Emma’s periods had been irregular since her teens. Sometimes they came every 35–40 days, sometimes not for months. She was told, ‘That it is normal in your teens, and your cycles will settle down’. But they did not ‘settle down’.
In her mid-20s, Emma started noticing coarse hair on her chin and upper lip, breakouts that flared along her jawline, and stubborn weight gain, especially around her middle. She started dieting, but the scale would not budge.
When she went to her doctor, she was put on the pill to ‘regulate’ her periods. It did give her a monthly bleed, but as soon as she stopped it, the irregular cycles came back. Her doctor diagnosed her with PCOS and suggested she try losing weight and gave her a prescription for Metformin. Metformin, is a medication that improves the body’s sensitivity to insulin and reduces the liver’s production of glucose.The main effects are:
- Lower fasting insulin levels which means less stimulation of the ovaries to make androgens
- Better blood sugar control which means fewer post-meal spikes and crashes
- Possible ovulation improvement in some women with PCOS
Our diploma trains practitioners to support conditions like PCOS with a full integrative personalised approach.
What is PCOS?
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal and metabolicMetabolism is not a calorie-burning furnace that sits somewhere near your belly button, deciding whether you can fit into last year's jeans. Metabolism is the set of chemical processes taking place inside your body every second of every day, keeping you alive. condition that affects at least 1 in 10 women of reproductive age, though some experts believe the actual number is higher. The critical thing to know is that PCOS is not just about the ovaries. It is a whole-body condition involving hormone signalling, insulin sensitivity, inflammation, and the brain-ovary connection (HPG axis, aka Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Gonadal axis).
How PCOS is diagnosed
Most doctors use the Rotterdam Criteria, you need to meet 2 out of these 3:
- Irregular or absent ovulation (long cycles, missed periods, or no signs of ovulation)
- Signs of high androgens (either in blood tests or physically such as acne, unwanted hair, scalp hair thinning)
- Polycystic ovaries on ultrasound (≥12 small follicles per ovary and/or increased ovarian volume)BUT you don’t need cysts to have PCOS and having cysts does not automatically mean you have PCOS.
The symptoms:
- Cycles longer than 35 days or no periods at all
- Acne, jawline breakouts, unwanted facial or body hair
- Thinning scalp hair
- Weight gain around the waist, or weight that’s hard to shift
- Sugar cravings and energy crashes
- Dark, velvety skin patches (acanthosis nigricans)
- Fertility challenges
- Mood swings, anxiety, or low mood
- Poor sleep or trouble feeling rested
It is not just ‘symptoms’ but the emotional and social impact.
- Feeling like your body is ‘working against you’
- Trying every diet and exercise plan, yet seeing little change that can turn into an eating disorder
- Managing acne and facial hair while feeling self-conscious in public
- The stress of not knowing when (or if) your period will come
- Doctors telling you, ‘come back when you want kids’
- The uncertainty about fertility, even if you are not ready for children yet
- Feeling unheard or dismissed
Mainstream medical treatments
Conventional care often focuses on symptom control:
- The pill, to regulate bleeding and lower androgens
- Metformin, to improve insulin sensitivity
- Anti-androgens (Spironolactone), for acne/hirsutism
- Fertility drugs (Letrozole, Clomiphene), to trigger ovulation
These can be helpful tools, but they do not address the underlying drivers and for many women, symptoms return when medication stops.
Download our syllabus to find out more about our two year integrative Diploma course
The New School approach integrates nutritional medicine with psychological coaching
At the New School, we see PCOS as more than just a hormonal condition — it’s both a multi-system imbalance and a disruption in the mind–body connection.The multi-system imbalance can include:
- Insulin resistance: present in many women, even those who aren’t overweight
- Chronic low-grade inflammation
- Disrupted hormone feedback between the brain and ovaries
- Gut microbiomeWhen you hear the word microbiome, you probably think of the gut. Fair enough, it gets most of the attention. But what if we told you that microbes are not just hanging out 'down under'? They are everywhere. There is the oral microbiome living in your mouth, the skin microbiome covering every inch of your body, the urogenital microbiome, the lung microbiome, and, of course, the celebrity of the microbial world, the gut microbiome. These tiny organisms are not unwanted guests infact, truth be known, we are their guests. They are part of you, which helps keep you alive. imbalances affecting hormone metabolism
- Stress axis dys-regulation (HPA (Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal) axis changes that affect the HPO Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Ovarian axis)
Nutrition and lifestyle support
- Balance blood sugar which means a protein-rich breakfast, complex carbs, healthy fats
- ‘Anti-inflammatory’ foods such as, olive oil, greens, berries, fish such as salmon
- Micronutrients include magnesium, zinc, vitamin D, inositol
- Gut health includes fibre, fermented foods, probiotics
- Strength training, which improves insulin sensitivity
- Gentle circadian rhythm support such as morning light, regular sleep-wake times
Disruption in the mind-body
PCOS can come with shame, frustration, dis-ordered eating and exhaustion from the constant ‘fix your body’ narrative. Applying psychological coaching helps women:
- Rebuild self-worth beyond weight or skin appearance
- Find a way of eating that is sustainable, not punishing
- Use nervous system tools to lower chronic stress
- Track unique cycle patterns, EVEN if the cycles are irregular
- Release the ‘my body is broken’ belief
- Suppression of the feminine side? Why does the body ‘need to produce’ more male hormones?
