Endometriosis — There’s Hope: How to Begin Your Journey to Long-Term Wellness & Healing
If you’re grappling with an endometriosis diagnosis, know that there are options to calm your symptoms. Here, you'll learn practical tips to begin your healing journey through hormonal balance.
One of the best quotes I’ve heard when it comes to healing is —
“You can’t heal within the same environment in which you got sick.”
When I first came across this quote, I knew it was referring to our external environment (the people, places, and things around us). I took it a step further in my mind, realizing the same is true for the environment within our bodies.
When your body is sick, it’s an indisputable sign that what you’re currently doing isn’t working. You can’t do the same things over and over and expect to get better.
If you want to get well and achieve long-term wellness — and not just a band-aid quick fix — you need to proactively make different choices for your health.
At first, I didn’t do that.
After my initial endometriosis diagnosis in 2019, I had surgery to remove the 10-cm cyst wrapped around my uterus. Following the procedure, I asked my doctor if I should be concerned about the endometriosis coming back. He seemed unconcerned, so I was unconcerned.
Just two weeks after surgery, I went back to my fast-paced, stress-filled, sleep-deprived life. My only focus at the time was to get “back in the game” at full speed.
I leaned all the way back into Navy life and prepared for deployment. I didn’t have a movement practice in place, a healthy sleep schedule, or a focus on hydrating properly. I ate well but not nutritionally focused.
I didn’t have any stress management practices in place. I pushed myself hard from an emotional space of feeling behind because I hadn’t been contributing at work because of my illness, surgery, and recovery. I felt like there were things I now needed to prove because my illness was specific to being a woman.
I often think I would have been easier on myself if I’d broken my leg or my appendix had burst because both men and women can experience that, and there’s no possible weakness assigned to that.
My body protested over the next five months, but I ignored it. I kept pushing — that is, until I found myself in the emergency room with a doctor telling me I needed emergency surgery.
So began a very challenging journey to slow down, to listen to my body, and to educate myself on making informed decisions for my health.
The first thing I had to do was learn to be still, slow down, and not feel guilty about being “lazy.” My worth was so deeply tied to my productivity that in an effort to feel as worthy as I could in life, I ignored my body’s signals that it was unwell. Slowing down, learning to listen, learning to honor what my body needs, and seeing those things as a sign of self-love and care and not laziness laid my foundation for healing.
I fumbled at first, but soon, each choice I made became more intentional and better suited to my long-term health and healing journey. I’m so profoundly grateful and blessed to share that it was all worth it, and if I could talk to my past self, I’d say, “There’s hope.”
Treating endometriosis only as a gynecological disease limits how you approach your care.
I’ve seen, for both myself and for other women, that endometriosis treatments usually fall into the categories of birth control, surgery, or hormone therapy … and not much else.
But the front matter in the book The 4-Week Endometriosis Diet Plan, by Katie Edmonds, transformed my mindset.
When you look at the disease as not just a hormonal imbalance but also a gut issue, autoimmune/inflammatory issue, or malnutrition disease, other natural and practical options for care start to make sense.
In later articles in this Endometriosis Series, we’ll do a deep-dive on:
The Gut & Endo
Inflammation & Endo
Malnutrition & Endo
In this article, you’ll learn how to approach endometriosis through the lens of hormonal imbalance. Here, we’re talking about strategic ways to support your overall wellness to address the root causes.
Health and healing aren’t one-size-fits-all. We share the what and the why here because when you learn about both, you can better understand how endometriosis affects your body and feel empowered to choose what will best serve you.
Endometriosis goes hand-in-hand with hormonal imbalance.
Endometriosis is a sign of estrogen dominance — i.e., high estrogen levels relative to progesterone.
Consider your estrogen and progesterone as partners that beautifully balance one another in the different phases of your cycle. Estrogen leads the pair as the dominant hormone, whether high, normal, or low, and impacts progesterone from there.
This particular hormonal imbalance can present itself in two ways:
Estrogen is high, and progesterone levels are normal
Estrogen levels are high, and progesterone levels are low
In The Hormone Cure, Sara Gottfried, MD shares what she’s researched and seen as the Top 7 Root Causes of Excess Estrogen:
Perimenopause and Diminished Ovarian Reserve: During perimenopause, your estrogen level will fluctuate between high and low.
