Managing Your Triggers

It is possible to still live a decently normal life while still dealing with endometriosis. Once you understand what triggers your endometriosis, it gets easier. While your life will never be completely normal again, you need to learn how to get your endometriosis under control and the rest will fall into place.

Diet
I had a really hard time figuring out what triggered my endometriosis diet-wise. I had always just eaten whatever was convenient or whatever my parents made for me. I never paid any attention to what kinds of food I ate.
Once I found out about my endometriosis, I began to pay close attention to what I ate. Over time I found that dairy products were my main issue. Anytime I ate anything with a lot of cheese or milk, I found myself in a lot of pain.
Cigarettes and liquor were two other major triggers for my disease. This was harder to stop but I did quit smoking cigarettes. I also stopped drinking hard alcohol for the most part. Cutting these things out of my life has made living with endometriosis much easier.

Exercise
Unlike many people, I found that exercise actually irritated my endometriosis. Any type of strenuous activity causes a lot of pain for me. I even found that standing for long periods of time can irritate my endometriosis. It became very hard to work long doubles at my job. I would have increasing back pain over time that would not go away until I stopped exercising.
Now, I need to find a replacement for strenuous exercise. I have begun looking at other options like yoga or Pilates to replace treadmill running or weight lifting. I think that once I begin doing one of these things, I will feel better and my pain will diminish.

Once I changed these two aspects of my life, my pain from my disease got better. It is important to find what triggers you with your own endometriosis and react accordingly. This can really change your life once you begin to understand what your body is telling you.

Families of Those Living with Endometriosis

Living with endometriosis yourself can be challenging, but sometimes, the hardest thing is getting those closest to you to understand what is happening. Often, families of someone with endometriosis will not be able to comprehend what is going on in the life of the one suffering. This may cause the entire family to suffer.

Why Is it so Hard to Understand?
Since endometriosis is not something that you are born with, it may be hard for a patient, as well as their family to adjust to the disease. It is something you can't see, touch, or feel if you are not the patient. This is why many families will not comprehend endometriosis. If you haven't experienced it, you will never fully understand it.

My Experience
My mother has had a very tough time understanding the pain I go through on a daily basis. Before I was diagnosed, I'm pretty sure she always thought that I was just complaining about some imaginary pain to get out of things that I didn't want to do. Even after my diagnosis, she still has a hard time believing that a pain could be so bad that you can't get out of bed.
Some of my best relationships and friendships have failed due to this disease and the lack of knowledge about it. My mother and others close to me are getting better at understanding what I am dealing with, but it is still not easy.

What Can You Do?
I suggest that people who have loved ones dealing with endometriosis should read up. There are plenty of books out there that provide information about the disease. They can also go to support groups for endometriosis where they can learn how others have learned to accept and cope with this disease.

3 Surprising Facts About Endometriosis

There are many rumors floating around about endometriosis. This is largely because there is very little information about the disease. It is important to clear up these rumors for the women diagnosed with this disease. Three facts listed below combat some of the rumors I heard when I was first diagnosed with endometriosis.

Hormonal Treatments Don't Cure Endometriosis

Many people think that different forms of birth control can actually cure endometriosis. This is untrue. Birth control can help to manage endometriosis but it is not a cure. It does stop your periods so birth control can tame your endo but it does not reverse the damage that has already been done. 

It is important to understand that there is no cure, just pain management. Once the endometrial tissue has begun growing, the only way to remove it is through surgeries, such as a laparotomy.  Even surgery doesn't always cure the disease. There are some organs where doctors cannot remove the tissue.

Hysterectomies Don't Cure Endometriosis
Hysterectomies are often the last resort for women with endometriosis. It is not always true that a hysterectomy will cure endometriosis though. 

Many women have endometrial tissue that has grown on their liver, spleen, small or large intestine, or bowel. This tissue can cause pain as well even after a hysterectomy. It is not only the uterus that causes pain. Taking the uterus out can help with endometriosis but just like birth control, it can't reverse the damage that has already been done. 

Pain Medications are Not Good Treatment for Endometriosis

I experienced this first-hand. Pain medications are an excellent short-term treatment for endometriosis. They eliminate your pain completely and you begin to feel great. They are not meant to be taken for a long period of time though. 

I was prescribed pain medications of different types for about a year after I was first diagnosed. This was great at first, but after a while, I became dependent on the medication and it was hard to get myself off of it. 

I would not suggest that anyone take pain medication for long periods of time. It only makes the pain worse when you are finished taking them. You become so used to living without pain when you are on pain killers that when you finally get off of them, it makes things much worse. 

How Endometriosis Affects Your Life

Endometriosis is definitely a mystery to doctors. They don't know the causes or how to cure it. It is all about pain management and how to get the patient through the day.

Effects on Women
This can become really frustrating for the women who have to deal with endometriosis everyday. Personally, I have always thought that there has to be something more that the doctors could do; something that they must be hiding from me that will make everything better. This feeling of a complete loss of control can make you crazy over time.
Many women will often become depressed because they feel like there is no end to their constant pain. You begin to feel like there is nothing that you will be able to do to end your daily pain. Many women will also become distant from those closest to them during this time.

What's Happened to Me?
I often have felt this way since being diagnosed. There have been many times where I have been unable to get out of bed due to the pain. I just have to try to make it through the day and do the best I can. Ibuprofen will help a little bit but it becomes a mental game. I found that I just have to convince myself that the pain is not as bad as I think it is.
I did have issues with my personal relationships when I was first diagnosed. The guy I was seeing at the time was unable to handle what was happening to me. I always just thought that he was too immature to handle it.
Finally, I realized that had I talked to him and opened up about my disease, he might have been able to understand it. The main reason why our relationship didn't work out was because he knew about the disease but I would never talk to him about it. I never informed him about what was going on so he couldn't comprehend what was happening to me and my body.

What Should You Do?
Learning more about the disease, changing your diet and sleep schedule, and increasing exercise and decreasing alcohol and smoking can make your life a little better. Since I was diagnosed in 2011, I have found that cutting out dairy and smoking dull the pain. The only way to find out what works and doesn't work for you is trial and error. Every woman is different and will find their own triggers for pain.

Here is a link to help explain how diet and exercise can play a role in the treatment of endometriosis.

What is Endometriosis?

Many people don't have any idea what endometriosis is. I think that it is time to get the word out there about endometriosis and its effect on women. This increased awareness will allow for more research to be done and, hopefully, a cure.

What Is It?
According to the Mayo Clinic, "Endometriosis (en-doe-me-tree-O-sis) is an often painful disorder in which tissue that normally lines the inside of your uterus — the endometrium — grows outside your uterus (endometrial implant)".
This definition sounds pretty complicated but for a woman who has endometriosis, the word means literal hell. It is something that you deal with because you have to.

What Happens Next?
There is no known cause of the disease and also no cure. You basically are diagnosed, then sent off to go deal with it on your own. While many doctors will try medications, these are normally just for pain management. There is no permanent solution to the disease right now.
There are many different support groups you can try throughout the area. These groups will help you to stay sane and learn to manage endometriosis in many different ways; through diet, exercise, as well as pain medications that work and don't work.

With increased awareness, a solution for endometriosis is sure to be found.