What is Endometriosis?
March is Endometriosis Awareness Month, so in the spirit of our mission to educate, we are featuring blog posts this month to help inform and guide you readers when it comes to this condition. Maybe you know someone who has been diagnosed with this condition, or maybe you are questioning if you have it. Whatever the case, let’s break down who endometriosis affects, what it is, and how it is diagnosed.
Endometriosis (hereafter referred to as endo) is a condition where tissue that is very similar to the lining of your uterus (AKA your endometrium) grows outside of your uterus. It affects about 1 out of every 10 women (or people born with a uterus). Most of the time this tissue grows inside the abdominal cavity. However, in rare cases it can grow elsewhere. It is important to remember that this type of tissue is programmed to fluctuate along with your hormonal cycle. This will help you understand the connection when we start to talk about the common symptoms.
The most common symptom of endo is excessive pain during the menstrual phase of your cycle. This is often severely debilitating, causing inability to participate in work, social events, and even basic everyday activities. It is also common that someone with endo may experience pain during penetrative intercourse or with/after orgasm. As you can imagine, this can cause a lot of strain on personal relationships. Other symptoms of endo include: excessive bleeding during or between periods, infertility, painful bowel or bladder movements, IBS-like symptoms, bloating, and nausea. Whew, that was exhausting just to type, can you imagine experiencing all of that? How disruptive these symptoms would be to your everyday life?
Due to the laundry list of symptoms I’ve listed above, it can sometimes be hard to identify if you might have endo. Medical providers might look into a multitude of other conditions before they consider endo as a potential diagnosis. Often, women or their providers are trying to treat a number of these symptoms separately, which is an ineffective strategy. Endo is usually first suspected by an OB GYN provider due the nature of the condition and its symptoms. The OB GYN can run labs and do some imaging to help rule other conditions in or out with the goal to narrow their suspicion. However, it is currently only possible to fully diagnose endo with a laparoscopic procedure to look for and biopsy tissue that can be tested by a lab. This is usually performed by a specialist who deals mostly/only with addressing endo. During this procedure, they may also be able to grade the severity of the disease.
Now that you know a little bit more about what endometriosis is, you might have additional questions such as: could I have endo? What do I do if I suspect/know I have endo? Or, what are the treatment options? Have no fear, because we will be exploring these very questions over the next few blog posts. We are here to help you understand this condition in terms that make sense and give you actionable steps that you can take to help yourself or the people that you love with this condition.
