What is the connection between PCOS and insulin resistance? What are the three criteria for PCOS, and why do some women develop too much testosterone? And why do patients put on a low-carb diet for other reasons than infertility, have a higher pregnancy rate?

In this presentation from the Low Carb Denver 2019 conference, Drs. Nadia Pateguana and Jason Fung talk about PCOS and insulin resistance.

This is our #10 published presentation from the Low Carb Denver conference. We’ve previously posted the presentations by Gary Taubes, Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, Dr. Sarah Hallberg, Dr. David Ludwig, Dr. Ben Bikman, Dr. Paul Mason, Dr. Priyanka Wali, Dr. Caryn Zinn and Dr. Eric Westman.

Transcript of the preview above
Dr. Jason Fung: Everything here is really a disease of too much insulin. And this is the part that sort of logic just breaks down. Because in medical school you learn about all this stuff and it’s like okay well if too much insulin causes everything that you see in PCOS, then what’s the treatment?

How about Clomid? Is like… Did you not pay attention here? Too much insulin was the problem. Why are you giving Clomid which stimulates the ovary to ovulate? It’s like… how about an ovarian wedge resection? It’s like… What? What are you talking about?

So ovarian wedge resection was this sort of old-time treatment for PCOS where they’d actually slice a little wedge, you know, like a little piece of watermelon out of your ovary and that was the treatment for PCOS.

And why did it work? Because if you slice a little wedge of your ovary, your ovary cannot produce as much of the testosterone. So a lot of the symptoms would get better but, again, you’re not making the actual disease better.

Because you never actually treated the hyperinsulinemia. Or you can go to other treatments like… Metformin sort of makes little sense… But how about birth control pills? Is like, is that going to reduce your insulin? If it doesn’t, then what are you doing for this disease?
Like you got to go back to the root cause of the disease and fix it if you want to fix this disease. And the disease is so common and causes so much heart ache that– We treat it in this crazy manner when we already know what the root cause of this disease is. It’s like it’s too much insulin, so let’s produce insulin.