My PCOS story
How getting the stamp changed nothing
We complain a lot about how a diagnosis takes 10 years, 15 years…
Let me tell you the story of how I got mine in less than a month.
And how it did nothing for me.
I was 15 when I got the stamp: PCOS and the treatment that promised to help me… the pill.
This is my story of getting the diagnosis, getting the treatment, and only a decade later realising that I had to take control over my own health.
I’m 32 now.
I get no pain during my period.
Regular cycles.
I love my body.
I love being a woman.
And I want to inspire you to cultivate that love too, because behind all the pain that makes you hate your cycle right now, there is a whole new world waiting for you.
The diagnosis
I remember that day like it was yesterday.
I went to the appointment with my mom, first time in a gynaecologist’s office, my hands were sweaty but I felt less alone having her next to me. We did an ultrasound. The doctor saw a massive cyst on one of my ovaries and many smaller ones. A blood test too: testosterone, very elevated.
And I got the stamp: PCOS.
The solution was simple.
On the pill for six months to start, and we’d see how it developed.
I remember my cousin saying she wouldn’t take contraception because it involved hormones and it sounded scary.
To me, it felt like stepping into big girl shoes.
It felt like a mature decision.
And I said yes.
What the pill actually does to your cycle
Little did I know how the pill actually works.
It does not treat anything.
At all.
It is literally a brake on your natural hormones, on your ovulation. And if you understand how ovulation works, you would understand that it needs certain levels of your own hormones to break open the capsule containing the egg.
No egg development, no ovulation, no period.
What you get instead is a fake bleed.
I did not know that.
To me it looked like the pill had fixed my symptoms, because now I had “regular cycles”, a lot less pain and I was not vomiting all day long.
What I also did not know: the pill affects your brain.
Studies show that adolescent girls on combined oral contraceptives are significantly more likely to be prescribed antidepressants, because the pill suppresses the hormones that regulate serotonin and dopamine.1
It also depletes B6, a vitamin your body needs to produce serotonin in the first place.
I was a teenager going through puberty while blocking her own natural hormones and neurotransmitters, and nobody told me that was part of the deal.
Coming off the pill: what nobody warns you about
I stayed on the pill longer than six months.
I had gained a lot of weight during that time.
My face looked puffy and inflamed.
I hated the body I was living in.
I decided to stop, because my cycles seemed regular again and from the outside it looked like “the pill fixed my PCOS”.
Oh boy…
The next time I got my period felt like I had been catapulted back into my worst nightmare.
Here is what nobody told me about the pill: your natural cycle is suppressed the entire time you are on it, so when you restart, you begin from a few levels LOWER than before.
Your gut is affected.
Your microbiome is affected, so your body absorbs nutrients differently.
Your brain chemistry has been disrupted.
And now I was experiencing highs and lows like never before, emotionally and physically.
The word “rollercoaster” is not dramatic enough to describe that feeling.
It was more like a “🔗drop tower“ every month (if you love amusement parks you know how that free fall feels like)
Why I had irregular cycles for years
The hormonal environment had been completely thrown off, and there were so many signs.
But I had no one to point me toward them.
- I was not sweating during exercise
- I was not sweating in saunas
- My legs were swelling after 30 minutes of sitting down
- I would skip going to the toilet for 2 to 3 days, massively constipated
- I could not lose weight
- My energy crashed after lunch every day
- Brain fog every morning
- Could not fall asleep
- Waking up during the night
- Starting to lose my hair
Just to name a few…
These are not “common signs” of PCOS.
These are common signs of a dysregulated body: slow lymphatics, slow digestion, slow transit, all pointing to deeper hormonal dysfunction that starts long before the ovaries.
Why did nobody tell me that???
PCOS: what the diagnosis misses
I think the problem starts with the name itself.
PCOS stands for polycystic ovary syndrome.
Which implies the treatment should target the ovaries.
But here is the thing: the “cysts” were never actually cysts. They are arrested follicles, eggs that never fully developed. The name led doctors to treat the ovaries, when the real story was happening everywhere else in the body.
This year, after a global consensus process that took over a decade and involved 22,000 people, PCOS got a new name. Published in The Lancet2.
It is now called PMOS: polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome.
And I think there is so much power in the words we use.
Because this is so much more than just a name change. It defines how practitioners look at the condition and at treatment. We are no longer treating the ovaries. We are looking at the full endocrine and metabolic picture, with insulin being a major player.
The condition was always multisystem.
Endocrine, metabolic, reproductive, dermatological, psychological.
The name just finally caught up to the reality.
If you were ever denied a PCOS diagnosis because you had “too few cysts,” or sent home because your ovaries looked fine on a scan but you had every other symptom?
This is exactly why.
The diagnostic lens was too narrow. And it meant millions of women were missed, misdiagnosed, or handed a pill and told to come back in 6 months.
The difference between regulating and healing
I started this journey wanting one thing: a regular cycle and no more period pain.
That was the goal: “Get the cycle under control”; “Stop the chaos”
What I didn’t expect is that somewhere along the way, THE GOAL CHANGED.
I went deeper than it.
I started working on my lymphatics, my digestion, my blood sugar, my sleep. I started paying attention to what my body was actually trying to tell me instead of suppressing the signal.
And the cycle… it regulated itself.
That is the thing nobody tells you.
A regular cycle is not something you can work on “directly”.
Your cycle is a report card.
It is your body’s way of showing you that everything upstream is working.
Your drainage is moving.
Your gut is absorbing.
Your blood sugar is stable.
Your nervous system is not in permanent crisis mode.
So if you came here looking to regulate your cycle, you are in the right place.
!!!! But be warned: you are going to end up healing far more than that.
The regular cycle is the end result.
What happens before it is the actual work.
And that work changes everything, not just your period.
If you have ever been handed a pill and sent home
I am not here to bash the pill. It has its place.
But if you said no to it, or if you took it and now you are on the other side wondering why you feel so far from yourself, I am happy you are here.
Because this platform was built for exactly that woman.
I built a method I live by that gave me not only my cycle back but an entirely new level of love and compassion for my female body, joy and fulfilment in life.
And my only purpose is to inspire you to feel the same about yourself.
I want that for you.
Not just the regular cycle.
All of it.
The relationship with your body that makes you feel like you finally came home.
Love, Teo
PS: If you’re not yet inside our community on Skool, this is your sign. Come inside and meet the other women going on a similar journey like you. You’ve got free education, resources, trackers, programs, challenges (to name a few). The best part is that you are not doing this alone.
JOIN HERE: 🔗 https://www.skool.com/thesyncway/about