kidkid
06-26-2009, 03:42 PM
Hello hello! This is a message, question, thought to all you people out there who have been diagnosed with PCOS and are living the raw food lifestyle. For those of you who are unfamiliar with PCOS, it stands for Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and has been described to me by doctors/the internet/the medical establishment as a metabolic disorder or a hormonal disorder that affects about 10% of women (and counting). Symptoms are described as excess body hair, irregular or absent periods, higher than normal testosterone levels, insulin resistance, obesity, and a greater risk of developing diabetes and cancer.
I am a female bodied person who identifies as a woman. Due to my testosterone levels, I DO have hair on my chin and I do have hair on my tummy and my thighs, like a male-bodied person would have. I am chubby. I don't have a regular menstrual cycle (I ovulate maybe once a year). In short, I have many of the symptoms described above. I feel generally happy and healthy as long as I eat good food, see my friends, stay active and stay passionate. Eating raw food has made me feel brighter, more vibrant, more energized and generally healthier.
My question to the PCOS community here is: how much of the medical language surrounding PCOS is about gender norms and how much is actually about health? Who gets to decide how much body hair a woman should have? Or how fat or thin a woman should be? Or even how much testosterone a woman should have? Sometimes I feel like PCOS treatments are more about making the person "normal" than about actually making them healthier (ie. take the pill to menstruate; get electrolysis for the body hair; take fertility drugs to have babies; diet and exercise to lose weight). What about those of us out there with PCOS who don't identify as women? What about transgendered individuals with PCOS? Two-spirit people or intersex people with PCOS? Do they have "excess" testosterone? Or just the right amount for them? do you see what I mean? Sometimes it seems like the medical establishment is taking variances and making them pathology -- saying "your body doesn't look or act like a woman's body should look or act, therefore you are sick and must be changed". Historically, similar things have been said to anyone who doesn't fit perfectly into the binary gender system (the system which says that male-bodied-men and female-bodied-women are the only kinds of people). Let me be clear: I am not saying that women with PCOS are all transgendered, intersex, or somehow not "real" women. I am saying that it is unwise to rely on gender norms to tell us whether or not we are healthy. No two women's bodies act the same anyway -- how can we only think one kind of body is healthy?
I want to now relate this back to the raw food lifestyle: I noticed that some of the people on this website with PCOS mentioned that the raw food lifestyle made them feel really good and healthy, but some of their symptoms of PCOS hadn't gone away (like the weight or the body hair). But what I want to offer is a different way of looking at this. Maybe they haven't gone away because there's nothing WRONG with them. Maybe the low carb diets and medications that other PCOS women use to get rid of those symptoms aren't actually making them healthier -- yes they get rid of those symptoms that some of us may not find desireable, but that doesn't mean they are making us healthier. Meanwhile, eating a good diet of natural foods is allowing the body to be what it wants to be, what it is happiest being, what it is healthiest being. I feel that eating raw foods will help us achieve our optimal health, and we shouldn't be hoodwinked or shortchanged by people or establishments who want us to look a certain way instead of wanting us to be truly happy and healthy.
I am a female bodied person who identifies as a woman. Due to my testosterone levels, I DO have hair on my chin and I do have hair on my tummy and my thighs, like a male-bodied person would have. I am chubby. I don't have a regular menstrual cycle (I ovulate maybe once a year). In short, I have many of the symptoms described above. I feel generally happy and healthy as long as I eat good food, see my friends, stay active and stay passionate. Eating raw food has made me feel brighter, more vibrant, more energized and generally healthier.
My question to the PCOS community here is: how much of the medical language surrounding PCOS is about gender norms and how much is actually about health? Who gets to decide how much body hair a woman should have? Or how fat or thin a woman should be? Or even how much testosterone a woman should have? Sometimes I feel like PCOS treatments are more about making the person "normal" than about actually making them healthier (ie. take the pill to menstruate; get electrolysis for the body hair; take fertility drugs to have babies; diet and exercise to lose weight). What about those of us out there with PCOS who don't identify as women? What about transgendered individuals with PCOS? Two-spirit people or intersex people with PCOS? Do they have "excess" testosterone? Or just the right amount for them? do you see what I mean? Sometimes it seems like the medical establishment is taking variances and making them pathology -- saying "your body doesn't look or act like a woman's body should look or act, therefore you are sick and must be changed". Historically, similar things have been said to anyone who doesn't fit perfectly into the binary gender system (the system which says that male-bodied-men and female-bodied-women are the only kinds of people). Let me be clear: I am not saying that women with PCOS are all transgendered, intersex, or somehow not "real" women. I am saying that it is unwise to rely on gender norms to tell us whether or not we are healthy. No two women's bodies act the same anyway -- how can we only think one kind of body is healthy?
I want to now relate this back to the raw food lifestyle: I noticed that some of the people on this website with PCOS mentioned that the raw food lifestyle made them feel really good and healthy, but some of their symptoms of PCOS hadn't gone away (like the weight or the body hair). But what I want to offer is a different way of looking at this. Maybe they haven't gone away because there's nothing WRONG with them. Maybe the low carb diets and medications that other PCOS women use to get rid of those symptoms aren't actually making them healthier -- yes they get rid of those symptoms that some of us may not find desireable, but that doesn't mean they are making us healthier. Meanwhile, eating a good diet of natural foods is allowing the body to be what it wants to be, what it is happiest being, what it is healthiest being. I feel that eating raw foods will help us achieve our optimal health, and we shouldn't be hoodwinked or shortchanged by people or establishments who want us to look a certain way instead of wanting us to be truly happy and healthy.