Three Tips on Getting Pregnant with PCOS
If you’ve just walked out of the doctor’s office after being told that you have PCOS, you might feel stuck in that mindset of, "I'm gonna struggle with infertility." Let's first banish that thought and move into actionable strategies to help you get pregnant naturally.
As a functional practitioner, I have helped so many women with PCOS conceive naturally. This includes women who have literally gone through multiple fertility treatments unsuccessfully, or that’s how they had one of their children and then they worked with us and conceived naturally after that.
When you're struggling with infertility and PCOS, you probably fit into one of two camps. One, you're just trying to get your ovulation back and literally have no cycle at all. Or two, you may be regularly ovulating but you still aren't getting pregnant and you don't know why.
What I’m sharing in this post will help, no matter which camp you’re in. So let's dive in!
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PCOS Requires Full Body, Sustainable Support
When we’re looking at PCOS, we need to come in with full body support.
Sometimes we might think, "It's just metabolic" or "It's just hormonal." No. Let's look at the body as a whole and how things are impacting everything else. It's not going to be just one thing or one supplement that makes a difference.
Secondly, we need to look at things we can change sustainably to support your hormones.
Not something you’re gonna try for a week and give up because it doesn’t fit your lifestyle. You may have heard with PCOS, "I need to do keto. I need to do IF. I need to do carnivore. I need to do this or that aggressive diet."
And here's my question: do you see yourself doing that kind of diet long-term? I’m all about long-term, sustainable support and none of those extreme diets fit into that category.
Because yes, you can put your PCOS symptoms completely into remission. But you have to stay consistent with a lifestyle that's going to support it. So this is not, "I'm gonna do something for 20 days and I'm gonna feel amazing and I'm just gonna go back to my regular lifestyle." Your symptoms will come back.
Step 1: Blood Sugar Balance is the Foundation to Getting Pregnant with PCOS
Blood sugar balance is truly the foundation for all women, but especially women with PCOS because you have a very strong connection with insulin resistance.
I want you to imagine that your cells have a lock on them. In order for glucose to get into the cells, insulin has to come and unlock it so it can open and get the glucose in. Now, if you’re insulin resistant, your insulin comes and knocks on the cell and goes, "Hey, I need to open it up. We need to get glucose in." And the cell goes, "Yeah, I have no idea what you are."
So then we come with more keys and more keys and more keys. You have to take 25 keys to open this cell just to get the glucose in. And that is insulin resistance.
Symptoms of Insulin Resistance
When you’re dealing with insulin resistance, weight loss can become very difficult. You may notice that you're carrying most of your weight around your midsection.
Maybe you also notice things like darkening of the underarms or under your neck, that can also be signs of insulin resistance.
Maybe you're dealing with hirsutism (male pattern hair growth, like on the face and neck), which is connected to excess androgens and insulin resistance.
Maybe you're dealing with no ovulations due to insulin resistance.
Insulin and Testosterone Work Hand in Hand
Our goal is to start sensitizing the cell to insulin while also lowering your fasting insulin and lowering the overall insulin that is in your body. When we're looking at PCOS, most women also have excess androgens. If we have too many androgens, that's going to shut down ovulation.
Every time you spike your blood sugar, it's causing your ovaries to produce more testosterone. If you have PCOS, you already have an issue with excess androgens; you don't need more of them.
So you can see how the insulin and testosterone are working hand in hand—the hormonal and the metabolic—to cause this perfect storm. You're struggling to lose weight, struggling to get pregnant, struggling to have a regular ovulation, struggling with unwanted hair growth.
That is why PCOS is not just hormonal. It's not just metabolic. They go hand in hand and impact each other. So the first thing we need to start with is nutrition to keep your blood sugar balanced.
How to Pair Your Foods for Blood Sugar Balance
The blood sugar balance framework is simple:
half your plate non-starchy veggies
a quarter protein
a quarter healthy fats and carbs
This approach is sustainable because no food really is off limits, you just need to pair foods well together!
By the way, yes, we do need carbs to support our thyroid and ovulation. But I want you to focus more on low glycemic carbs, especially in this healing phase.
Fiber is also so important for blood sugar balance. If we aim for half our plate being non-starchy veggies and you're rotating in 30 different plants per week, you’re off to a great start here.
I highly recommend mastering breakfast first because the more stable you can keep blood sugar at breakfast, the more stable it's going to be the rest of the day. Start with just one meal and master that before moving to the next.
You can get some of my favorite PCOS breakfast ideas in this post.
Step 2: Bring in Strategic Supplementation
Once you've got your food foundation down, there are some supplements that can make a real difference when you're trying to get pregnant with PCOS.
