 Over the last two decades, there has been increasing evidence supporting an important contribution from food-derived advanced glycation end products, AGEs, also known as glycotoxins, to increase oxidative stress and inflammation processes that play a major role in the causation of chronic diseases, including, potentially, polycystic ovary syndrome. Women with P-caused end to have nearly twice the circulating AGE levels in their bloodstream. Poccystic ovary syndrome may be the most common hormonal abnormality among young women in the United States. Common cause of infertility, menstrual dysfunction, excess facial and body hair. Now, the prevalence of obesity is also higher in women with P-caused, and so since the highest AGE levels are found in broiled, grilled, fried, and roasted foods of mostly animal origin, is it possible that this causal change starts with the bad diet, like lots of fried chicken, which leads to obesity, which then, in turn, leads to P-caused. So, maybe it's only indirectly related to P-caused through weight gain? No, because the same link between high AGE levels and P-caused was found in lean women as well. As chronic inflammation increased oxidative stress has been incriminating the disease process of P-caused, so the role of AGEs as pro-inflammity, pro-oxidant mediators may indeed be linked with a metabolic and reproductive abnormalities of the syndrome, further, the build-up of AGE inside polycystic ovaries themselves suggests a potential role of AGEs contributing to the disease process itself beyond just some of the consequences. Rage is highly expressed in ovarian tissues, in other words, the receptor, that's the R in Rage. The receptor in the body for these advanced glycation improducts is concentrated for some reason in the ovaries, so ovaries may be particularly sensitive to their effects. So, AGEs might indeed be contributing to the cause of polycystic ovary syndrome and infertility, so should we just cut down on meat, cheese, and eggs? Or, we can always come up with AGE absorption blocking drugs. We know AGEs have been implicated in the development of many chronic diseases, specifically food-derived AGEs play an important role diet as a major source of these pro-inflammatory AGEs. Indeed, cutting down on these dietary glycotoxins reduces the inflammatory response, but stewed chicken just doesn't taste as good as fried chicken, so therefore, you can have your KFC and eat it too. Just take this drug with it every time you eat to cut down on the absorption of these toxins. And, it works. It actually lowers AGE blood levels. This oral absorbent drug, AST120, is just a preparation of activated charcoal. That's what you'd like to give for drug overdoses and when people are poisoned. I'm sure if you took some Ipocac with your KFC, your levels would go down too. You know, there's another way you can reduce your absorption by reducing your intake in the first place. Simple, safe, feasible. The first thing you do is stop smoking. Glycotoxins and cigarette smoke may contribute to the increase in heart disease and cancer among smokers. Then, you can decrease your intake of high AGE foods while increasing your intake of foods that may help pull AGEs out of your system like brown rice and mushrooms, and we can eat foods high in antioxidants like berries, herbs, and spices. Dietary AGE intake can be decreased even just by simply changing the method of cooking from the high-temperature dry cooking methods to low-heat, higher humidity. In other words, moving away from broiling, searing, frying, to more stewing, steaming, and boiling. But what we eat may be more important than how we cook it. For example, boiled chicken has less than half the glycotoxins of roasted chicken, but even deep-fried potatoes has less than boiled meat. We can also eat foods raw, which doesn't work as well for blood pudding, but we can choose raw nuts and nut butters, which may have 30 times less glycotoxins than roasted, and we can stay away from high-AGE processed foods such as puffed shredded and flaked breakfast cereal. Why does it matter? Because study, after study, has shown that switching someone to a low-AGE diet can lower the inflammation within their bodies. Even just a single high-AGE meal can profoundly impair our artery function within just two hours of consumption. Fried or broiled chicken breast and veggies compared to steamed or boiled chicken breast and veggies. The same ingredients, just different cooking methods. Now, you'll notice that even the steamed or boiled chicken meal still impaired arterial function, so you could certainly choose to eat even healthier, but significantly better than the fried or broiled. Ironically, the amount of AGE's administered during this high-AGE intervention, this profoundly impaired artery function amount of AGE's, was similar to the average estimated daily intake by the general population, the standard American diet. That's why you can decrease inflammation in people putting them on a low-AGE diet, but an increase in inflammation was less apparent when people switched from their regular diet to a high-AGE diet because they're already eating a high-AGE diet, submitting these glycotoxins in their regular diet. Do we have evidence reducing AGE intake actually helps with polycystic ovaries? Yes, within just two months. Baseline diet switched to a high-AGE diet to a low-AGE diet, and you see parallel changes in insulin sensitivity, oxidative stress, hormonal status, with the take-home being that those with PCOS may want to try a low-AGE diet, which in the study meant restricting meat to once a week that's only boiled, poached, stewed, or steamed, and cutting out fast food type foods and soda. What about instead of steamed chicken we ate no meat at all? Rather than measuring blood levels, which vary with each meal, like if you just ate some roasted nuts or something, we can measure the level of glycotoxins in your body tissues over time instead, with a fancy gizmo that measures the amount of light your skin gives off, because AGEs are fluorescent. And so no surprise, this turns out to be a strong predictor of overall mortality, so the lower the better. And the one factor consistently associated with reduced skin fluorescence, this reduced AGEs coming out of your body, was a vegetarian diet, which suggests that eating more plant-based may reduce exposure to these preformed dietary AGEs, potentially reducing tissue AGEs as well as chronic disease risk.