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Hello everyone this is Lovneet Batra your health expert and clinical nutritionist and you're listening to my podcast Nutrition By Lovneet. 

Hi guys this is  Lovneet Batra and today I want to talk to you about how to manage PCOS and PCOD during COVID 19. These are tough times, aren't they, and being a PCOS  PCOD warrior, you might be more stressed out because of the uncertainty that is floating around, be it social, emotional, financial, and we all know that stress is not exactly the friend. When you are struggling with hormonal imbalance, even in general but it gets worse when you are trying to win a battle against hormonal imbalance. So let's talk about how to manage this hormonal imbalance, and how to stop it from becoming worse during these challenging times.

Now pcos is a complicated disorder, and it can manifest itself in different ways for different individuals. For some women, it can mean irregular periods, or inability to lose weight or acne or hair fall, or infertility. But today we are going to discuss what are the basic diet principles you must follow. Starting with fixing your sleep timings, Believe it or not, if your body is sleep deprived, it's not going to heal or repair itself. So fixing your sleep timing is important. Try to get seven to eight hours of sleep, but at the same time every single day and try to wake up in the morning without using an alarm clock, naturally. 

Now secondly, I know it's very difficult to stay off screens these days, but did you know that having too much of screen time can actually cause xenoestrogen to regulate more in our bloodstream, these are the bad estrogen that can worsen the hormonal imbalance when you're struggling with these pcos pcod. So, limit your screen time to only. Most important, and try to take breaks from screen time, every half an hour. Now while you are taking those breaks from screen time every half an hour stay active and maybe walk for two minutes, activity levels, not just during an assigned hour of the day, but through our help in increasing insulin sensitivity, which further helps in better hormonal balance.

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Now your hormonal balance starts with a  right, gut health. Now to build a good gut health, you have to first see, are you feeling acidic, are you constipated. If so, you need to fix that, and increase the growth of good bacteria in your system to create the right environment. Now, one of the few ways to do that as soon as you wake up, is through, oil pulling. What is oil pulling? You take one teaspoon of coconut oil and empty stomach without having anything, you keep it in your mouth for 10 to 15 minutes and swish it around. Then after 10-15 minutes, you just spit it out. Right. This eliminates the bad toxins, bad bacteria in our mouth, and it just helps us to establish that right environment, starting right after oral cavity. Just be sure not to ingest any of this oil and spit it out in our trash. 

Then, Rinse your mouth with warm water. You can brush your teeth after this, and clean your tongue as normal. Now many people are too focused about eating high proteins, when struggling with pcos, and one of the main nutrients that is missed is the fiber. You need to have at least 40 grams of fiber in your diet. What this does is, again, it eliminates the bad estrogen in the body. So how can you get enough fiber in your diet, whole grains, fruits and vegetables. They don't need to be salads or raw vegetables, it can also be cooked vegetables, try to have a variety of three to five vegetables in a day, two different fruits in a day, and three different whole grains, in a day by whole grains, I mean, grains that take longer to cook and are usually cooked in an Indian household as either Dahlia, or Khichidi even hand pounded rice. These are all good. Now you can bulk up on plant based proteins, especially from mung daal peas and you can also include servings of chickpeas and rajma at least two to three times in a week. 

This is extremely helpful for women who are facing acne or hairfall due to pcos helps in combating both the problems. Now you need to make sure that you're getting enough healthy fats, through nuts and seeds, try to include two servings of nuts, such as almonds, walnuts, cashews, you can soak it for six to eight hours throughout the water just have the nuts and two servings of seeds, such as roasted flax seeds of pumpkin seeds also subzi or Halleen seeds. 

Now one thing that you must exclude from your diet is excessive caffeine, especially coming from coffee. Try to avoid coffee, because it does not help with relaxing yourself, you can have tea, but restricted to less than two servings in a day. Many people of course, ask me that is sugar okay to have when you are suffering from PCOS PCOD, the answer is obvious that no, it's not okay, but especially during the lockdown many people find it very difficult to eliminate sugar altogether. Now here's my guideline for this. Make sure your sugar intake is less than 10 grams in a day, that's quite doable having one teaspoon of sugar on two different occasions in a day can help you satisfy your craving. Now make sure

that your sugar intake is not right after a meal. Okay, it can be before your walk, it can be in between meals, but not right after the meal. And thirdly, your sugar should not be combined with a refined flour, so it cannot be in form of a cookie or cake but it can be in a form of Moong daal halwa.

 So keep it simple, keep it real, and focus on the food quality, and it will certainly help you improve your hormonal balance. 

Thank you for listening if you found this information helpful you can subscribe to my podcast Nutrition by Lovneet you can also visit our web page www.nutritionbylovneet.com  for health updates, healthy recipes and exciting ways to stay fit