Birth Control for PCOS

[soos_mite_ah]

My doctor recommended that I take birth control to regulate my PCOS. I'm already doing the diet and life style route as of right now and although I have seen some progress, I have yet to have all of my physical, external symptoms disappear. I understand that taking the diet and life style rout might take some time and trial and error and I'm willing to go through that in order to cultivate healthy habits independent of my PCOS, but I'm also thinking about adding the birth control to the mix. Yet on the other hand I have heard that birth control can mess up your hormones even more  in some cases and of course there are the side effects. I'm nervous to try it because there is this level of uncertainty involved as I have never taken medications that impacted me on the hormonal level and because I'm new to birth control. 

[Leo Gura]

@soos_mite_ah Test. You can't know until you test.

[mandyjw]

@soos_mite_ah How do you intuitively feel about it, what's your gut feeling? 

[soos_mite_ah]

21 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

@soos_mite_ah How do you intuitively feel about it, what's your gut feeling? 

I think it should be fine but my gut feeling is over run by uneasiness so it's difficult to differentiate between fear and intuition

[mandyjw]

@soos_mite_ah Have you seen this? Dr. Christiane Northrup is awesome for a more wholistic, spiritual approach to women's health. It won't directly answer your question but might give you some new things to consider. The initial description of what it is is a little dramatic and lengthy in my opinion but the suggestions are at the end. 

 

[soos_mite_ah]

@mandyjw I bought her book Women's Bodies Women's Wisdom. I found her perspective really interesting and to a certain extent I could relate to the emotional causes of PCOS that she described. Prior to buying this book, I was already doing that type of healing work so I decided to continue what I was doing. My health has been all over the place so I decided to focus my extra attention to reducing stress and calming tf down. 

I just watched this video right now and so far I have cleaned up my regular diet for my PCOS. I cut out gluten and dairy since those can make insulin resistance worse. I couldn't fully cut out bread. Tried it didn't really work for me personally. Now I'm mainly working on getting my metabolism back on track by eating breakfast more regularly as well as ensuring I eat enough.

I guess I could also maybe look into some herbs. Not sure where to start though

Over all at this point, I feel like I'm managing my PCOS. A lot of my symptoms have reduced but they aren't gone yet. Part of me wants to wait a little longer to see if it will take another couple months for all my new habits to pay off or to just take the chance with the birth control. 

[Preety_India]

@soos_mite_ah what kind of symptoms did you experience? 

 

[soos_mite_ah]

@Preety_India Lets see: 

• Irregular and skipped periods
• Really painful cycles
• Hair loss
• Fatigue 
• Extreme cravings (though I'm pretty sure I had these before the PCOS) 
• Acne 
• Weight gain/ difficult losing weight 
• Messed up sleep schedule
• Messed up metabolism (though my metabolism has been messed up for a variety of other reasons) 
• Hair growing in weird places 
• Anxiety 
• Depression 
• Also when I get stressed, I have a lot of physical manifestations of it which include the worsening of the above
• Weird blood test results because of my liver

I have dealt with most of these so far but I'm still dealing with acne, hair growing in weird places, irregular cycles, difficulty losing weight, messed up metabolism, anxiety and depression. All of these have gotten better but they aren't gone yet. 

[docs20]

Birth control pills are usually very safe if you don't have a familiar history of blood clotting diseases, and it will definitevely improve your health situation. It's one of the best choices to deal with PCOS especially at the beginning of the treatment, then you can integrate with more natural and holistic treatments