Psychological coaching for transformation
1. Rebuild self-worth beyond weight or skin appearance: help you anchor your self-image in strengths, values, and lived experience, not in the mirror or scale. This reduces the shame that drives self-sabotage.
2. Find a way of eating that is sustainable, not punishing: shifting away from ‘perfect’ eating to flexible nourishment prevents the restriction-binge cycle that worsens blood sugar and mood.
3. Use nervous system tools to lower chronic stress: breath pacing, orienting, somatic shaking, or vagal toning can help quiet the HPA (Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal) axis overdrive that fuels ovarian androgen output.
4. Track unique cycle patterns, EVEN if irregular: this reconnects women to their body’s rhythms, providing signs of progress that aren’t scale-related (e.g., noticing the first ovulation after months of none).
5. Release the ‘my body is broken’ belief: replacing it with ‘my body is adapting, and I can support it’ changes the emotional energy around food, exercise, and self-care.
Our students don’t just learn how to coach others, they also experience what it is like to be coached themselves. It is a full circle of learning, growth and practice. Here’s a message from Emma Crimaudo, Cohort 2023–2025.
I’d been living in fight-or-flight for most of my life. I needn’t have worried about joining the school as there was no “danger” here. Instead, I learnt how to conserve energy and promote relaxation. I found tools to move out of sympathetic overdrive and into the calm of parasympathetic.
The deeper symbolic and psychobiological layer
From a mind–body perspective, PCOS can reflect an adaptive survival strategy:
- ‘Suppression of the feminine’ – life experiences (conscious or unconscious) may have taught the body that expressing softness, receptivity, and cyclical rhythms is unsafe or unproductive. This can manifest in:
- Minimising emotional needs
- Pushing productivity over rest
- Feeling ‘weak’ if one slows down
- Why the body ‘needs’ to produce more male hormones:
- Androgens are associated with drive, physical strength, and competitiveness. These are traits the body may lean into when it perceives a need for self-protection or self-sufficiency.
- This can be adaptive if the psyche feels ‘I have to fight’ or ‘I need to harden to survive’.
- In German New Medicine terms, high androgen output can be part of a territorial conflict resolution, building ‘male-coded’ resilience when the environment does not feel safe for reproduction.
Coaching questions that can help start the transformational shifts
- When in your life did you start feeling you needed to be more independent, ‘tough’, or less ‘soft’?
- Do you remember a time when it felt unsafe, unproductive, or even dangerous to be in your feminine energy?
- How much space does rest, pleasure, and play have in your current life?
- If your body were producing more male hormones to protect you, what might it be trying to help you do?
When women begin to reintroduce safety, softness, and receptivity, while still honouring their strength, the body can gradually shift out of this high-androgen, ovulation-blocked pattern. This is not just about mindset, it is a nervous system ‘re-regulation’ that affects the HPA-HPO axis and metabolic signalling.
Message from Ava, Cohort 2023–2025.
“This journey has been so much more than a course. It’s been about healing, learning, friendship, and becoming part of something bigger than myself.”
Our students, learn how to ask the right questions at the right time and apply specific functional testsIf you have ever been told, ‘your blood tests are normal’, not ‘normal’ or not yourself, then you have already discovered one of the reasons functional testing has become so popular. Functional tests are designed to provide additional information about how the body is functioning. They may explore areas such as hormones, digestion, nutrient status, fatty acids, the microbiome, genetics, metabolism, or stress physiology. Think of them as gathering more pieces of the health puzzle, ideally before a dis-ease ‘shows up’. Sadly, most people turn to functional tests, once they have a dis-ease. when/if required.
From a holistic medicine perspective, we know that not all PCOS is the same, two women may meet the diagnostic criteria but have very different root causes, symptom profiles, and treatment priorities.
We train our students to primarily cover the fundamentals, and then dive into testing if and when required. Below is what we would be looking for in PCOS-related functional and blood tests, what the markers mean, and how the results steer a nutrition/functional medicine plan.
1. Glycemic and insulin resistance markers: insulin resistance is a core driver in many PCOS cases (even lean PCOS). High insulin levels can lead to increased ovarian male hormone (androgen) production, resulting in ovulatory disruption.
If you did not know, it but there is alot of overlap between metabolic syndrome and PCOS.
2. Androgen profile: androgen excess is a core PCOS feature, but which androgen and where it’s coming from matters for ‘treatment’.
3. Gonadotropins and ovarian markers give insight into the ‘subtype’ of PCOS.
4. Oestrogen and metabolites, because clearing out oestrogen is important and oestrogen clearance patterns affect cycle symptoms and endometrial health
5. Adrenal stress markers due to chronic HPA activation which worsens insulin resistance, inflammation, and ovulatory delay.
6. Metabolic and inflammatory markers, because PCOS is a cardio-metabolic risk state
7. Micronutrients just some of the key nutrients which regulate insulin, ovulation, and inflammation.
8. GI Markers (if comprehensive gut test is done). The gut is the gateway to health.
Remember, it is about the individual that is experiencing PCOS, not the PCOS itself. All these tests support you and your practitioner to put together the best plan that is personalised for your biochemical and psychological needs.
To health!
From the team at the New School Of Nutritional Medicine
Learn about the Founder & Principal of the New School of Nutritional Medicine, Dr Khush Mark PhD HERE.
