Goodbye October #100
October in The PCOS Newsletter
Hello everyone,
I hope you are doing well. My husband and I (trying to get used to calling him that) have left the grey London for a month in Barcelona. After our wedding, we decided to make the following 12 months our most adventurous, so here we are, living the Spanish life. People here are more relaxed than Londoners. They are out and about all day long, enjoying their 7pm aperitivo. There is a sense of community and freedom. I love it.
My biggest life lesson in October:
Exciting things come and go. Our wedding (at the end of August) was a blast, but it’s only a memory now. Chasing big and exciting things is a waste of time. The only thing we have is the present. Make it count.
October in The PCOS Newsletter
I want to do these review posts regularly as they help us reflect on the exciting things we have discovered over the past month.
Let’s look at what we discussed this October in The PCOS Newsletter.
1. The science of having a sweet tooth
We learnt what drives the love for sweets for many of us, including its genetics.
2. Do we have a choice where we store fat?
We all have that one place in our body we wish we could make fat disappear from. We found out that, unfortunately, or fortunately, where we store fat and how much of it comes down to our genetics.
3. Could cellular reprogramming solve PCOS?
We discovered how Dolly, the sheep, was cloned through the incredible discovery of Nobel prize winner Shinya Yamanaka. We can now turn any cell from our body into stem-like cells that can be programmed to do other things in the body. It's not quite a PCOS treatment, but it's an exciting discovery I couldn’t pass not writing about.
4. Irritated? How did you sleep?
We found out how lack of sleep disrupts the communication between the frontal cortex (our rational brain) and amygdala (our raw emotions centre). This miscommunication leaves us acting on our raw emotions and feeling more emotional throughout the day.
5. How lack of sleep makes us gain weight
We also discussed how lack of sleep causes us to accumulate extra weight. When we don't sleep, we might eat up to 385 more calories the following day. Unfortunately, our reward brain regions are also more active, making us crave more junk food.
I hope you have enjoyed deepening your knowledge of these diverse topics during October. There will be much more to come in November.
See you Sunday,
Francesca