So yesterday PCOS was renamed to PMOS. After 11 years and about 22,000 people fighting for it. If you’re one of the…

So yesterday PCOS was renamed to PMOS. After 11 years and about 22,000 people fighting for it. If you’re one of the women who was told to just lose weight or come back when you want children, the reason it was renamed is going to make a lot of things make sense. Keep reading🧵🩷

khaleesi🧍🏽‍♀️@shelovesore · May 13, 2026

I learnt something new about PCOS recently, I’ll quote soon

PCOS is now officially called PMOS, Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome. Published in The Lancet yesterday, and before you think it’s just a name change, it’s not. Let me explain why it’s actually so much more than that

The old name was wrong, like fundamentally, it was medically wrong. “Polycystic” implies cysts on the ovaries. There are no cysts, there never were. 170 million women were living with a condition named after something that isn’t part of it. You can imagine that

And because the name said “ovary”, everyone treated it like a reproductive problem, something you only need to worry about when you wanted kids. Meanwhile women were dealing with unexplained weight gain, anxiety, hair loss, facial hair, exhaustion and more, and just being sent home anyway

Think about what does to a person. You know something is wrong, your body is telling you something is wrong, and the doctor sends you home. Nearly half of women with this condition saw 3 or more doctors before getting a diagnosis. A third of them waited over 2 years and even after diagnosis, most left with almost no real information about what was actually happening to them

The new name PMOS finally says what this condition actually is. A whole body condition, it affects your hormones, your metabolism, your mental health, your skin, your reproductive system, all at once, and not a fertility problem. Not just a “just lose some weight” thing. A complex and chronic condition that deserves to be taken seriously from day one

The renaming took 11 years. 22,000 people involved, doctors, researchers, patients, from every part of the world. And when they asked everyone what they wanted most from a new name, the number one answer wasn’t scientific accuracy, or was: STOP THE STIGMA. That answer alone tells you everything about what women with this condition have been quietly carrying.

Because the stigma has been exhausting. Weight changes people couldn’t control being treated like laziness. Facial hair, acne that refuses to clear off, periods disappearing for months with no explanation. All of it dismissed or turned back into a conversation about your body size. Women were out here diagnosing themselves online because their doctors would go deep enough

So what even changes now? The new name comes with a commitment to update how doctors are trained, how the condition is classified in health systems and how treatment is approached. It’s not just a rebrand, there’s a whole roadmap attached to it. The women being diagnosed from here on should, in theory, have a very different experience than the ones who came before, basically

And to every woman who spent years being dismissed, sent home, told it wasn’t that serious, you weren’t imagining it, and your body wasn’t being dramatic. The system just has the wrong map the entire time. It took 11 years and 22,000 people to finally draw it. You deserved better from the start and hopefully now, more women will actually get it🩷

This is the thread on vaginismus as promised 🩷

khaleesi🧍🏽‍♀️@shelovesore · May 14, 2026

I came across the word vaginismus while I was reading one time, I looked it up almost casually and then sat with what I’d just read for quite some time. I’ve been meaning to talk about it since then and kept stalling, and I think part of that is the deeply internalized belief that women just don’t discuss these things openly. But here we are, this thread is for every woman who needs to know about vaginismus🩷