PCOS: What it is and what you need to know

According to the HHS Office on Women's Health, Between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 women of childbearing age has PCOS: Polycystic ovary syndrome.

Women's Health magazine recently featured a story about a 25 year-old woman and her expierence getting misdiagnosed before learning she had PCOS. Here's an excerpt from the article on misdiagnosed patients.

So, a woman walks into a doctor's office. She's 25, and her cramps are out of control; her period is irregular at best. What's more, she's packed on 50 pounds in 18 months. Her general practitioner suspects and tests her thyroid. Normal. She's shuffled to a gynecologist, who orders a raft of blood work. Normal again. She's prescribed Advil for the pain and birth-control pills to regulate her cycle. Back home, she takes to the Web, searching for answers. And at a followup visit with her gyno, she timidly offers a diagnosis of her own: polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal disorder that plagues some 5 million young women. "Doubtful," says her doc. "You don't fit the profile." Though the classic PCOS patient is overweight, sufferers also have unnaturally high testosterone levels, something that's missing here. Besides, before her recent weight gain, she'd been slim and healthy, so she's likely just going through a normal postadolescent metabolic slowdown, says her M.D. She'll bounce back soon enough. Except that she doesn't—and two years later, after constant pain and countless more appointments, procedures, and tests, Alexa Stevenson of St. Paul, Minnesota, is finally correctly diagnosed by a reproductive endocrinologist with PCOS, the most common cause of infertility.

Crazy, right? So how do you know if you have it? Here are the symptoms for PCOS, courtesy of the Office on Women's Health:

• Infertility (not able to get pregnant) because of not ovulating. In fact, PCOS is the most common cause of female infertility.
• Infrequent, absent, and/or irregular menstrual periods
• Hirsutism (HER-suh-tiz-um) — increased hair growth on the face, chest, stomach, back, thumbs, or toes
• Cysts on the ovaries
• Acne, oily skin, or dandruff
• Weight gain or obesity, usually with extra weight around the waist
• Male-pattern baldness or thinning hair
• Patches of skin on the neck, arms, breasts, or thighs that are thick and dark brown or black
• Skin tags — excess flaps of skin in the armpits or neck area
• Pelvic pain
• Anxiety or depression
• Sleep apnea — when breathing stops for short periods of time while asleep

If you think you have a lot of the symptoms above but don't want to go thru the same expierence Alexa had to deal with, here are a few tips to help you prepare for your doctor visit:

• Do your homework. Alexa searched for informatoin on the web. This is a good idea if you search within credible health websites. Try WebMD and womenshealth.gov to get you started.
• Make a list of all the symptoms you have and the severity in which you have them.
• Look into your family history. Has anyone else in your family been diagnosed with PCOS? Any history of diabetes or infertility could also serve as a red flag.
• Find a doctor who has expierence with PCOS. Those who do, have more expierence diangosing the symptoms correctly.
• Go to your doctor visit with lots of questions. Writing them down will garuntee that you don't forget anything when you get there.
• Be prepared to take a lot of tests if your doctor thinks you could have PCOS. WebMD has a great list of tests that you  may undergo during your visit.

Bottom line: Knowledge is power. In honor of PCOS Awareness Month (September), I feel it's important that us 20something ladies are proactive about our health. PCOS isn't a condition that's discussed every day, but it's something that could impact your health and your future. Pay attention to your body and don't be hestitate to speak up if you think something is wrong.