Wax on face.
Hot, sticky, painful wax on a face that really didn’t want it.
I was lying there, staring at the ceiling of the clinic, hating the ritual but accepting the fate. Hirsutism.
Excessive hair growth.
A visual scream of what’s been messing with my hormones for ten years. Polycystic ovary syndrome. Or so I used to call it.
That week the medical world decided to rebrand.
PCOS is dead.
Long live Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS).
We spent the entire appointment talking about the name change instead of complaining about the weather or the pain of ripped-out hair follicles.
Here’s the thing.
The old name implied cysts.
It didn’t actually have to involve them.
Roughly 170 million women worldwide have this. One in eight.
It’s hormonal.
It’s metabolic.
It touches multiple organs.
It drags insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease and sleep apnea along for the ride like reluctant baggage.
The New York Times argues that sticking to “ovary” in the title kept doctors misinformed. It stalled funding. It fragmented care.
Doctors often told me it was benign.
Treatment only if you want kids.
My esthetician has it too.
Different map.
She has the cysts.
I have insulin resistance.
I battle facial hair; she fights cystic acne.
We both gained about 60 pounds out of the blue, like our bodies suddenly forgot how to process energy.
But her fix?
Intermittent fasting. Milk thistle. Myo-inositol.
My fix?
Metformin didn’t do a thing for her. For me, combined with a GLP-1 agonist, it’s part of the life raft.
I’ve sat across from dozens of PMOS sufferers.
The pattern never changes.
No two people manifest it the same way.
No single treatment works for everyone.
I’ve spent twelve years chasing stability.
Twelve years.
And that history is exactly what runs through my mind every time a wellness influencer or health-tech CEO talks about “personalized medicine.”
May is coming.
The calendar fills with pitches.
Companies on my beat start sliding decks over email.
They all agree on one thing.
Health data is messy. Confusing.
But if they can get smart? If they can process it right?
They’ll give us personalized health.
“Personalized health isn’t about generic advice. It’s about recommendations based on your unique metrics.”
Simple theory.
Complex reality.
Imagine your wearable notices your heart rate variability is fine, but your sleep was terrible.
It tells you: Do 20 minutes of gentle yoga. Not a high-intensity sweat fest.
Or imagine you log food meticulously.
Your AI scans it and flags roasted broccoli as the enemy, noting an interaction with your meds that causes sulfur burps.
Or your CGM data whispers the exact supplement stack you need that Tuesday.
Sounds like agency, doesn’t it?
It is an alluring idea.
Your genetics dictate what works. Your biology is unique.
Health tech companies love this concept.
It sells.
But back to me.
Back to the PMOS loop.
Most doctors start with the blunt instrument.
Lose weight.
The logic holds up on paper. Weight loss usually helps.
But try telling that to insulin resistance.
It’s a trap.
Weight gain stems from metabolic chaos. Insulin spikes trigger androgen production. Androgens store more belly fat.
It’s a closed circuit of misery.
Plus, PMOS often means a lower basal metabolic rate.
We burn fewer calories at rest.
We struggle to build muscle.
Calories in, calories out?
Not so simple.
Yet, check any fitness app.
Check any nutrition tracker.
Is there a slider for PMOS?
For fatty liver?
No.
You click “Start Workout.” It guesses. It’s usually wrong.
Same for period trackers.
They can’t handle hormonal birth control, a common treatment. Do they know that pills mess with basal body temperature algorithms?
Probably not.
Every company has a proprietary black box algorithm.
You can ask, sure.
Good luck.
Maybe someday this will work.
Wearables are feeding new data to researchers. Correlations are popping up in reproductive health studies.
Right now though?
If you don’t fit the “norm”—the straight, able-bodied, non-hormone-using baseline of human data—”personalized” health means cobbling together ad hoc fixes yourself.
It’s a timing mismatch.
Generative AI is a toddler. Companies are fumbling.
And the human body? Still mostly a mystery.
How do you code for the unknown?
Science moves slow.
Technology demands fast.
PMOS was identified in 1935.
It took until 2026—91 years, plus a decade-long debate among 50+ medical groups—to get the name right.
Meanwhile, the apps are launching now.
For people with “normal” health? Sure. Maybe easy.
For the rest? The foundation shifts beneath our feet every quarter.
For me, “personalized tech” currently looks like hard labor.
Elbow grease.
I have to train the AI.
I have to map my specific constraints: PMOS plus non-alcoholic fatty liver.
I have to decide which of the hundreds of metrics I collect actually matter.
I consult doctors. I fact-check their fact-checks. I try things that might not work.
Am I killing the hype?
Not quite.
I’m cautiously optimistic.
There have been times in the last 12 years where an algorithm might have saved me.
Like that quack doctor who convinced me I needed desiccated pig thyroid extracts for a thyroid problem I didn’t have.
Wouldn’t a bot have spotted that contradiction faster?
Probably.
I hope we get “algorithmic modes.” Settings for different diagnoses. Tweaks for meds.
Until then, though.
Beware the pitch.
Don’t let them convince you it’s just a wrist strap and an AI chat.
It’s not simple.
It’s background noise that requires your full attention to filter out.
In the meantime?
I’m buying some milk thistle.
See how that works.
