PCOS and Indian Women - PCOS affects nearly 35% of Indian Women

 As some of you might know, I come from an Indian background. I was shocked to find out nearly 35% of women in India have PCOS. It is a no brainer why we would have got this as health awareness is very less in India. Our diet is full of refined foods and sugar and there is no sign of this epidemic slowing down. Though we have one of the largest PCOS population in the world, we don’t have any support groups to share our experiences.

When I was thinking about the reasons for our PCOS epidemic, our lifestyle comes to my mind. Typical of Indian families, many of us are not encouraged to do exercise or instructed to follow healthy food habits. The worst part is Indian doctors don’t think of PCOS as an issue, because it is so common. Even after I came to Australia, I was following typical Indian diet. My diet mainly consisted of parboiled rice, maida and refines wheat flour etc. The symptoms I had related to PCOS were acne and irregular periods. I never did exercise and don’t feel like doing it anyways. Luckily, I became aware of PCOS as one of my colleague’s girlfriend had it. As I had acne, I pretty much concluded even before getting my blood tests that I have PCOS.

For anyone reading this, please be aware that getting diagnosed with PCOS is not an easy thing. i.e. When you go to a doctor for irregular periods , they might just prescribe you BCP’s. Though 70% of women with irregular periods have PCOS, you might not get diagnosed for that in your first consultation. Most women get diagnosed with PCOS, only after they consult the doctor for infertility.

If you have adult acne or anyone you know has it, get diagnosed for PCOS. It is vital to get diagnosed and treat it appropriately to avoid the risks of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. If you have family history of PCOS or diabetes, then your risks of getting PCOS is higher. Regarding diet, try to consume as much whole grains a possible.

I was able to change my diet and get rid of my PCOS symptoms such as acne and irregular periods. It tried cutting rice from my diet and it helped with my cravings. My diet typically contains Low GI bread and whole wheat flour rotis as my staple. Whole wheat flour is full of fibre. It releases energy slowly into your body and thus helps Insulin Resistance.

The rest of my diet consists of items such as avocado, which are easily available in Australia. To help with irregular periods, I consumed carrot and beetroot juice. Your body must be capable of detoxifying the toxins, beetroot being a blood purifier helps heavily with it. Carrot juice helps your liver in eliminating those toxins.

Try consuming lot of legumes and pulses, as they are high source of protein. Try consuming hot water whenever possible, as the fat deposits get released with hot water. Avoid deep fried foods from restaurants.

Exercise regularly. If you can’t join a gym try to do skipping at home. Start doing it for 5 minutes and slowly increase it to half an hour. You can do it while watching TV, so you don’t have to allocate a special time for it.:)

Also, d-chiro-inositol can be used to treat women with PCOS. As it is quite expensive to buy it online, you can try having buckwheat. Buckwheat is a rich source of DCI and it helps with the PCOS symptoms greatly. Buckwheat is also know as kuttu in Hindi and Papparai in Tamil.

I am a big fan of Buckwheat flour dosa..I will post the recipes soon....:)

In addition to making lifestyle changes I also took the Insulite PCOS system and False Unicorn Root in the month I  got pregnant naturally. Both are bit costly supplements but it worked in my case.

If you have been told by doctors that getting pregnant is harder and suggested the IVF path start making these lifestyle changes I see whether it makes any improvement in your symptoms(i.e. regular periods, less acne etc..) . If your PCOS symptoms improve with proper diet and eating habits, then there is a real possibility you can get pregnant naturally.