PCOS: Breakfast & IF

Hey Muse,

What’s PCOS?

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a condition that affects a woman's hormone levels. Women with PCOS produce higher-than-normal amounts of male hormones. This hormone imbalance causes them to skip menstrual periods and makes it harder for them to get pregnant. PCOS also causes hair growth on the face and body, and baldness. And it can contribute to long-term health problems like diabetes and heart disease.

When we look at PCOS as a whole, there's excess testosterone/androgens involved.

But where are they coming from?

1) you can have androgens coming directly from your adrenals due to stress

2) many of the androgens coming from the ovaries when there's too much insulin/when you're eating too much sugar

Breakfast, hormones and blood sugar

One of the habits that I've been observing over and over again in women with PCOS is the habit of skipping breakfast (usually due to being in a rush/not making it a priority).

This habit of skipping breakfast messes with our blood sugar regulation and stress hormones. Especially if you would just have a coffee but no food and rush to work. Caffeine will spike cortisol more when it's consumed alone.

Why am I mentioning breakfast in PCOS?

Because eating breakfast is so important when it comes to regulating your blood sugar levels since its dysregulation it's one of the underlying drivers in PCOS. It will also prevent you from binging later in the day when you're starving and will eat anything, junk included.

Moreover, cortisol will rise up until we eat breakfast and if we skip it, we'll run on cortisol to thrive but it'll lead to adrenal fatigue long-term.

Intermittent fasting: good or bad for PCOS?

You may be thinking 💭 "but Intermittent Fasting (IF) is at all rage now" and I can tell you that I'm not against IF because there are various benefits associated, like autophagy.

BUT I truly believe that you shouldn't be skipping breakfast to get those benefits. Actually, the very fact of skipping the first meal of the day might create more health complications hormonally.

The importance of circadian rhythm

We have evolved to restrict our activity to the night or day by developing an endogenous circadian clock to ensure that physiological processes are performed at the optimal times. This built-in circadian rhythm makes us diurnal creatures and let us have an overnight period of fasting. Briefly, modifying our natural rhytms is hypothesized to influence metabolic regulation via effects on (1) circadian biology, (2) the gut microbiome, and (3) modifiable lifestyle behaviors. Negative perturbations of these biological and physiological systems can produce a hostile metabolic environment, which might worsen PCOS symptoms.

1.       Circadian biology

The time of day plays a major part in integrating metabolism and hormonal patterns. Insulin sensitivity is higher in the morning and decreases throughout the day and into the night. This is, in part, due to the circadian rhythm of insulin secretion. Postprandial insulin and glucose responses to meals increase across the day and into the night. Thus, meals consumed at night are associated with greater postprandial glucose and insulin exposure than content-matched meals consumed during the day.

2.       Gut microbiota

There is now a large body of evidence suggesting that the micro-organisms colonizing the human gut, known as gut microbiota, play a central role in human physiology and metabolism. Many functions of the gastrointestinal tract exhibit robust circadian rhythms. For example, gastric emptying and blood flow are greater during the daytime than at night. Gut microbiota has an impact on people affected by PCOS on glycemic control, including: incretin secretion, short-chain fatty acid production, bile acid metabolism, and adipose tissue regulation. It is now well-established that imbalanced gut microbiota is linked to glycemic control impairment. Therefore, it is plausible that a chronically disturbed circadian rhythm may affect gastrointestinal function and impair metabolism and health.

3.       Changes in lifestyle behavior

Changes in lifestyle behavior, like skipping breakfast, have demonstrated alterations in appetite - regulating hormones (leptin, ghrelin) that may lead to an increase in total energy intake. Leptin and ghrelin are peripheral signals that contribute to the central regulation of food intake. Leptin, aka satiety hormone, improves glucose and fat metabolism and provides information about energy status to regulatory centers in the brain. Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, increases food intake and appetite and promotes body weight gain. In addition, evidence has shown that both hormones can be altered by circadian rhythm disruption. Accordingly, and hypothetically, people who suffer with PCOS and skip that initial moment of nourishment will have lower concentrations of leptin and, consequently, those of ghrelin will be higher.

Ideally, you want to eat a nourishing, warming meal within 1h of waking up. This will strengthen your digestion, lower high cortisol/chronic stress and get your metabolism burning.

Hope you enjoyed this info, share with your pals and let me know your questions!

Much Love,

Manuela