Dr. Mullen explains that irregular periods, sometimes only once every three months, are the first sign of PCOS. The condition also causes acne, excess facial hair, and insulin resistance. Ovarian cysts on ultrasound aren't required for diagnosis, despite what many doctors think.
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Dr. Mullen, what are the symptoms that somebody who has PMOS or PCOS— PCOS— normally in the course of a menstrual cycle, you know, you'll start recruiting eggs. One will take over and you'll ovulate from one egg. Well, with polycystic ovarian syndrome, you don't really ovulate regularly, so it makes your cycles irregular. They're irregular maybe once every 3 months and maybe once a year. So irregularity of cycles is usually the first point. The second point is that there are also other things going on. A lot of women will find that they have signs of what we say androgen excess. That just means that your ovaries are also making testosterone. They make more than just estrogen and progesterone. They make testosterone. And so when you don't ovulate, you get this sort of chronic overproduction of testosterone. And what happens when you get A lot of testosterone. You grow hair. Acne. Oh, acne. Acne, facial hair. Women will find that they start to get chin hair or hair around the nipples. So there's a sort of a more of a male pattern hair growth. It can also lead— because you've got that, it can also lead to hair loss. There are other organ systems that are affected. And the endocrine part is there's an overproduction of insulin. So there's a degree of insulin resistance because you're not responding to the insulin. So you're, you're overshoot it and you're making too much insulin. Acne, weight gain, higher levels of insulin, irregular cycles, those are all signs. Those criteria are basically the same. And I think that when you get caught up on the polycystic part of it, you think you're going to do an ultrasound and see, instead of seeing one follicle, you're going to see 20 little ones. Well, you don't see it and you don't always— that's not an integral part of making the diagnosis. And for someone that doesn't understand that, and I don't know who— many gynecologists who don't understand that, you wouldn't do an ultrasound and go, well, I don't see a lot of cysts, so you must not have it. You go by the patient in front of you. You listen to the story that they're telling. So we've made We've made a lot of progress in terms of changing the name. Mm-hmm. But you know where we haven't made a lot of progress? Finding out why it happens and having new treatments for how to, how to deal with it. That's where the attention needs to be focused. We need to focus on, okay, now what are we going to do about it? We need more research.
