47: How a nurse treats her PCOS and what she wants you to know

You’d think that those working in the health and medical space would have absolutely no problem with their PCOS right? If you’re a doctor or nurse, surely you’d have enough knowledge to have all of those answers right?

Well not really. Unfortunately, the structure of our modern westernised medical system isn’t well set up for more chronic issues like PCOS . Many doctors and nurses aren’t well versed in this area of medicine because it’s not something that’s hugely focused on in medical school – often they just get taught about routine treatment options but not so much the pathology for conditions like PCOS – which is crazy considering roughly 20% of women have PCOS!

Today I’m joined by the lovely Karina! Karina is a former emergency department technician who’s just finishing her Masters of Nursing, and therefore has a fair amount of medical knowledge under her belt. However, she was dealing with a lot of the classic insulin resistant PCOS symptoms such as stubborn, excessive weight gain, hangry attacks, sugar cravings, the works. She had the knowledge but wasn’t getting anywhere with her symptoms and was told  over and over by her doctors that medications and the Pill were really the only options when it came to having any real change with PCOS symptoms. Learning about PCOS in her women’s health class just got her even more frustrated because it reiterated this and she knew from personal experience that she wasn’t seeing great improvements in her symptoms.

Karina came to work with me in The PCOS Protocol to really get to the root of those PCOS symptoms and wow, she has come such a long way. Not only has she seen a great improvement in her weight and physical symptoms, but she’s gotten her energy back, she’s not experiencing those awful sugar cravings, hangry attacks and she’s starting to feel like herself again. 

You don’t really know how important your body is until something goes wrong, and you don’t appreciate it until you learn to understand WHY it’s doing what it’s doing and you can work with it and not against it.

In this episode, Karina and I talk about the training that they get in nursing school for PCOS, her journey with PCOS as a medical-literate professional, dealing with weight gain, dealing with friends / family / strangers judging you for making changes, why it’s not just an ‘eat less, exercise more’ equation when it comes to PCOS and what she wants others to know about finding a fix for their PCOS symptoms – as well as a whole lot more. 

I think we can all learn a lot from her journey when it comes to our own. I know a lot of you will resonate with parts of her story so I definitely recommend having a listen, her story is so inspiring.

This episode is for you if:

• You’re a medical professional with PCOS and you can’t seem to figure out what will resolve your symptoms
• You have sugar cravings or can’t stop eating sugar when you start eating it
• You have stubborn weight gain that won’t shift
• Why you’re not losing weight even though you’re eating clean and exercising regularly
• You’ve had friends / family / strangers judging you for not eating certain foods

Some things we cover in this episode:

• Karina’s PCOS journey and struggles with excessive stubborn weight gain
• What they teach you about PCOS in nursing
• Why it’s not as simple as ‘just eat less and exercise more’
• What the medical community is missing when it comes to PCOS treatment
• A combination approach to PCOS
• Why PCOS isn’t just a fertility condition
• How to stop punishing your body
• How to deal with people thinking you’re being trendy / snobby for not eating certain foods

Want to understand more about that PCOS root cause and how you can put your other symptoms into remission? Then come join us in The PCOS Protocol.

We’ll guide you through all of the changes you need to make in order to feel in control of your PCOS and get back to what’s really important to you!