How do you prevent a hormonal imbalance????? Yes, exercise and diet help but some diseases also need medications.

PCOS doesn't necessarily have to do with unhealthy living. There are lean women with PCOS. Victoria Beckham is supposedly one of them.

Jillian Michaels is another example of a healthy woman with PCOS.

I have it as well and I'm a healthy 25 year old-5ft 1in 128 lbs. I however am not a candidate for Met b/c I'm not insulin resistant. I work out, do acupuncture twice a week, drink awful home-brewed herbal teas and eat healthy. My husband and I have been trying to conceive for almost a year now. I haven't had one period or ovulation on my own since we started trying...I have PCOS to thank for my IF.

Metformin can actually lead to weight LOSS not weight gain. Do your research.

@Allison, I'm sure there are PLENTY of other side effects that this child might have gotten.

Kudos to this mother for NOT playing Russian Roulette with her still developing child's health.

Metformin is a glucophage, or sugar eater. I haven't had any side effects while on Metformin, other than weight loss.

PCOS originates from a lack of estrogen and extra testosterone--weight gain, increased body hair, a lower voice, etc. are symptoms. You can't diet away an estrogen deficiency.

As a woman with PCOS, I can vouch for the weight loss that I get with Metformin--this isn't about eating healthy, etc.--PCOS is a disease that is not treatable in itself, but we can mitigate some of the symptoms. I wish I had known about PCOS when I started gaining weight rapidly, even though I was not eating anything different.

We should at least give our daughters the option of preserving their fertility. I have read some of the posts on PCOS sites and to have a pre-and early teen girl describe how they feel when they are told at that young age that they will never have children is heartbreaking.

This isn't about dieting. PCOS interferes with your body's ability to metabolize sugar. I put on 30 pounds in one month, while doing nothing differently. I was at my ideal weight, was not overweight at all, and yet I got PCOS. After about 4 years of beating myself up, and 60 pounds later, I got on Metformin when the doctor saw the cysts in my ovaries. I lost 20 pounds in one month, while eating the same things as I had before. I have since lost another 25 pounds and am still losing more weight. Yes, I watch what I eat, but dieting alone is not the answer.

Perhaps not, but I have to ask, were you still eating to the doctor's recommendations? Doctors today still support the flawed recommendations of the government.

How much fruit were you eating? Indulging in any treats? Still eating grains of any kind? They all add up, even the foods that are "healthy". Especially the recommendations for servings of grains. Sugar is sugar is sugar. In fact, it's thought that even fake sugars cause an insulin response and can still be damaging. Aside from a small amount maybe from fruit, sugar is poison to the body. While we probably still need some (although you'll survive with no carbs, but not protein and fat interestingly enough), we don't need near as much as they say, and there's no need to metabolize something that isn't there.

There are numerous women with PCOS that have normal weight.

Diet has nothing to do with it. It is a response to hormones.

Weight gain is just one of many symptoms associated with PCOS.

I never said it had anything to do with weight, although insulin resistance can certainly affect it.

I'm saying diet can have something to do with it and maybe help with the treatment, as our weight gains and losses are very much related to the same hormone, insulin. If your body isn't using insulin properly in the first place, why then feed it the extra sugars that require it to respond with insulin? It would be a way to help control it by not making your body overproduce insulin. If you don't understand that diet is directly related to hormones, then you need to do more research on how our body uses carbs and what happens when we eat too much. That hormones and diet aren't related is very, very false.

Would you like to tell me how my carb intake will help the cysts in my ovaries that are visible with an ultrasound?

There are some things you can't diet away. If you look at PCOS on webmd, we don't know what causes it, and we can't cure it. We can only manage its symptoms.

PCOS is a result of low estrogen and elevated testosterone. The insulin resistance comes later.

No, it won't fix already existing cysts, and if you'd read the article, you'd realize that it wasn't about that. It was about using a drug in young girls that controls insulin. What diet will do is help control the production of insulin, and when you can get that under control, it effects how other hormones are produced, like testosterone. I do know people who are using lower-carb, no sugar (Primal/Paleo)to help treat it and are getting some relief, but I feel like there simply isn't enough research since they're diving into the diet part because doctors don't know anything. We could really use some numbers, and not just personal stories. But their hormones are finally leveling out some.

You can't diet away elevated testosterone. You might want to look at your daughters' hands--a longer 4th finger/ring finer than the index finger is a sign of elevated testosterone.

Giving a girl metformin at age 8 will help prevent infertility due to insulin resistance. However, if you read about PCOS on webmd, the lower your weight, the better the chances you have on conceiving. So yes, diet and exercise do playa a role. My doctor also switched me from Depo to a birth control pill because the birth control pills have estrogen in them. You might want to put them on the pill when they are old enough for contraceptives vs. another method.

