My Healing Journey; Endometriosis Pt. 2
In my last post, I wrote about some of my experiences and struggles throughout my life with living with endometriosis. I talked about how isolating it can be, how often times doctors don’t really listen or fully understand themselves, and want to simply write you off and just give you medicine/birth control to “solve your problem”. There are so many frustrations and pains which come with this chronic illness outside of the actual pain and physical/emotional tolls it takes on your body.
For this post, I want to talk more about how I got from where it felt truly hopeless, to where I am now; healing, functional, happy, and living a virtually pain free life. I won’t say that I am healed because I would be lying if I said I don’t still experience some symptoms, but throughout this healing journey, I can tell you that I am now in a place I didn’t think was fully possible. I still find it hard to believe at times because I lived with this chronic illness and pain for so long it felt like it would never leave, but I never gave up or stopped looking for answers.
The image on the far left is me at 21 before making any changes. I may not have looked like I was sick, but that was one of the unhealthiest times of my life. Center is me 10 years later and far right is this past year.
The beginning of my healing journey started when I was 22. I became vegetarian and soon after completely vegan. This was a very big catalyst moment for me as I learned the importance of nutrition and what we put into our bodies. Before this, I was pretty oblivious to the impacts of diet in so many ways. I wouldn’t say I ate terribly, but I just never stopped to think about what I was actually taking in or how it would effect my body.
Around this time, before I went vegan, I was also drinking alcohol pretty often. I didn’t know this at the time and I didn’t actually learn this until years later, but alcohol is one of the worst things you can consume if you have endometriosis. Without going into too many details, this is for a few reasons; it increases inflammation within the body and endometriosis/any chronic illness really also does the same thing, there is an inflammatory response and this is where pain starts and other symptoms throughout the body. Consuming alcohol worsens this significantly. The sugars which are in most alcohols too also is another reason to stay way. Heavily processed, refined sugars in general you don’t want to consume or limit extremely. Sugar also increases inflammation in the body and it can also play a role in effecting our gut health, and it is common for there to be digestive issues with endometriosis. I had extreme digestive issues at this time, and it’s no surprise when I look at how poorly I ate and how much alcohol I was consuming.
When I went vegan I actually decided to stop drinking at the same time. For probably 3–4 years I didn’t touch alcohol at all, and to this day I pretty much don’t except for an occasional glass of wine, or occasional social drink, but even this is very limited and rare. Once I started eating healthier and stopped drinking, the benefits began immediately, and it was why it was such an easy decision to stick to. I suddenly noticed that the digestive issues I was having stopped, I had way more energy, my mood improved and I felt happier overall. I felt mentally stronger, more focused and my mindset changed in a lot of ways through this experience of eating healthier and taking this step into self care. It was the first big step in the right direction, and although it wasn’t enough to stop the severe pain I went through every month, it began the journey of balancing and healing my body.
Another important part to my healing came in the form of exercise/physical movement. If you’re like me, maybe you find it hard to keep a set routine with going to the gym or even working out at home. When living with a chronic illness, sometimes all we want to do after a long day of working is come home and lay down, I know for me, that’s still my favorite thing to do. When I was younger and living with the more severe side of this disease, it was so hard for me to keep up with much of anything. I’ve had chronic fatigue most of my life. Chronic fatigue, chronic pain and chronic health issues, combined make it very hard to push through any given day when they are flaring up. Once I went vegan and got serious about my health though, I became very determined and pushed myself to my limits to get into better physical shape.
Eating healthier and taking better care of myself helped to greatly improve my energy levels, I still would suffer fatigue at certain points of the month, but it wasn’t nearly as much as it had been before. I became more active, I got into running, rock climbing, yoga, hula hooping and dancing. All of this was over a period of time between my early to mid twenties, and remaining active on some level became key for me. Allowing myself time to stretch, breathe, and be in some form of physical movement, not only helped to strengthen my body and mind but it is also known that exercise can help to greatly reduce symptoms and pain associated with endometriosis.
