasing your intake of green tea. So make a nice cup of green tea 2 or 3 times a day – I prefer the loose-leaf tea versus the bag tea – and then just sip on that. You can have it a little bit iced if you want, or not so warm and that should help as well. It’s not the end-all be-all when it comes to detoxing or eliminating testosterone but it’s definitely a nice addition to your regular daily routine.

And then last, ‘Detox’.

If we can start to detox, we can start to pull those extra hormones out of ourselves and start to excrete them. So, starting with a detox that get a jumpstart on detoxification of our excess hormones like testosterone and other androgens, is a great way to start.

So those are five steps,

#1, we want to manage our exercise

#2, we want to manage our stress

#3, we want to manage our cycles

#4, manage our blood sugar and

#5, manage our testosterone.

Hopefully that gets you started on the right step!

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