Dr. Kyle Gillett

So its prevalence is much higher than we think it is.

There's been a lot of studies and some studies say prevalence of 10%, some say 20%.

It's not completely clinically penetrant.

So most people don't know they have PCOS until they have infertility or subfertility.

Most women find out they have PCOS in their 30s, especially because it's on a spectrum or a continuum like a lot of things where you can have a weaker version or a very severe version.

What are the symptoms?

there's a criteria called the Rotterdam criteria.

And in the Rotterdam criteria, there's a couple of different ways that you can diagnose it.

You're looking for androgen excess, insulin resistance, and you can also look for polycystic ovaries.

You don't actually have to have polycystic ovaries or get an ultrasound of your ovaries to be diagnosed.

If you have androgen excess, for example, androgenic acne or hormonal acne.

If you have hair growth, like a hair growth on the chin, it's called hirsutism.

Or if you have, you know, like deepening of the voice, any symptom of too much male pattern baldness, if you're a female, that's a symptom of PCOS as well.

then you can also have insulin resistance.

So this is obesity, it's prediabetes, a high fasting insulin, a HOMA-IR over two, a fasting insulin of over six.

So if you have significant insulin resistance and also androgen dominance, that's a sign of it.

Androgen dominance often leads to what's called oligomenorrhea.

So if you're having more than 35-day intervals in between a period,

or if you have less than nine per year, then that can be a sign that you have oligo, which means too little, menorrhea, which means menses.

So that's a very common sign of PCOS.