Balancing blood sugar levels can help treat Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). Foods like buckwheat are great additions to your diet, and lifestyle advice for PCOS includes getting enough sleep, taking cold showers or swimming in cold water, and getting the support you need from a practitioner or support group.
1. Balance blood sugar level
Balancing blood sugar levels is an integral part of managing PCOS and reversing symptoms. A lot of people consider PCOS a hormonal condition, but insulin resistance plays a big role in the majority of cases. Dr Lara Briden says that, "insulin resistance is by far the most common driver of PCOS." And even in the women who have PCOS but are not insulin resistant, balancing blood sugar levels can really help hormone balance and overall health; so, balancing your blood sugars is a good bet!
Some tips for balancing blood sugar levels with PCOS are as follows:
- Avoid sugar and processed carbohydrates (crisps, white bread, white pasta, white rice): opt for whole grains instead!
- Move your body after eating – a 2022 metanalysis suggests that even walking for just 2 minutes after a meal can help to balance blood sugar levels (1)
- Add cinnamon to your diet – cinnamon is one of my favourite herbs for balancing blood sugar levels. It's backed by research (2) and it's so accessible. Rather than focusing on a particular dose, just try to add a little bit into all of your cooking and get it into you regularly!
- Vinegar has also been given the scientific stamp of approval. Various studies have been published in the last few years (3, 4, 5) showing that adding vinegar to your meals can reduce how much your blood sugar climbs after eating, particularly when you eat high glycaemic index foods. My suggestion is 1 teaspoon of Apple Cider Vinegar with each meal. Always best to dilute this in water or add to meals.
2. Take cold showers or swim in cold water
If I had even one penny for every time a woman with PCOS was told they needed to lose weight, I would be a wealthy woman. But PCOS actually makes it easier to gain weight and very hard to lose weight, so it's just a pretty rubbish suggestion really!
A blast of cold water at the end of your shower each day, or a swim in the cold sea, or a lake or river, could be a much better way of balancing your body's fat stores. Let me explain! We have 2 different types of fat: brown adipose tissue and white adipose tissue. Brown adipose tissue is the type which is more easily used by the body and is said to help you to burn calories while you sleep! And women with PCOS have significantly less of this brown fat tissue compared to women without PCOS. (6)
Cold water therapy is one way to increase your stores of this more helpful, more metabolically active brown fat!
3. Sleep well!
Make sure you get at least 7-8 hours of sleep a night. Sleep helps to increase brown adipose tissue, and also gives our body time to rest and repair and clear excess hormones from our system.
It is also important to make sure your sleep quality is good. A 2020 clinical trial concluded that this link between poor sleep and PCOS was so prevalent that sleep health should be included in the assessment of PCOS. (7)
If you have PCOS and regularly get 8 hours of sleep (or more) but still feel tired in the morning and throughout the day, then it might be worthwhile getting checked for sleep apnoea.
4. Try buckwheat
There is so much that I could say about diet when it comes to PCOS. Dietary changes are so fundamental when it comes to treating PCOS, which you can imagine from the blood sugar connection. One helpful thing that almost everyone could add to their diet is buckwheat!
Buckwheat is a superfood in my opinion! It is technically a seed and has a lovely nutty flavour. It can be great for balancing blood sugar levels. It is a delicious food for you but also for the good bacteria in your microbiome and it's great for your heart health!
My daughter can't eat gluten, so we eat a lot of buckwheat instead (yes, despite having wheat in the name it is gluten-free). You can bake with buckwheat flour (buckwheat pancakes are delicious!); you can get buckwheat pasta and noodles; or you can just cook with the whole buckwheat groats.
5. Get the support you need
Having PCOS can be tough. It comes with fertility worries, knock-on health issues like diabetes and fatty liver disease, and tons of misinformation to top it all off. Like many areas in women's health, it is really misunderstood and understudied.
The allopathic medical system simply attempts to manage PCOS with medications that were designed for completely different purposes, most commonly contraceptives, or metformin – a drug designed to treat diabetes. A full natural treatment protocol is beyond the remit of this blog; however, if you have been given a diagnosis of PCOS I do urge you to seek out a naturopath, nutritionist or herbalist who specialises in this area, in order to get all the support you need to reverse this condition.
It can be a lonely journey too, and so many of my clients find it really helpful to connect with other women with PCOS, either locally or online. Find your tribe, people who understand what you are going through, and share tips and tools for a life of health and happiness with all the support you need!
If you have any questions please get in touch!
