Struggling with PMS or PCOS? It’s time to get to the root of the problem. In this episode of “The Dr. Hyman Show,” I revisit powerful conversations with Dr. Elizabeth Boham and Dr. Heather Huddleston to uncover the hidden triggers of hormonal imbalance. From the risks of hormonal birth control to the critical role of diet, we explore how stress, toxins, and inflammation wreak havoc on your hormones—and what you can do to fix it. Tune in for a personalized approach to achieving hormonal balance and reclaiming your health. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal Full-length episodes of these interviews can be found here: The Hidden Cause of Your PMS and How to Fix It Fast The Underlying Causes and Solutions for Women’s Hormonal Balances with Dr. Elizabeth Boham The Root Causes And Treatment For PCOS This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Mitopure, and AG1. Streamline your lab orders with Rupa Health. Access more than 3,500 specialty lab tests and register for a FREE live demo at RupaHealth.com. Support essential mitochondrial health and save 10% on Mitopure. Visit TimelineNutrition.com/Drhyman and use code DRHYMAN10. AG1 is offering new subscribers a FREE $76 gift when you sign up. You’ll get a Welcome Kit, a bottle of D3K2, AND 5 free travel packs in your first box. Just go to DrinkAG1.com/hyman
Chapter 1: What are the hidden causes of PMS and PCOS?
Coming up on this episode. Many young women are becoming increasingly aware of the potential harms of birth control, not because their conventional gynecologist is explaining it to them, but through their own personal experience. They're on a journey to educate themselves and they want a more nuanced, personalized approach to hormonal health.
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Every week, I bring on interesting guests to discuss the latest topics in the field of functional medicine and do a deep dive on how these topics pertain to your health. In today's episode, I have some interesting discussions with other experts in the field. So let's just trump right in. PMS is not a normal consequence of being female.
If you're one of the many women who do suffer from PMS, you don't have to suffer from PMS every month, enduring mood swings, breast tenderness, fluid retention, migraines, bloating, or heavy, painful periods. While medications may sometimes be helpful, they can have pretty significant side effects
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Chapter 2: How can diet improve hormonal balance?
Well, I think for sure we know that inflammation may have some direct effect on ovarian dysfunction. So there are some studies showing that if you treat inflammation, you can improve sort of ovulation to some degree in the ovary. So there may be a direct effect of inflammation on the ovary. There's also a path where inflammation does drive up insulin resistance, and that's
through sort of TNF alpha and other cytokines that are thought to interfere with insulin action. And we know that insulin resistance really drives androgen production from the ovary, at least in patients with PCOS. So there's definitely a metabolic sort of driver of the hyperandrogenism and hormonal dysfunction and anovulatory sort of status that we do see.
And then we also know that that inflammation in and of itself has really important downstream consequences, not only in terms of cardiovascular disease, but there's more and more of a thought around depression and cognition that may be impacted by inflammation. So I do think it's really an important piece of this disorder that we want to try to get a handle on and try to treat.
It's so important and it's so many causes of inflammation. It can be environmental toxins, it can be the microbiome, it can be inflammatory foods. I mean, there's so many factors that we know that are driving inflammation in our society that are just getting worse and worse. And so it might be not one thing, it may be so many different things.
Can you talk about the difference between the patients you see with PCOS who would be the typical ones we learn about in medical school are overweight, they have acne, hair loss on their head, facial hair, irregular periods, infertility, versus the ones who are thin and exercise and don't seem to have any weight issues. Is there a different subtype? Are these the same kind of condition?
How are they different?
I mean, I think that they're probably subtypes. PCOS is, I think, a very heterogeneous disorder. It's really just a syndrome, right? It's a collection of things that kind of go together and sort of have somewhat of a shared pathophysiology. But it's not like, you know, if you think about something like hypothyroidism, which is very much, you know, it's like your thyroid gland isn't functioning.
You're going to have this. You fix this. It translates. PCOS is messier. And so, yeah, so the patient, there is a lean phenotype, we call it lean PCOS, and it's often quite different than the obese PCOS. Some of the things that may be similar is the lack of ovulation, the need for help with fertility care. So that may be a constant.
The other thing that may be a constant is trouble with elevated androgen. So hair growth on the face, acne, that can still manifest in lean PCOS. But, you know, lean PCOS patients are lucky in that they're often not quite as much struggling with some of the metabolic features.
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