Lara Briden - The Period Revolutionary
Leading the change to better periods and hormones
Endometriosis is a disease of immune dysfunction that is affected by estrogen. Conventionally, it is treated with surgical removal of the lesions and suppression of the menstrual cycle. The lifestyle approach is to address a possible underlying problem with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) contamination and to modulate immune function with nutrients such as zinc and selenium.
Endometriosis is not a hormonal condition. It’s affected by estrogen but is not caused by estrogen or “estrogen dominance.”
Instead, endometriosis is a whole-body inflammatory and immune disease, and possibly a microbial disease.
What does that mean for treatment?
According to a 2017 study, pain is the most frequently reported symptom of PCOS. Even though pain is not a symptom of PCOS!
The solution to this paradox is that both PCOS and period pain are common, so it’s easy to have both a PCOS diagnosis and period pain (including pain due to endometriosis).
That’s true whether the PCOS diagnosis is valid (i.e., there are symptoms of androgen excess) or invalid (i.e., the diagnosis was mistakenly based on an ultrasound finding).
Normal period pain or dysmenorrhea should be mild and respond to simple treatments like ibuprofen, zinc, or a dairy-free diet.
If period pain does not respond to simple treatments, it could be something more serious such as endometriosis or adenomyosis.
Debilitating period pain is never normal.
Successful treatment of heavy periods relies on identifying an underlying cause such as hormone imbalance (low progesterone), adenomyosis, or thyroid disease.
Treatment for heavy menstruation is to treat the cause as well as use general period-lightening strategies such as natural progesterone and a dairy-free diet.