Srinagar, June 18 -- You hear it in whispers during bus rides, in clinic waiting rooms, in college corridors. Girls skipping periods for months. Women in their 20s growing facial hair. Teenagers breaking down over sudden weight gain and cystic acne.

A silent crisis is gripping women in Kashmir, and it has a name: PCOD.

"I hadn't seen my period in five months," says 19-year-old Iqra from Anantnag. "I was scared, but the doctor just wrote it off as stress."

When she finally got an ultrasound, the image showed what doctors call a "string of pearls": rows of tiny, undeveloped follicles lining her ovaries. It confirmed what she had feared: Polycystic Ovarian Disease, or PCOD.

And she's not alone.

A recent estimate suggests that more than ...