PCOS Help

A hormonal problem that was also known as Stein-leventhal syndrome—named after the doctors who identified and characterized the symptoms—is one of the leading causes of infertility today. It is rerported to affect 5% of the female population world wide.

Most of these women develop insulin resistance and increased male hormones. Insulin is the one responsible for bringing the sugar or glucose from the blood stream into the cell. Testosterone on the other hand is the main male sex hormone.

Normally, everyone has both testosterone, and its female counterpart, estrogen, in their blood stream. For females, the amount of estrogen is far more numerous than testosterone. But women wit PCOS tend to have more testosterone, a medical condition termed as hyperandrogenism.

The disease was first identified back in 1935, but doctors where baffled by its cause. Even today the exact cause of the illness is still not verified, but it was speculated that it had something to do with insulin and testosterone levels, thus making it an endocrine problem.

Women with the disorder have been found to have cysts on their ovaries. These cysts are in actuality immature egg cells that have not been released to the fallopian tubes. They remain in the ovary and grow in number, thus the illness is named polycystic ovary.

Because the egg cells in the ovary are not released, menstruation does no occur. Thus PCOS’s common symptom is amenorrhea or the absence of menstruation. And since the egg cell is not released, it is imposible for a sperm cell to fertilizte the egg. This lack of ovulation or termed as anovulation is also a classic symptom of PCOS.

PCOS fertility problems are common to these women and the posibility of child birth is very difficult. But the problem is not permanent and can be dealt with.