Another important area for me was within stress management and how I handled stressors. Stress, especially chronic stress creates inflammation in the body, and so when it comes to any kind of chronic pain or illness you will end up with flare ups and worsening symptoms when your body is under chronic stress.
I’ve had issues with chronic stress through most of my life, for many reasons, which I won’t go into right now, but it was an issue. While I was in school studying for my bachelors in psychology, I ended up taking a few courses which focused on stress, trauma, coping and things of this nature. I was interested both personally and professionally, and what I learned during that time helped me to not only improve and reduce stress in my life but I learned valuable skills and tools to help with self-soothing, relaxing, and coping when inevitable stress occurs.
For me personally, this was a very important aspect to my healing because it became obvious, even early on for me, that when I was under stress, my symptoms and pain would go through the roof. It made it that much worse. Because the thing is, is when we don’t have the appropriate outlet for releasing stress, emotions, or even toxic thoughts, they sit within our body, it causes tension, inflammation, stagnation, and it can quite literally even create sickness and disease within you. Stress is no good.
I already had some practices which I was using in my life prior to the courses I took, but I was able to add more and these really have helped me a lot. Some of the practices which I use include; journaling, meditation, breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, qigong, or going outside for a walk/being in nature. These are basically my go-to things for moving and releasing stress from my body, and they really do help a lot!
One of the most important things I did which I feel is what has brought me to the life I live now, was getting acupuncture therapy for endometriosis. However, I don’t think that this would’ve mattered or made much difference if I was living my life like I was before, I think that each step that I took within increasing my health was a critical step to having this be an effective treatment for me.
When I first went to get my consultation, my acupuncturist even gave me a list of instructions and things I would need to do or not do, in order for treatment to be effective, it was interesting to realize that I was already doing most of those things such as; no consumption of meat, dairy, sugar, no alcohol, no caffeine…there were other things listed but these are what I remember the most. I remember during consultation we talked about my symptoms, how long I had it, etc… and basically it would take a certain amount of treatments along with sticking to the list of requirements and taking recommended Chinese herbs to help reset, rebalance and heal my body.
The acupuncture treatment worked. I had done a lot of research and studying of it for a few years before ever getting it and had even read a study which showed that for women with endometriosis, there is a greater chance of recovery following acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine treatment than there is following the western medicine approach of birth control, medication and majority of the time surgery. For me, it was an easy decision which path I would take.
I stayed dedicated to my path of healing, which can’t be looked at in a one dimensional way. The holistic approach to medicine has always naturally appealed to me, and because of my own experiences, especially those within the western mindset, it became clear to me that I needed to find the way for myself, and it wasn’t and hasn’t been easy. It’s been years of studying, researching, trying different things, along with also taking accountability for myself and how my own behaviors, habits and mindsets were actually working against me.
Our body is a system, and if there is one part that isn’t working right, then you can be sure that there are other parts not working right. When we are looking to heal, find answers or understand illness and disease, we can’t just look at the one part, if I had taken that approach or belief, I would’ve followed my doctors orders, and continued on birth control that was making my body more sick and imbalanced. Instead, I chose to look at all areas of my life, I faced uncomfortable truths of how I was living and even contributing to my own pain. I took the holistic approach of looking at the whole, and in doing that I realized that I was living in a pretty imbalanced and unhealthy way.
For those who don’t live with any chronic health issues, this all might sound extreme, I’ve even heard it before from others when I mention certain things about me, “you don’t drink?” “you don’t eat meat?” “how do you live without cheese?” For some people, these are absolutes and it sounds crazy to deny yourself “life’s pleasures”, but I can tell you as someone who has had to always struggle to feel at peace in their own body, there is nothing better or higher than having your full health in every respect; mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Feeling at peace within myself and also knowing I have the power to heal and change myself, is the highest form of self love, respect, and care I can give to myself, and it has given me a life I am grateful very to have.
