Wellness with endometriosis

Endometriosis can affect all aspects of your life when it is bad! Even when things are better and you are pain free, lifestyle changes are very important to keeping you feeling good. I often tell patients even with the best excision surgery you cannot go and eat fast food every meal and pro-inflammatory diet. There are many ways we can work together to come up with the best plan for eating/pain relief and supplement or lifestyle modifications which can help you in healing and beyond. 

You may have heard many people mention low inflammatory diet or cutting gluten out to feel better. While endometriosis doesn’t cause celiac disease and most patients are not truly celiac, it causes many food sensitivities and gastrointestinal side effects which can be worsened by inflammatory foods like gluten.

I don’t recommend being so severe with diet that you can’t enjoy life, but it is good to exercise the right changes 90-95% of the time and then pick things you really enjoy sometimes. 

I don’t think any one diet is perfect for endo, some patients benefit from vegetarian or vegan diets, and others like myself cannot tolerate peas and legumes and survive on pure vegan diet!

In general the best diet will be one usually that has minimal to NO processed foods. Gluten free, and very low in sugar helps. Now it is not good to replace sugar with fake sweeteners as those are HIGHLY processed and difficult to digest even for the normal gut, much less one with endo or inflammation. If you see an allergist for any issue the first thing they will tell you is to cut artificial dies, sweeteners, processed foods and common allergens. These often can worsen inflammatory conditions, seasonal allergies and even asthma. 

Working on overall less simple carbohydrates and sugar and gluten will make you feel a lot better. In general the sugars in foods and carbohydrates can cause a lot of those endobelly symptoms of bloat and indigestion.

Low inflammatory diet plus some supplement support for digestion can really help turn the endobelly bloat around and process things better.

Be careful the additives in things! Pea protein is a huge craze right now but if you examine a bag of frozen peas for the protein content you will find its very little in one cup of peas. How many peas must you pulverize to get that 20g protein shake? If you ate that many raw peas in one sitting and add processing on top of that…would you get a belly ache or have indigestion/bloat/gas/diarrhea?  Anyone could!

Endometriosis is often blamed or endobelly, but I do think there is a strong correlation with what we are putting in the system and trying to process. 

Take the work of your intestines down especially in sensitive times  of the month. If you have constipation with ovulation work on plenty of hydration, extra fiber and magnesium in that time if tolerable. Avoid inflammatory foods especially around ovulation and pre period if those are your worst pain bloating days. 

High inflammatory foods: sugar (feeds endo, cancer, infection bacteria, autoimmune disease and diabetes to name a few)! Simple carbohydrates bread pasta etc, too much caffeine and alcohol. Some night shade vegetables or too much dried fruit can also bother patients.

Please see the library shelf for good guide books and talk to your endo specialist about the best place to start.