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Hi Aunt Vadge,
I’m trying to understand what role insulin resistance plays in my PCOS. I always thought my high cortisol/DHEAS were causing the insulin resistance. If that’s the case, would addressing the cortisol also improve my insulin?
Yours,
Stressed
Dear Stressed,
In my experience, insulin resistance plays a role in PCOS to some degree in almost everyone — so much so that even when insulin and glucose tests come back normal, most women with PCOS notice a real difference from cutting out refined grains and sugar and keeping their blood sugar steady with low-glycaemic foods. So it’s worth managing regardless of what your numbers say.
And yes, to your specific question: addressing high cortisol would very likely help your insulin resistance. Cortisol is your stress hormone, released by the adrenal glands in response to any kind of stress — good or bad, a looming deadline or just a relentlessly busy day.
One of the things cortisol does is push your blood sugar up (useful if you need to flee danger, less so around the clock), and it does that partly by working against the hormones that keep you insulin-sensitive.
So chronically high cortisol effectively fuels insulin resistance, which in turn worsens PCOS — the cortisol, insulin and PCOS all sit in one connected loop, and easing the stress end helps unwind the whole thing.
Practically, that means giving your nervous system regular downtime: a daily wind-down (even five to ten minutes of meditation or a mindfulness app), protecting your sleep (eight to nine hours does more for cortisol than almost anything), gentle regular movement rather than punishing exercise, doing something you really enjoy every day, and — if stress feels relentless or rooted in something deeper — seeing a counsellor or psychologist to get to the source and learn tools to handle it.
Some practitioners also use specific adaptogenic herbs to support the stress response, but that’s worth discussing with a practitioner who knows your full history rather than self-prescribing. The headline for you: yes, calming cortisol should improve your insulin picture, and the low-GI eating helps from the other direction — work both ends, and your PCOS will thank you.
Warmest regards,
Aunt Vadge
This is general information based on our clinical experience, not a substitute for personalised medical advice.