Cortisol-Linked Estrogen Dominance: Cortisol blocks your progesterone production, leading to low progesterone levels, and that imbalance sets up estrogen for dominance.
Xenoestrogens (aka Endocrine Disrupters): BPA, Pesticides, Phthalates, and other chemicals can be found in body care products, clothing, makeup, canned foods, and other products.
Obesity and Weight Gain: High insulin leads to high estrogen. Also, fat tissue within the body produces its own estrogen.
Diet: What you choose to consume on a daily basis will influence your gut microbiome, and the health of your gut directly impacts your estrogen levels. If you don’t have the right bacteria in your gut, your body won’t metabolize estrogen as effectively.
Nutritional Deficiencies: Low levels of some key vitamins and minerals, such as B12, folate, methionine, magnesium, zinc, and copper, are associated with high estrogen levels.
Mercury: Mercury toxicity is a concern in our food supply, and it binds estrogen receptors like xenoestrogens, which can promote excess estrogen production.
“The main thing you need to know is this: a hormone does not exist in a vacuum.”
— The Hormone Cure by Sara Gottfried, MD
How can you promote a healthy, hormonal balance?
When your symptoms indicate that your estrogen levels are dominating, supporting your body in metabolizing and detoxing that excess estrogen should take priority over raising your progesterone(Reminder: Estrogen is the dominant hormone between the two).
Here, we’ve provided 7 things you can do today to start metabolizing and detoxing excess estrogen. This is not an all-encompassing list, but a great place to start learning how to support your body’s balance. As always, keep your bio-individuality at the forefront of your mind when considering your care.
Drink Water: Ensure you’re peeing regularly throughout the day. Staying hydrated will naturally flush excess estrogen from your body through your urine.
Maintain a Balanced Fiber Intake: You should be pooping every day, if not several times a day. Eat more whole foods and refrain from eating foods that give you gas and make you feel bloated. This, paired with stress management, movement, and hydration, will keep your digestive system happy and help you regulate your bowel movements. Your body also detoxes excess estrogen through your poop.
Prioritize Cruciferous Vegetables: Eat more cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower. These veggies all naturally contain di-indolemethane (DIM), which supports the production of good estrogen and limits “bad” (cancer-causing) estrogen production.
Limit Alcohol and Caffeine Intake: Both alcohol and caffeine raise estrogen levels. In addition, alcohol can damage your liver — your natural detox organ. To support your liver and promote estrogen release, try toning down your alcohol (and caffeine) consumption so your liver doesn’t have to do more work.
Start a Consistent Movement Practice: An exercise or movement practice — whatever feels best to you — is a valuable tool for bringing harmony to your hormones. Movement lowers cortisol, which can support your progesterone levels, and it lowers estrogen.
Prioritize Your Sleep: Melatonin lowers your estradiol levels. Research shows when you have a set sleep schedule and go to bed before 10 p.m., your body produces more melatonin.
Avoid Endocrine Disrupters: The endocrine system manages hormone release in your body, and endocrine disrupters can, well, disrupt that process. As we mentioned above, endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can be found in a slew of everyday products, including cosmetics, clothing, and food packaging. Check the labels of products you’re purchasing and research the ingredients listed.
Remember: you don’t need to do everything at once. Pick one or two things to work on and create daily practices around them. Once you have those smoothly integrated into your day-to-day routines — to the point that you don’t have to really think about them— invite another one in.
The goal is for these to be long-term habits. Give yourself grace when incorporating them, and allow yourself and your body time to adjust to the changes.
Your body needs that time to counterbalance what it may have been experiencing for years. So, even if you feel so much better within just a couple of weeks, know that this isn’t the finish line; it’s a beautiful beginning.
Consistency and patience are your helpers—Keep going!
READ:
Bloodwork: Why it is crucial to know your bloodwork for your health as a woman
Your blood work results provide a window into not just your hormonal health but your overall health as a woman.