Health Topic: PCOS Info

Can't lose weight? Do you have coarse, excess hair on your face, chest or back? Do you suffer from hair loss or acne? Are you depressed? Unable to conceive?

If so, you're experiencing common symptoms of PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). As bad as these symptoms are, the scary thing is if you don't get some control over this disorder, you have a much higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Our research indicates that if you are a strict vegetarian, you may have greater difficulty in gaining the upper hand over PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). However, we recognize that there may be spiritual issues involved.

I (Dr. Nancy Dunne) have been privileged to know quite a few long-term vegetarians, people of deep social conscience and committed to values like sustainability and global health.

Grains have become a problem because we eat too much of them, and we eat them too far altered from their natural state.

The inevitable health consequences of a diet high in refined and chemically tainted grains are all around us. The consequences of 50 plus years of eating this way in America are skyrocketing numbers of people who are overweight and suffering diabetes and heart disease.

Another big problem with vegetarian diets is that they rely heavily on grains. Grains are not essential human food.

Think about it. Humans were human for at least 10 or 12 thousand years before we invented farming. Original humans had no need for daily doses of grain. We did eat those few ripe seed heads we walked by in the late summer, when the grass was tall and bending with these plump, inviting nuggets. We plucked those and chewed a few and shared the rest around.

Protein is a big concept. Kind of like ‘love’ or ‘stress’, protein is a word that covers a lot of related but not equivalent items.

The way you love your mother is not the way you love your girlfriend -- or, if it is, you are in for some trouble on down the line. The stress of getting packed for a month in Thailand is different from the stress of divorce- and they are both big.

It's true the meat industry puts out a product many people find themselves unable to stomach, and rightly so.

However, not eating animals at all is not the solution. Humans are designed to function optimally with animal protein fluctuating between 20% and 60% of our daily calories. There is no magic, perfect numerical formula for the percentage of this or that that we all should strive steadily for in our diets.

Many people are surprised to learn that I am not in favor of a vegetarian diet. There is an assumption that because I am a naturopathic physician, I am going to tell everyone to stop eating beef and learn to love tofu. Actually, I consider a life-long vegetarian diet to be inevitably nutritionally inadequate. I encourage daily consumption of clean, lean animal protein.