The first thing to remember with PCOS, is all of these symptoms are related, BUT not everyone will have the same symptoms or the same severity of symptoms. It is helpful to understand what is causing these symptoms, so you can be empowered and understand how to alleviate your symptoms. 

At the end of this article I will give a brief summary on how to address general treatments for PCOS. These are not intended to treat you specifically as each case is different.

1. Missed or irregular periods

Increased GnRH frequency release from the pituitary leads to elevated LH to FSH ratio in women with PCOS, this causes eggs each cycle to not reach full maturity. Without one dominant mature egg, ovulation does not occur, therefore no egg is released and progesterone levels are chronically low, because the egg release is what causes progesterone to increase. The withdrawal of progesterone, two weeks later, causes you to bleed each month. Without progesterone increasing after healthy...

The word cyst can sound scary. Oftentimes they are nothing more than a normal part of ovulation or a fluid filled sac that has developed on an ovary. In some cases they can be caused by PCOS or can be malignant such as in ovarian cancer. Normal ovulatory cysts are not caused by PCOS and are typically completely normal and even expected.  

I will be briefly describing the various types of cysts, and at the end you will find a simple chart summary of the differences between "normal" ovulatory cysts and PCOS cysts.

Functional "Normal" Ovulatory Cysts

These are a completely normal part of ovulation. Each month when you ovulate a cyst forms outside your ovary. This cyst is called a follicle. It grows to about 20-25mm in size! Eventually the cyst opens and releases the egg into the fallopian tube for fertilization. 

Some women can actually feel the cyst opening. This has a fun name, it's called "mittelschmerz" pronounced MITT-ul-shmurz. It is a...