It probably would help. I personally switched to the Primal WOE, similar to Paleo, a few months back felt immediate results for my own problems (not PCOS, but weight and other related problems). Google Mark's Daily Apple, click on the Forums page and type in PCOS in the search bar on the site to find all the threads related to it. Ignore his advertising, it makes it look gimmicky, but he's got a few books out and his own meal replacement stuff. The book is helpful if you go through with the change though. The people I met on the forums on the website are mostly pretty nice, and many of them also have PCOS.

It's a drastic change getting rid of grains, eliminating as much sugar as possible, and staying away from things like hormone filled conventional meat and soy. It's about eating the best whole, un-processed foods that we can afford. While we only have personal stories, many of them have found that their hormones are getting a little better under control.

I personally have been having the easiest time I've ever had losing my weight. On top of that, many of my insulin-related problems and needing to eat every 2 hours or I'd feel hypoglycemic is gone. Many others have seen improvement in their Type II diabetes. It can definitely help with insulin resistance, even with PCOS.

There are no 'preventative treatments' for PCOS, only management. Diet and nutrition do not affect hormones.

Diet and nutrition do affect hormones and is directly related to insulin. Do some research before you start spouting more lies to people who really need the help.

I hope that you are right. Before I got PCOS, I was unsympathetic to overweight people--have a vegetable, get outside, and your problems will be solved. With my weight gain with PCOS, I have really had to struggle to lose weight, and am much less hasty to judge overweight people as lazy or undisciplined eaters. Not all overweight people have an illness requiring medication, but that possibility should be explored before we give overweight people platitudes about exercising and dieting.

For most overweight people, it's generally an issue of eating too much of the wrong things. Our kids are starting out early these days, but for those who become overweight it becomes a vicious cycle. Sugar is a big one, and our body treats it like poison, and when we eat too much of it our body responds by sending out tons of insulin to get rid of it right away. We only need a small amount of blood sugar and it's best to keep it a constant level with foods low in sugar itself instead of the small meals recommendation.

They can eat the bad stuff for a while with no consequence, but once it catches up to them the resulting insulin problems tend to make a person more hungry more often, and the bigger they get the more calories they need, making the problem worse because they're likely still overeating. I hate it when people blame Type II diabetes on being fat, when really they're both just symptoms. My mother is on Metaformin for that, but she'd feel so much better if she'd stop eating crap food. She still eats about 3 times as many carbs as I take in a day and her doctor is still okay with that! Those sort of diets also cause inflammation and damage to the heart and cause complications for things like your cholesterol. It really comes down to hormone problems, and it's related to diet. And if you've already got a hormone imbalance due to something else (like PCOS), you really need to watch what you eat. Control the insulin and you essentially control nearly everything else.

Unless there's a thyroid issue or similar, no, meds aren't needed. Diet and exercise can still work, but not the way doctors try and make us. Calorie restriction sucks if they try and use a low-fat diet as our bodies would really rather use that as fuel. It's a better, slow-burning source of energy. Couple that with the tendency to think we need to run ourselves to death and you can see why it fails most of the time. They should be focused on moving slowly with low-impact exercise to prevent further inflammation and gaining strength as muscle helps burn energy too.

CuddleMom, I never claimed it to be caused by diet or an issue because of diet. But the symptoms can be controlled by diet.

Demon Gray wolf,

I have PCOS. I tried hard to lose weight doing all of the possible diets. Nothing. I went on metformin and lost weight immediately with absolutely no lifestyle change. I still exercised and I still ate the same things. Being overweight was never about me eating the wrong things or being a couch potato. Because of allergies, everything I eat is made from scratch. There is no corn in my diet and I keep the grains to a minimum. I have always eaten lots of vegetables and fruits with chicken breasts and fish. PCOS caused my body to store everything I ate as fat. Metformin allows my body to process insulin effectively.

If your daughter is at risk or has been diagnosed with PCOS, it might save many dollars down the road in fertility, IVF, etc., costs.

As for pharma, metformin is a very old drug and is now generic, so the cost would not be that great.

I think they would have chosen a more expensive drug if that was their intention, Met is a $4 perscription from Walmart.

@JCA - I agree. And yes it is a cheap drug (more than $4 if you're not glued to Walmart) BUT keep in mind Metformin IS NOT approved by the FDA as a treatment for PCOS. It is approved by the FDA as a Diabetes medication. So...what better way to get the $$ (even if its only a few bucks per person per month) from a wider range of consumers??