A useful coping technique for women with endometriosis is to acknowledge there will be chronic pain and some days will be worse than others. If you don't feel well, forego any activities. Always try to get ample sleep at night and don't feel guilty about taking naps when you need them.
Both high-intensity and low-intensity exercises help endometriosis. High-intensity activities, such as running, aerobics, or biking, reduce symptoms. Low-intensity activities, like Pilates, calisthenics, or yoga, help reduce stress and manage pelvic pain.
To feel better, eat more fruit, veggies, and fish. Women who eat a plant-based diet are less likely to get endometriosis. Also good: healthy fats like omega-3 fatty acids in salmon, tuna, and walnuts. Cut back on beef, pork, and other red meat.
Medication, surgery, and self-care treatment strategies like avoidance of triggers, stress management, heat, and exercise can help reduce your symptoms and the severity of your flare-ups.
In particular, those with endometriosis may experience feelings of frustration, guilt, low mood and irritability, while partners may experience worry, helplessness and frustration.
Multiple studies show that when you have chronic pain related to endometriosis, your quality of life decreases, so you feel depressed or anxious. These mood issues can cause you to experience more pain, creating an unpleasant cycle.
Endometriosis modulates gene expression in the insula, amygdala, and hippocampus which play a key role in behavioral changes of pain, anxiety, and depression.
Stress causes inflammation and endo pain
Additionally, stress can cause muscle tension and spasms, which can increase pain and discomfort in the pelvic area. Stress can also disrupt the hormonal balance in the body, leading to menstrual irregularities, which are common symptoms of endometriosis.
Endometriosis has significant social, public health and economic implications. It can decrease quality of life due to severe pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety and infertility. Some individuals with endometriosis experience debilitating pain that prevents them from going to work or school.
Physical impacts. Most women mentioned chronic pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, and dyspareunia as leading symptoms of their endometriosis. Most of them reported that pain killers or special body positions did not significantly relieve pain. It was never-ending, so I lived like this every day.
If you have endometriosis, one of the best ways to sleep is on your side.
Often with endometriosis, the pain correlates with the menstrual cycle, starting one or two days before menstruation and lasts throughout the period. Endometriosis-related menstrual pain can occur on one or both sides and vary in intensity.
Endometriosis can damage the reproductive organs and affect fertility. For example, adhesions and endometriosis tissue can damage the uterus, making it more difficult for a fertilized egg to implant. It may also damage the ovaries, affecting egg quality and making it harder for a person to become pregnant.
Explaining endometriosis
You can talk about how in your body, there's tissue that typically lines the inside of the uterus. But for some individuals, some of that tissue grows outside the uterus as well. You can say that when this happens, it's called endometriosis. And this is what you have.
Getting quality rest is important — without it, you could experience metabolic and hormonal changes, along with increased inflammation and pain.
Endometriosis is an inflammatory disorder, and this inflammation can lead to fatigue. Inflammatory molecules, such as prostaglandins, cytokines, etc., contribute to fatigue as well as problems with “sleep, cognition, anxiety, and depression” (Poon et al., 2015; Zielinski, Systrom, & Rose, 2019).
These patients may continue their day to day activities, while silently suffering throughout the day. However, it is important to stress that symptoms should not be pushed to the side. These symptoms of pain, fatigue, and personality changes are real and your body's way of saying that something is wrong.
After adjustment for birth characteristics and education, women with endometriosis had an increased risk of being later diagnosed with depressive-, anxiety and stress-related disorders, alcohol/drug dependence, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder compared with the general population and with their sisters ...