McCall McPhersonFounder, Modern Thyroid Clinic.

Why Insulin Resistance is Key in PCOS Management

7 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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1:16

McCall McPherson explains how insulin resistance drives PCOS. High insulin levels trigger the ovaries to produce more testosterone, creating a cycle that worsens symptoms. Genetics, sleep, diet, stress, and gut health all feed into elevated insulin.

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Tell me a little bit about why insulin resistance, if it's in that subtype in particular, why is it so common in pcos? So really, I would say I don't ever see a patient with PCOS that doesn't have a form of insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is kind of that metabolic part that you get with pcos. It's because when you have pcos, you have typically those higher androgen levels, right? And so when you have higher androgen in women, that means testosterone. When you have higher levels of testosterone, it's kind of like the chicken and the egg, what came first. But when you have elevated insulin levels, whether that be from genetics, lack of sleep, poor diet, stress, a bad gut, whatever, when your insulin levels are high, that high insulin is going to drive your ovaries to make more androgen, more testosterone. And when you make more testosterone with pcos, this makes your PCOS worse, right? Because the high androgen symptoms are. Or the high androgen levels are causing a lot of the symptoms they're having. And so then you'll get higher insulin. And so it's. It's just like this big wheel, this nasty wheel that we get on.