Myo-Inositol
Myo-inositol has been studied extensively for PCOS and insulin resistance. It has been shown to help sensitize the cell to insulin while also helping to lower androgens. The typical dosage range is between 2,000 to 4,000 milligrams a day. You can break it up into twice a day dosing, or you can do it all at once.
You can find my recommended inositol supplements in my Fullscript dispensary. Just create a free account and you can get a discount on safe, professional grade supplements.
By the way, please don't buy your supplements on Amazon. I know it seems convenient, but they're not temperature regulated, which can reduce their potency. It’s also very common for supplements to be counterfeited on Amazon. You'll get supplements that have the correct label but then you open it and it's not the supplement you paid for.
If you're gonna be spending money on a supplement, please buy it from the brand itself, from a professional grade dispensary like Fullscript, or go to a health food store to make sure you’re getting something that’s safe and effective.
Maitake Mushroom
The other supplement I love bringing in is maitake. Maitake has actually been studied in supporting ovulation with very cool results. And it's been studied for blood sugar support with massive results, especially with type 2 diabetes and lowering fasting glucose.
You do need to get a high enough dosage of at least 4,000 milligrams a day and you want these to be fruiting body only and certified organic. If you're just taking 500 milligrams, that's not what's been studied and it's not going to do you much good.
There are not many brands that are certified organic, fruiting body only, and have a high enough dosage, so I opt for Eversio Wellness. They're a Canadian brand with a high extraction ratio and a certificate of analysis, so you can see the testing of what's in their products.
Eversio Wellness has two great maitake options:
Maitake capsules which you can just take with a glass of water (I promise you are not going to taste them - Leah hates mushrooms and I can take these no problem!).
Five Mushroom Blend, which is a powder that you can mix into your food (ideas for taking functional mushrooms without any gross taste here).
For PCOS and fertility support, I'm leaning towards the five mushroom blend because beyond maiktake, it includes cordyceps which is great for libido, energy, and egg quality. It also includes reishi, which is calming for your HPA axis. Reishi is also really good to support androgen detoxification, which is important with PCOS.
The five mushroom blend is also something I'd recommend your spouse bring in if you are actively trying to get pregnant because it's very helpful for sperm quality. Now you're helping both of you at the same time!
Use discount code LEAH at Eversio Wellness.
Other Supportive Options
In terms of supplementation, you could also consider bringing in seed cycling (easy recipe here), removing endocrine disruptors, adding apple cider vinegar before meals (to support blood sugar balance), or bringing in Omega-3s. Most fish oils you get at the store are rancid unfortunately, so I opt for food-based natural forms of Omega-3 like chlorella from Energybits (discount code LEAHB for Energybits chlorella).
Step 3: Address Nutrient Depletion
If you’ve been dealing with PCOS for a long time, you may also be dealing with gut issues, hair loss, chronic stress, poor sleep, and you're just not getting enough nutrients from your food.
Your body is stuck in this endless cycle and that’s where testing becomes your best friend. I really like bringing in Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) testing because we can see exactly at the cellular level what is going on.
We see things in the hair faster than we would in a blood test because blood always wants to stay at homeostasis, pulling and pushing minerals in and out of tissues. Plus, important minerals like magnesium are barely stored in the blood (only 1%) so blood tests aren't very accurate.
When we test, we can see exactly what you're depleted in and create a protocol to get your nutrients up to the needed levels. This is going to support your cycle, weight loss, insulin sensitivity, and fertility.
Testing is something that we help you with inside the Hormone Reset Program®, but getting pregnant with PCOS requires more than just testing. You need the lifestyle shifts, adapted to YOUR life, to make these changes sustainable so they stick.
That is what we do in the Hormone Reset Program®. We literally partner with you and keep you accountable as we make these changes and give you the education so you truly can understand what's going on with your body and walk away knowing exactly what to do to boost your fertility.
Just Start Somewhere
These are the three things that we see helping women get pregnant with PCOS:
blood sugar balance
strategic supplementation
addressing nutrient depletion via testing
If you take just one thing away from this post to start today, it’s blood sugar balance. Don't look at all this information and think "I can't do all of it, so I might as well do nothing." No. Start today. Look at your plate the next time you eat and see how you can tweak things for blood sugar balance. You CAN put your PCOS symptoms into remission and you're gonna feel better by taking one step at a time.
If you have PCOS and want to get pregnant, join me inside the Hormone Reset Program®
Let’s get rid of your PCOS symptoms and boost your fertility so you can finally get pregnant. Get the accountability, testing and personalized protocol you need for lasting results.
