The AEA always has speakers about PCOS at every conference. Keiko (Japan) asked me if PCOS is epidemic in the United States, because it’s always the central AEA topic, and not common in Japan.
Did you know that women receive 70% of all prescription medication? If you will read “Male Practice” you will discover that women are up to 80% more likely to visit a doctor and WANT to have a diagnosis and medication. (Men typically avoid doctors.)
I will have a lot to say on this subject … eventually, when I’m back to my videos (at the moment too many projects and big hair jobs). However, there is a misguided cultural aspect to female hair: that it’s always a “medical problem.” In my opinion we all buy into this idea; and it’s erroneously promoted by the associations.
Okay, so here’s the book I recommend. I don’t think it’s outdated (1982), because it exposes issues that we still have with us today. The book influenced me a lot … still does.
Male Practice: how doctors manipulate Women (Mendelsohn, 1982).
Is it possible that PCOS really is more common in the USA? I read that both genetics and environmental causes can cause PCOS. So maybe the Japanese have fewer PCOS genes? As for environmental factors, I read that obesity can cause or make PCOS worse, and Japan has lower obesity rates than the USA. I read that bisphenol-A, an environmental toxin found in the liner of some metal food cans, has been implicated in PCOS. So, obese and overweight people would be eating more food, and therefore perhaps ingesting more bisphenol-A than non-overweight people would. Or maybe Japan has just as many women with PCOS, but they are underdiagnosed in Japan, because many would look just slightly chubbier than average and not obese. I remember reading years ago a message by an East Asian woman living in the USA who has PCOS and she said she had difficulty convincing her white doctor that she had PCOS because she didn’t have facial hair and she wasn’t obese or very overweight. She had to keep nagging him, explaining that her weight was abnormal for her; that she was usually thinner.
“There is ethnic variation in skin sensitivity to androgens, particularly among east Asians who are less hirsute. Chinese and Japanese women with PCOS have low FG scores despite elevated plasma androgens.”
