5 Ways to Treat PCOS

1. Regulate Your Cycle

Your doctor may prescribe low-dose birth control pills to treat PCOS. The contraceptive pill balances your body's estrogen and progesterone levels and lowers the output of male hormones that contribute to facial hair, acne and other PCOS symptoms. The synthetic progesterone in the pill wards off the effects of overexposure to estrogen, which is a risk factor for endometrial cancer.

Your doctor may prescribe rogesterone alone to treat PCOS. Taken for 7 to 10 days a month, progesterone balances the menstrual cycle and protects against endometrial cancer. The disadvantage of this treatment is that progesterone does not lower your male hormone levels, and excess amounts of these androgens spur PCOS symptoms.

2. Address Insulin Resistance

There is some evidence that metformin, an oral medication used to treat type 2 diabetes, helps reduce PCOS symptoms. Some studies show that metformin regulates ovulation and lowers excess male hormone levels, so your doctor may prescribe this medication to treat PCOS. However, more research is needed to verify whether metformin protects you from endometrial cancer.

3. Treat Infertility

If you have PCOS and pregnancy is your goal, you must take medication to stimulate your ovaries to produce and release eggs. Clomiphene is an oral anti-estrogen that you take in the first half of your menstrual cycle. Your chances of twins or other multiple births are increased with clomiphene. Some doctors prescribe a combination of clomiphene and metformin to treat PCOS-related infertility.

If you're taking clomiphene or metformin and you don't get pregnant, the next step may be gonadotropins that include the hormones FSH and LH. Gonadotropins are injected. Your doctor will test your FSH and LH levels before beginning this type of treatment. High LH levels are a common PCOS symptom, so you may need only FSH.

4. Prescriptions for Excess Hair Growth

To counteract the excess male hormones that cause extra facial and body hair, you may take a medication that inhibits the effects of these hormones and lowers their production. Spironolactone may be prescribed for this purpose. Do not take spironolactone if you're expecting a baby or planning to become pregnant.

The prescription cream eflornithine is also used to impede facial hair growth in women with PCOS. Like spironolactone, this medication should not be used during pregnancy. And the record on effectiveness of eflornithine isn't great--approximately two-thirds of women who use it do not experience reduced facial hair growth.

5. Surgical Ovarian Drilling

With this procedure, the surgeon makes several small incisions in your abdomen and inserts a laparoscope through one of the incisions to allow a detailed view of your ovaries. Using a laser or cauterizing surgical instrument inserted through the other incisions, the doctor burns or "drills" holes through the enlarged cysts on your ovaries. Ovarian drilling cuts the production of LH and male hormones to reduce PCOS symptoms and enhance fertility. Surgery is usually recommended only if other treatment methods haven't worked.