Spotlight: The Ultimate PCOS Handbook by Colette Harris and Theresa Cheung

Summary:

This book is quite large. It’s several hundred pages. That’s good, very good. This is good because PCOS is a disorder some doctors still refuse to believe exists. I know, I don’t know what they’re thinking either. I thought they went to medical school and all.

I have had this book for a couple of years and it is a great book. It’s not the most comprehensive. All information about PCOS is not included within its pages, but it does have quite a bit of information.

There are three parts to this book:

Part 1: The Lowdown on PCOS

In this section what PCOS is will be explained. It’s a syndrome. It’s something that can’t directly kill you, but can cause you to get other things that might kill you, like ovarian cancer or heart disease. There is a section about what causes PCOS, but nobody really knows what definitively causes PCOS. So far it has been determined, but not really mentioned in this book, that there are several variations of PCOS and several triggers. This is the part of the book where you’ll learn the stuff your doctor didn’t tell you when you were diagnosed with PCOS.

Part 2: Total TLC for your Body: Action Plan for your Health Now and in the Future

This section deals with a lot of information. There is a nutrition guide in this book which is ok, but it’s not awesome. The book also discusses exercise and the fact that high intensity exercise may not do anything for you when you have PCOS. A detox is discussed. This is the book that led me to try to reduce the amount of food additives that I had in my diet. This is what started the whole eat naturally thing for me. Herbal and nutritional supplements are discussed. If your doctor tells you, “Hey just take a multi-vitamin,” then your doctor is an idiot, I’m sorry. I know he probably spent a lot of money on medical school, but he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Your body needs more than a multi-vitamin. Different people have different needs, especially women with PCOS. This is explained in this book. There is a section on fertility and a section on managing your weight. I don’t think anybody has figured the weight part out yet.

Part 3: Taking Charge of PCOS: Nurturing your Emotion and Spirit

PCOS makes you feel like a man. I’m serious and I’m not joking. It can really take a toll on your mental well-being. If you suffer from PCOS from a young age, you’ll grow up feeling like you’re a freak and that you’ll never be normal. Don’t worry other women feel the same thing. You’re not alone. PCOS also leads many women to have unexplainable depression. The more research you do, the more you’ll learn that PCOS inhibits your body from processing the feel-good factors like it’s supposed to. Women with PCOS are prone to certain vitamin deficiencies that can lead to depression. Many women with PCOS go through fertility treatments for years. That can really take a toll on mental health. There is, of course, a section from real women who have used various tools to make themselves feel less freakish. We love inspirational stories.

What I liked: I really liked that this book is several hundred pages long. That means it has a lot of information. There are plenty of other books on PCOS that are thin. They don’t hold a lot of information. By far, this is the best book I have found for PCOS.

I liked that this book addresses both traditional and non-traditional ways to treat PCOS. Let’s face that fact that birth control pills and diabetes drugs aren’t for everyone.

What I didn’t like: The spelling this book is kind of weird to the American eye because it’s more British English rather than American English. It’s not a deal breaker, it’s just a little weird sometimes.

Do you want to know what I want? I want a PCOS book that is personal. I want a PCOS book that says, “Hey this is what I went through. This is the day I was on the floor crying because X,Y, and Z. This is the time I was teased in school. This is the time I had a miscarriage for the third time. This is the time I spent several thousand dollars on laser hair removal. This is the time I went to a medicine man in the middle of the jungle for my PCOS because I was desperate.

I want a book on PCOS that explains what it is, but also tells one person’s story. I want the whole thing. I want to know the beginning, the middle, and the end. I want true life stories. I don’t believe Jillian Michaels has PCOS for one second, especially since she’s always prancing around being all exercisy and thin.

Why can’t somebody write a book like that? I want a book like that. That book needs to exist. It needs to exist badly. Women with PCOS need something real to look up to. Victoria Beckham has PCOS? Yeah, ok, maybe in a million years. She doesn’t look like she has PCOS. If that woman has PCOS, but doesn’t look like she has PCOS, she needs to get busy writing a book about it. She needs to tell us what in the heck her secret is. How do you look awesome, but still have PCOS? Seriously, maybe we should make a petition or something. Victoria needs to release the details about this whole thing. We women need to know how she has managed all of this.

Ok, I’m rambling. Moving on, the book is a very good resource. It’s not an end-all resource, but it’s still a very good thing to have. If you have PCOS, buy it. If you have a sister, a daughter, a mother, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, a bus driver, or whomever that has PCOS, but this book.

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