Speaker (Dr. Tabatha Barber) critiques standard PCOS care, arguing that conventional providers focus on symptom suppression (notably prescribing combined oral contraceptives) which mask but do not reverse the underlying disease. The speaker lists common medications used (birth control pills, spironolactone, antidepressants, Accutane, Metformin, Clomid), describes typical side effects (GI upset from metformin, weight gain from antidepressants, risks with long-term birth control/Clomid, potential nutrient issues), and emphasizes these are band-aid approaches that may worsen or return after stopping treatment.
Chapters
If you go to a conventional gynecologist or primary care doctor, they're going to focus on symptom relief. They usually give you a birth control pill so that you have regular periods. Again, that fixes your problem, right? Well, it doesn't actually. What's happening is you're taking synthetic hormones to override your, your brain and ovaries from making their own hormones. But what we are seeing is women who go on the birth control pill for pcos. As soon as they come off, it's right back to where you were or 10 times worse. It really is just suppressing and masking the symptoms of what's going on, but it's not stopping the underlying root cause disease. And so, so it's really not helping you. And the other piece of it is they try to get rid of your other symptoms like depression, acne, weight gain with spironolactone, antidepressants, Accutane. Sometimes they'll give you Metformin for the insulin piece of it, or Clomid to get you pregnant without fixing the root cause of the issue. Fortunately, those medications often cause new issues, right? So we now understand that Clomid and birth control pills have risks associated with them. Long term use, increase of cancers and other issues like leaky gut, vitamin mineral deficiencies. Metformin is usually not very well tolerated. It causes a lot of loose stools or diarrhea, GI upset, and antidepressants usually cause weight gain, which is not helpful. In PCOS that actually causes you to make more testosterone and have greater insulin resistance. So that's not helpful. The spironolactone can sometimes be helpful to block the production of dihydrotestosterone, that more androgenic form of testosterone. But, but it's not really fixing the problem with too much production and why that's happening. So these are very much band aid approaches and some women need those to feel better, look better, to make the changes necessary. But it's not really a long term solution. It's not going to reverse your pcos.
