Quick ahead a great 20 years, and we nonetheless don’t have a treatment for endo, and we don’t have what I, or the World Well being Group4 for that matter, would take into account efficient therapies for the situation.
However I’m not shocked. In 2022, the Nationwide Institutes of Well being devoted lower than 0.1% of their analysis funding to the examine of this continual situation that impacts 1 in 105 individuals assigned feminine at beginning of reproductive age, considerably reduces high quality of life6, and prices the USA an estimated $22 billion a yr in misplaced productiveness. (FYI, in uncommon instances, individuals assigned male at beginning can have endo too.)
Like many individuals with endo who’ve been left within the lurch relating to therapy and care, I needed to do my very own analysis. I found that dietary adjustments, though not a treatment, might assist alleviate endometriosis signs. Again within the early aughts, the prevailing knowledge relating to eating regimen and endo was to go vegan.
The simplified principle was that consuming some animal merchandise7, like purple meat, may drive prostaglandin manufacturing. Prostaglandins, though essential for the physique, when overproduced may 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 approach again in 2001, I can inform you {that a} vegan eating regimen doesn’t all the time equate to a nutritious diet. Though I ate an abundance of fruits and veggies, I used to be additionally consuming a number of processed carbs, equivalent to pasta, rice, cereal, bread, and so on. In order that vegan eating regimen didn’t essentially assist me. In reality, it could have made it worse9.
