Fast ahead an excellent 20 years, and we nonetheless don’t have a treatment for endo, and we don’t have what I, or the World Health Organization4 for that matter, would contemplate efficient therapies for the situation.
But I’m not stunned. In 2022, the National Institutes of Health devoted lower than 0.1% of their analysis funding to the research of this continual situation that impacts 1 in 105 folks assigned feminine at beginning of reproductive age, considerably reduces high quality of life6, and prices the United States an estimated $22 billion a 12 months in misplaced productiveness. (FYI, in uncommon instances, folks assigned male at beginning can have endo too.)
Like many individuals with endo who’ve been left within the lurch concerning remedy and care, I needed to do my very own analysis. I found that dietary adjustments, though not a treatment, might assist alleviate endometriosis signs. Back within the early aughts, the prevailing knowledge concerning weight loss plan and endo was to go vegan.
The simplified idea was that consuming some animal merchandise7, like pink meat, may drive prostaglandin manufacturing. Prostaglandins, though essential for the physique, when overproduced could cause the uterus (and that endometrial-like tissue) to contract, resulting in ache and cramping. Plus, prostaglandins are implicated8 within the pathophysiology of endo.
As somebody who went vegan means again in 2001, I can let you know {that a} vegan weight loss plan doesn’t all the time equate to a nutritious diet. Although I ate an abundance of fruits and veggies, I used to be additionally consuming a lot of processed carbs, equivalent to pasta, rice, cereal, bread, and so forth. So that vegan weight loss plan didn’t essentially assist me. In reality, it could have made it worse9.