Personalized health is the holy grail, but there’s a long way to go before algorithms can factor in chronic conditions.
This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they’re going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here.
A few days ago, my esthetician was smearing hot wax on my face. The two caterpillars I call eyebrows were in desperate need of taming — as was my lady ’stache. I hate this monthly ritual, but facial hair is a sore spot. Hirsutism is perhaps one of the few visual indicators of a condition that’s plagued me for the past decade. Until this week, I’ve always known it as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
Normally, I spend waxing sessions chattering away about the weather (it’s sort of hard to have deep conversations when someone is ripping hair off your face). But that day, we spent the entire session talking about how the global medical establishment decided this week to rename PCOS to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS.
There are several reasons why. Despite the original name, PMOS — which affects roughly 170 million, or one in eight, women worldwide — often doesn’t result in ovarian cysts. The updated name more accurately reflects how it’s both a hormonal and metabolic condition, not purely a reproductive one. The reality is that the condition can impact multiple organs and is associated with other health conditions, like insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and obstructive sleep apnea. According to The New York Times, focusing the name on one symptom of the condition — ovarian cysts — has led to inadequate clinical training, poorer research funding, delays in diagnosis, and fragmented care for people suffering with PMOS.
