Dear Adventurers:
We have a very special project that we would love and appreciate your participation in. Adventures is a community that was built to have frank conversations about our sex and romantic lives as African women, and health plays a huge role in that. Over the 12 years we’ve been running this site (13 years in January, if you can believe it!), we have discovered that there is no end to the topics left to explore as a community. In all that time, it’s difficult to believe we haven’t explored Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and its prevalence among women of African descent!
PCOS is hormonal disorder causing enlarged ovaries with small cysts on the outer edges.The cause of polycystic ovary syndrome isn’t well understood, but may involve a combination of genetic and environmental factors.Symptoms include menstrual irregularity, excess hair growth, acne and obesity.Treatments include birth control pills to regularise periods, medication called metformin to prevent diabetes, statins to control high cholesterol, hormones to increase fertility and procedures to remove excess hair.* It is a condition that disproportionately affects Black women.
We are working on a special project to help more people understand what it’s like to live with PCOS and would love for you to participate to help shed some light. What are your fears/hopes about this condition? What do people commonly get wrong? Do you consider the medical interventions you’ve received adequate enough? Or do you just want to vent?
Talk to us. Send us a voice note, an email (adventuresfrom at gmail dot com), a DM or a smoke signal on any of our channels on Twitter, IG or Facebook. Or since you’re already here, you can leave a comment below! We will be accepting stories until December 28th.
Love and Light!
*Defined by the Mayo Clinic
1 comments On Are You Living With PCOS? Please Let Us Hear From You.
Living with pcos but wasn’t aware until my late 30’s after marriage. I had enjoyed missing my periods since they are painful when it eventually comes and I wasn’t sexually active (so no stress) TTC’d for 3 years and body changes. My type of pcos was mainly internal, no physical/bodily hairs/acne but my ovaries were covered in tiny cysts.