42: Can You Reverse PCOS Naturally? – The Most Effective Functional Medicine Tools with Dr. Aaron Hartman

You have to realize that PCOS is also an autoimmune spectrum disorder. There's also a metabolic component. PCOS is a part of metabolic syndrome, which means diet is super huge, it means environment is super huge, it means hormonal regulation is super huge. And you need to look at those things. What is the elephant in the room for most young ladies? Health for the hormones that's being overlooked and can be addressed. I'm talking about pcos, also known as polycystic ovarian syndrome. This is one of the topics we're going to talk about during one of our kind of our short podcasts. These are questions people have asked us through social media, our newsletter. So if this is helpful, please like subscribe, follow us, put your questions out there so we can put into the mix and get to it on these short little end of the week podcasts. So PCs, PCs is a part of metabolic syndrome. It has several characteristics to it. Insulin resistance, okay, gut microbiome issues, hormone irregularities, but specifically resistance hormone resistance syndromes, which one of the things that results in is elevated testosterone and insulin resistance. So the standard treatment for this for PCOS for most young ladies in our country is our birth control pills. The concept with birth control pills is if you can block cycling, you'll block follicle formation development. So you'll block the formation of the cysts and the polycystic ovarian syndrome. The issue with that is part of PCOS is not only insulin resistance but elevated testosterone levels. So you will get abnormal hair growth, hirsutism, hair in your chin, nipples, acne, some other untoward, undesired, oily, greasy skin. Certain areas of the female body, particularly the external vagina outside the introitus, which is where there's a kind of internal labia kind of come together, are exquisitely testosterone. They need androgens. And so one of the results can become thinning of that skin, painful intercourse, urinary bladder problems, uncomfortable urination. It can almost feel like you have weird infections and things are kind of off down there solely from low, low androgens, low, low testosterone, basically. And so you use birth control pills to treat the elevated testosterone and one of the results is you lower it. So what are some better ways to deal with pcos? And that's what I want to talk about. You have to realize that PCOS is also an autoimmune spectrum disorder. If you do antibody testing on a lot of the young ladies, you'll see some low level thyroid antibodies, maybe an ana, an anca, so maybe some celac related antibodies, elevated SED rate, elevated hs, CRP or homocysteine levels. You'll see these markers for inflammation or autoimmunity. So you have to realize there's that aspect of PCOS that needs to be addressed and it is on this autoimmune spectrum disorder. There's also a metabolic component. PCOS is a part of metabolic syndrome, which means diet is super huge. It means environment is super huge. It means hormonal regulation is super huge. And you need to look at those things. Taking adequate B vitamins, vitamin C, checking your vitamin D level. That is a common, common low nutrient that we see in insulin resistance, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. With, with, with pcos. The next thing about, about this is insulin resistance. And that's really kind of goes hand in hand with the metabolic syndrome stuff. With insulin resistance, what happens is insulin goes up, but there's two organs that still that aren't insulin resistant. One's the kidneys and one is the, the ovaries. So the ovaries get overstimulated, hence the polycystic aspect. And the kidneys tend to hold on to fluid. So women will see more fluid fluctuations, swelling, edema related to the PCs. And so all of a sudden, you know, adequate electrolytes, trace minerals, magnesium, hydration with not sodium rich. You know, we have too much sodium in our diets in our country. But getting the right amount of electrolytes can be helpful with the, those imbalances working on your gut microbiome with probiotics.

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One of the things I really, really like with all these individuals is low dose naltrexone. If you just do a research a little Google search Google Scholar on low dose and pcos Lotus naltrexone and autoimmunity Lotus naltrexone and pick your autoimmune issue cardiovascular disease you'll see a plethora. You'll see thousands upon thousands of articles popping up on the use of low denseltrexone. I routinely use it in my PCOS patients to help with balancing their immune system, regulating their cycles. I routinely will do anti inflammatories, Omega 3s, Curcumin's, Great Boswellia, working on individual sleep melatonin can be helpful at night also is an anti inflammatory. But you got to clean the diet up. You got to remove all these chemicals in our food system. Not just red dye 3 which recently was banned, but all the other synthetic petroleum based dyes that are inflammatory. Removing sugar is huge. Making sure your bowel movements are pretty normal and looking at your environment. There's a lot of environmental chemicals and toxins that actually can be related to pcos as well. But the point is that PCOS that there's a lot of things you can do besides birth control pills to treat pcos and get to the root cause of what's going on. One of the biggest concerns is future fertility because PCOS can have some fertility issues. And one thing I've noticed is that with naltrexone that does a great job of helping with fertility and actually use it with a lot of my fertility patients. Dr. Newsy, who's a fertility expert out in Beverly Hills kind of taught me that trick about 15 years ago and it does really help with regulating inflammation and hormonal cycles. But PCOS is a modern scourge. It's a modern epidemic with young ladies and you really need to look at the environment, chemicals you need to look at your gut, nutrient deficiencies, balancing your hormones and and we have a lot of great resources on our website that actually help dive into that. But I want to just talk about, you know, not doing the conventional thing and looking at some other things because there's a lot of different things you can do to help with it. Hopefully the information was helpful. If so, you know, like share subscribe below. Also, if you have questions, topics you'd like discussed in these little mini things, please drop them wherever you Follow us. Reply to the newsletter and we'll try to get we'll put them in the hopper and try to get to them as we can. Take care. Talk to you soon.