Often times patients with PCOS are diagnosed at a young age usually late teens early twenties. Unfortunately, the only options available for treatment -until recently- were either hormones or no treatment at all!
Hormonal treatment often involved birth control pills and/or male hormone lowering agents. Both came with all sorts of unpleasant side effects. Add to that the fact that PCOS is a chronic illness which means that there is no definite cure at least for the time being. Discontinuation of treatment would often result in symptoms coming back.
Its unsurprising thus that most PCOS patients quit taking their medicine, often citing side-effect, or being simply fed up with taking drugs with no hope of cure!
Fortunately, there are plenty of ‘non-medicine’ or natural products that are PCOS friendly.
At the top of the list is cinnamon, a number of studies proved its effect on lowering blood sugar and insulin levels in blood. Some studies compared its effect on sugar and insulin to that of a well-known sugar lowering agent, that is being prescribed quite often for PCOS patients. Outcome was in favor of cinnamon with less side effect!
Another product is vinegar and olive oil. Both were shown to have a positive effect on total cholesterol and LDL (bad cholesterol) levels, lowering their levels in blood.
Raw nuts, delicious and a good source for increasing the good cholesterol levels.
There are all sorts of natural products to skin problems related to PCOS acne, hirsutism, and skin discoloration.
The list is quite long actually, with the above being just a few natural alternatives to medicines.
Thus, it’s not always necessary to take hormones to manage PCOS symptoms. To make the most of ‘alternative to hormones’ it’s very important to have regular follow up with a physician experienced in this kind of approach.
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