Is there such a thing as a "mild" PCOS?

amusedmonkey

I was recently diagnosed with "mild" PCOS. Losing weight sure helped keep some symptoms reigned in (like I'm finally getting my periods regularly when they used to come once every 3-6 months and my fasting blood sugar seems to have gone down)

My main issue seems to be high cortisol and testosterone. Because I'm "mild" and did not present with excessive body hair, my blood sugar is borderline normal, and my periods are clockwork accurate now, my doctor refuses to give me any medications and doesn't think I should go on the pill. He said all I need is a lifestyle change (isn't this what I've been doing already?)

I've heard a lot about low carbing and ketogenic for PCOS but due to my cortisol issues my body seems to react badly being on ketosis making my baseline blood sugar hang around over 100 at all times. My "happy" carb level seems to hover between 100-150 grams.


My main symptoms right now are mild to moderate acne around jawline, a few hairs on my chin and my hair is much thinner than it used to be. My hairline looks like it's slowly receding.. and I don't like that one bit.. mild or not, I need to do something!

What do you think my next step should be? Any advice?

Alliwan

Welcome to the PCOSis board!

The only thing I can really think of is to see if you had a fasting insulin test to see if you have insulin resistant pcos. Its different than your glucose/blood sugar test. If they do a test and you are insulin resistant, then going as low carb as you can while keeping your blood sugar level and using metformin has helped a lot of us who are also insulin resistant. If your blood sugar goes wacky, try a low gi diet, where you pair complex carbs with a protien and fat so your body processes the carbs much more slowly.

I'm not really sure designations of mild or severe are overly helpful, Its more about the symptoms that cause you problems and how to get relief from them. If you can only go as low as 100-150g carbs, then do that but try to pair the carbs with a protein and fats.

Lifting weights and cardio are both very helpful for pcos symptoms. So dont neglect either one. Hang in there, you've lost some weight so you are doing things right.

miranda_mom

I think you could have mild PCOS in terms of the symptoms not being as severe. For example, I have reduced fertility but I have two children. The first one I had with no meds and the second I only needed Metformin. I also have a very, very small amount of facial hair and some hair thinning (also treatable with Metformin). My blood work has always been borderline between PCOS and normal and I have cysts but not as many of them as some women do.
I will tell you that the situation might change as you age - when I was 28 and had my daughter I ovulated every 6-8 weeks so longer than normal but I was still able to get pregnant. When I was 33 we decided to have another child and I was not ovulating at all. For some women, weight makes a difference but for me, that was not the case. I weighed less the second time around.

Dragonwolf

One thing that might help is cutting out grains (at least the gluten-containing ones, but I prefer the "cut them all out for a while, then add them back in one at a time" method) and dairy.

I found my acne to be helped tremendously when I cut out grains, and then again when I cut out dairy.

Cutting out dairy completely is hard for me, though (gluten was pretty easy, and all grains not terribly difficult for the most part), so I haven't been able to go long enough to find out if it'd help the facial hair or other issues, though. Like you, though, I've only got a little bit, so it's kind of hard to figure out what triggers them the most.

Beyond that, I agree with everything Alliwan said.