What's helped my Endometriosis pain

I (Danielle) wanted to get a little personal with you & share my experiences with managing my Endometriosis.

Interestingly, I didn't pick Chinese Medicine to help my body (I was 18 and invincible!)

Young, invincible and off to another music festival!

I decided to study Chinese Medicine because Acupuncture helped my mum's back pain and because natural medicine helped my friend who had Glandular fever & chronic fatigue in school. 

I thought that was magical!

That Chinese Med could help back pain and something complicated like chronic fatigue too was such a cool concept to me.

It’s such a beautiful medicine that can help so many people. It's also a beautiful philosophy, a way of connecting seemingly random symptoms and helping us reconnect with nature. 

I love it and love sharing it with everyone.

AAAAND it comes in handy for my body!

Bonus. Here’s what I’ve learnt

Camping with the necessary hot water bottles

Endo sucks!!

I've had this since at least my mid twenties and its been a process of what works for my body, minimises my pain vs what really flares it up. 

Day 1 & 2 of my cycle used to consist of insane pelvic pain, pain down my legs and pain in my lower back.

It would require 3 (yes 3!) heat packs, bulk pain killers and having to cancel plans. 

There were many, many tears.

Honestly? I felt embarrassed that my periods were so bad, given I was a women's health practitioner and all!

An Integrated Approach to Endometriosis

In Integrative Medicine world, we see Endometriosis (& Adenomyosis) as a condition stemming from low iron & high inflammation / autoimmunity

In the poetic Chinese Medicine world, we see the blood of the whole body (including periods) as a river. Something is causing the river to dry up or congeal & is causing muddy puddles (clots!) instead of the beautiful free flowing river. 

The usual reasons? Not enough blood (literally anemia!) will cause the river to dry up. Cold constricts blood flow (think of an icepack on a swollen ankle) so too much cold in the body can do this too. 

My beloved dutch oven! Making all the healing foods

What has helped me

Sadly, Endo is something that needs to be managed rather than 'cured'. 

Happily, there's so many things that help!

Here’s what helped me

• Herbs (I know, it's too convenient right??) - they work so well. I know this because if I get lazy with this, all my symptoms come rushing back

• Sorting out my iron levels. Fixing this was such a game changer, including for my mental health

• Identifying foods that are inflammatory to me specifically. Yes gluten, dairy & sugar but for me doing AIP properly & identifying that nightshade vegetables and legumes stir up my pain (and then avoiding them!!) has just helped so much! See how to do this here and more blogs on Autoimmune Paleo

• Keeping stress levels low. Im sure most of you know your health symptoms are worse with stress, Endo is no different. This one will always be a work in progress for me. Running a business with staff through a pandemic and in tricky economic times isn't always fun or easy. Yoga, walking, cooking and Acupuncture (I am constantly amazed at how it drops my stress levels for days!) are what keeps me rolling and pretty pain free.

• Heat! I use stick on heat packs when I have my periods and in the cooler months have been going to bed with a heat pack every night - it's delightful!
  

  And when it's really bad? I do castor oil packs daily and take extra herbs.
  
  Hope this helps shed some light on Endo & know you’re not alone.
  
  Come see us if your Endo needs some taming.
  
  Big love, Danielle