How to Reduce Androgens in Females Naturally (PCOS/PMOS)

To reduce androgens naturally, follow three simple rituals at home each day: drink two cups of spearmint tea, enjoy a PCOS Repair Breakfast, and, for faster results, take an anti-androgen supplement. Leave the tea and the supplement out if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, and the supplement if you are trying to conceive. PCOS causes our bodies to produce too many androgens (“male” hormones like testosterone), and these cause frustrating and embarrassing symptoms like acne, hair thinning, excess hair growth, irregular cycles and weight gain.

While ultimately we want to identify what is triggering your body to over-produce androgens (your PCOS root cause) and reverse it, this takes time. In the short term, blocking the effects of excess androgens can help with symptom relief, and that is what the Anti-Androgen Plan, step one of my PCOS Repair Protocol, is for. You won’t need to follow it forever: once you are confidently implementing the plan for your root cause, your body will stop over-producing androgens and you will likely no longer need these rituals.

First, recognize the exception

Seek urgent medical assessment if unwanted hair growth, acne, or scalp hair loss is new, severe, or rapidly worsening, especially with voice deepening, increased muscle mass, clitoral enlargement, or another sign of virilization. New-onset clinical or biochemical androgen excess after menopause, and markedly elevated androgen results, also warrant urgent assessment.

Those patterns can have causes outside PCOS (Elhassan et al. 2025).

Confirm what the symptom or result means

Your symptoms are the best guide. If a recent blood test showed high testosterone, you can confidently assume excess androgens are a key factor in your symptoms. But many women I work with have normal or even low testosterone results and still have significant androgen excess symptoms, so a normal result does not rule it out. A blood test only measures the testosterone circulating in your blood, not what is bound up in your tissues, like your hair follicles. Testosterone is also only one of the androgens behind PCOS symptoms, and yours may be driven by another, like DHEAS, which is commonly raised by stress. And the test cannot show how strongly an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase is turning your testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a much more potent form that also causes acne, excess hair growth and thinning hair. The most common symptoms to look out for are:

• Acne around your chin, jawline, upper lip, neck, chest and back
• Thinning hair at the crown of your head or a widening part
• A receding hairline
• Excess hair growth around your chin, neck, jawline, chest, breasts or back

In adults, a PCOS/PMOS diagnosis generally requires two of three features after other causes have been excluded: clinical or biochemical androgen excess, ovulatory dysfunction, and polycystic ovarian morphology on ultrasound or an appropriate anti-Müllerian hormone result. The adolescent criteria are different (Teede et al. 2023).

The tests worth asking for are total and free testosterone, androstenedione and DHEAS. DHEAS is the androgen your adrenal glands release under stress, and it is not commonly measured, so ask for it by name, especially if your testosterone came back normal. It can be tested in blood or urine, and a practitioner trained in the DUTCH test, the Dried Urine Test for Comprehensive Hormones, can measure your DHEAS and cortisol over the course of a day. If you are on the pill, your results will not be reliable: for an accurate result you need to have been off it for at least three months, using another form of contraception in the meantime if you need one (Elhassan et al. 2025).

What the natural-intervention evidence actually shows

For lowering androgens naturally, I rely most on spearmint tea and the food you eat at breakfast: in trials, two cups of spearmint tea a day and a lower-GI diet both lowered testosterone (Grant 2010; Kazemi et al. 2021). They are the first two rituals of my plan, with herbs and supplements third, for faster results. Here is what the natural ways to reduce androgens have been shown to do.

What you eat for breakfast is the most impactful habit you can change for your PCOS. Cereal, toast, fruit and oats are high in carbohydrates and low in protein, so your body releases more insulin to bring your blood sugar back down, and insulin tells your ovaries to make more testosterone. The PCOS Repair Breakfast is high in protein and low in starch and sugar: 30 to 40 grams of protein, plenty of non-starchy vegetables and some healthy fat, only the low-sugar fruits like berries, and no grains, starchy vegetables or legumes. You are not cutting those foods out of your diet, just saving them for later in the day. Stick with it for at least two to three weeks before you make your next change. For exercise, choose movement you recover from within 30 minutes: workouts that leave you exhausted raise cortisol, and with it DHEAS.

