Healing endometriosis, hormones, uterine polyps & cysts.
I want to start this blog by saying — I will not and won’t be (for the foreseeable future) identifying as someone who has endometriosis. I believe the body is incredible and after studying the brain for over 3 years I know we know hardly ANYTHING about how it truly works and we still don’t know exactly every function and mechanism on how bodies work and what powers the mind and body have when working in tandem… one thing we do know is the power of placebo and no-cebo which can be AS powerful as medication, how crazy cool is that!?? I am choosing to believe I am moving THROUGH endometriosis, polyps & a cyst... I’ll explain more on why I DO BELIEVE there’s more to look at in women’s health studies and why I’m choosing to think there’s alternative viewpoints on healing… (not so woo woo reasons either… stick with me)…
Anyway, now you have an idea on what this blog is about I’ll go back to the beginning, not the very beginning but the reason I’m writing this blog; I had a genealogical appointment last Monday. I had had a ultrasound done 3 months ago that had shown a cyst, not a nice clear one… a dark one on my left ovary (measuring 38mm to be precise)… and 3 polyps. In my late teens I’d struggled with horrendous period pain, heavy bleeding, hormonal imbalance (hello pmdd) and other cycle based issues such as mid cycle pain, spotting and more… ANYWAY since adopting a healthy diet, good exercise, working on stress and a few more things these symptoms had mostly gone away! My last period was text book perfect. If I hadn’t seen the gyno and had the scan honestly I’d be none the wiser to any issues…
I decided not to go to a normal run of the mill gyno, but a specialist in endo and other womens health issues… she had state of the art scanning and other ways of knowing INSTANTLY (with the behaviour of the cyst too) that it was an endometrioma and almost ALWAYS they come with endometriosis. So basically Monday I was told I have endometriosis, a endometrioma and that my fertility is now compromised. Now fertility is the LAST thing on my mind, I feel way too young to have a child and frankly I’m just not ready… but still hearing that for me children could be a NEVER was a frightening prospect. So we’re looking at things like egg freezing now to insure that my options stay open if I do one day (in the VERYYY distant future) decide I’d like to have a child…. I’m still looking into this whole concept but I thought it was worth mentioning.
So back to the ideas on treatment for my diagnosis… I go back for another scan in approximately 3 months time. During this scan we’ll be looking to see if there’s a change in size on the chocolate cyst (why do they make it sound nice… chocolate??? haha)… and check out the polyps. My GYN would like to do an operation to take out the polyps on the offfff chance they’re not JUST polyps if you get my meaning… because of my age we don’t think they’d be anything to worry about… but you know… she’s being careful.
But on the endometriosis note, for now… it’s going to be left alone and here’s some reasons (from the founder of my GYN clinic) why:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CQH2kEMgyoY/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CQ2GbmZt8Rz/
if you CBF reading why; essentially surgery for endo is NOT a cure-all, it doesn’t always work and in some cases; it makes matters WORSE. Because I’m actually not in any pain and my periods are trotting along wonderfully, why rock the boat!?
Now to what I’ve decided to work on:
- shrinking this endometrioma (good sign- I’ve had a 3mm decrease in the past 3 months). There are MANY articles showing that NAC & pine bark extract have been used to shrink endometrioma’s ANDDD endometriosis lesions. This is hopeful evidence when it comes to people saying “oh there’s NO CURE FOR ENDOMETRIOSIS” … in the NAC studies, women who LEFT the study due to no longer having pain were not studied on further.. so how do we know that they didn’t heal their endometriosis?
- Shrinking the polyps — I know this one might be a harder battle, the gyno said that she’s never seen anyone’s polyps shrink… but danggg.. I got 3 months to really give it a crack and I’m going to try.
- egg health. One amazing thing that did come out of my appointment is that I learnt I have amazing looking eggs that are really strong and healthy… so keeping this trend going for a potential retrieval will be a goal of mine.
So now you’re prob asking… well what are you going to do to heal these things? Just NAC & pine bark?? NOPE.
I will be following a gluten free, refined sugar free and egg free diet, I mostly already do this due to allergies so this really isn't’ much of a lifestyle change for me thankfully. I will be eating a whole foods based diet with meat because it makes me feel good. I will be exercising, getting sun, meditating and ENJOYING my life. In addition I’m taking NAC, pine bark, thyroid support by bioglan, zinc, magnesium bisglycinate 600mg, tumeric, ginger, evening primrose oil, blackseed oil, probiotics, broccoli sprouts, dandelion tea, essential oils like progessence + & endoflex & iron to help get my levels up.
I’ll also be prioritising sleep, low levels of blue light, low caffeine, castor oil packs & yoni steams. The last thing that I believe got me into a pain free place WITH endometriosis is seeing a womb massage therapist, the gyno wasn’t shocked by this at all. If you’re having issues with pelvic pain I can’t recommend seeing a womb healer enough, I truly believe we hold a lot of trauma, pain, sadness and childhood experiences in our bodies, releasing this is a MUST for recovery (if you’d like to read more on that, a wonderful book is The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk — psychiatrist).
Anyway — this is where I’m at. I’m going to report back in 3 months time, we’ll see what happens, I’m not going to judge myself either way. Maybe I’ll need to move forward with surgery, but maybe not!? Who knows but I’m going to give this whole body healing a crack.
xx Em.