Choose the path by the outcome you want

Facial or body hair

Unwanted hair on your chin, upper lip, chest or back grows when high testosterone turns fine, soft hairs into coarse, dark ones that grow much faster. The three rituals work on that testosterone, but hair grows slowly, so give them a few months before you judge them, and in the meantime remove the coarse hairs you already have by shaving, waxing, laser or electrolysis. If you want medical treatment, your doctor may offer the pill first, then an antiandrogen such as spironolactone if the pill has not helped enough after six months; antiandrogens need reliable contraception (Martin et al. 2018). The pill can block the effects of testosterone while you take it, but it cannot teach your body to produce less, so the hair will likely return when you stop.

Acne or scalp hair loss

Acne around your chin and jawline starts when testosterone gets into the oil glands under your skin and drives extra oil that blocks your pores. Thinning hair on your head comes from DHT, the more potent form of testosterone, which makes the follicles on your scalp shrink until the hair falls out. Both respond to the same three rituals, and for thinning hair, look for an androgen blocker with saw palmetto and reishi, which slow the conversion of testosterone into DHT.

Irregular cycles or metabolic health

For irregular cycles and your metabolism, start with the PCOS Repair Breakfast. Insulin resistance affects at least 80 percent of Cysters, and high insulin disrupts ovulation as well as raising testosterone, so a breakfast that keeps insulin down works on your cycle and your weight together. If your cycles are irregular, add inositol, no matter which PCOS type you have. The international guideline recommends lifestyle care even without weight loss, and your doctor may offer metformin, mainly for weight and metabolic health (2026 International PCOS/PMOS Guideline). If your periods are very infrequent or have stopped for long stretches, see your doctor about protecting the lining of your uterus, which builds up when you go months without a bleed.

Trying to conceive

If you are trying to conceive, make inositol your supplement. It has been studied extensively for its ability to improve irregular cycles, increase insulin sensitivity, promote ovulation and enhance egg quality, and it is generally considered safe while you are trying to conceive. If you are not ovulating, your doctor may offer letrozole, the first-line medicine to help you ovulate (Teede et al. 2023).

How to evaluate an “androgen blocker” formula

A good androgen blocker combines the herbs and minerals that help your body balance androgen levels and slow the conversion of testosterone into DHT, with every ingredient and its dose on the label. My favourite natural androgen blockers are:

• Saw palmetto, which reduces the activity of 5-alpha reductase, the enzyme that makes DHT
• Reishi mushroom, which blocks DHT conversion in the hair and skin follicles
• Nettle, which raises sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), the protein that mops up excess androgens in your blood
• Green tea extract, which improves insulin resistance and supports healthy weight loss
• Zinc, which reduces acne formation and helps existing acne scars heal

Mine is AndroEase Plus, which I created because my clients got sick of taking handfuls of separate pills. Leave it out if you are pregnant, breastfeeding or trying to conceive, when inositol is my choice instead, and check with your doctor first if you are on the pill or another regular medicine.

If a tea suits you better than a capsule, two cups of spearmint tea a day is the first ritual of my Anti-Androgen Plan, and I sourced Androgen Relief Tea for it: 100% certified organic loose-leaf spearmint, 60 servings a bag. Leave it out while pregnant or breastfeeding.

Keep the three rituals going while you find out why your body is over-producing androgens, because that is how you reverse your symptoms for good. It will be one, or a combination, of the four root causes: Insulin-Resistant, Adrenal, Post-Pill and Inflammatory PCOS. My free root cause quiz tells you which is yours, and The PCOS Repair Protocol shows you how to treat it, with the Anti-Androgen Plan as step one.