When I first found out I had Endometriosis, my Gynecologist explained the complexity of my condition. He explained that the Endometriosis cells would grow and get worse as my hormones increased with each monthly cycle. He explained that by lowering or eliminating these hormone fluctuations, that we could stop the Endometriosis from growing and worsening and I could thereby at least reduce its effects. That all made perfect sense to me at the time. Too many hormones stimulate Endo to grow, lets cut down the hormones. The pill and these hormone treatments can do that for me…. perfect! Right? WRONG!
Trouble is, I never actually asked the doctor why my hormones might be out of whack. I never understood what triggered the hormones to make the Endometriosis grow.
After 15 years of trying to regulate my Endometriosis in the way suggested – taking every conceivable hormone treatment to try to slow down my Endometriosis growth, I still didn’t feel any better off. I had to have an operation to have it removed every year and half anyway and I just felt so terrible from all the side-effects of them. My Endometriosis continued to grow no matter what treatment I went onto.
So, eventually I had enough of trying this method and had to figure out a better way. I first had to understand my hormones and what in them would make my Endometriosis grow. What I figured out is that there are different types of hormones in the body and it is a group of hormones called Oestrogen’s which actually trigger growths within the body. Interestingly enough, these oestrogen’s don’t just trigger Endometriosis growths but all the other growths that might occur within a woman’s body – cysts, adhesions and even tumours. It is typically called Oestrogen Dominance. It essentially means that we have too much Oestrogen in our body and not enough Progesterone.
My first thought was then to use other options to try to regulate my hormones. Surely there must be other hormone treatments which don’t have all those nasty side-effects? Well, I found them in natural herbs and started to experiment with those. I tried various different options which claimed that they could regulate my Estrogen Dominance. It seemed to actually be working but as I continued, the problems just came back again. There was a bigger piece of the puzzle that I wasn’t considering!
That bigger piece of the puzzle came to me in a book by Dr. Cabot some years later. What I hadn’t considered was that my hormone imbalances were actually linked to a far more important organ. When I played with my hormones, I was playing in a very delicate area of the body. Hormones have the ability to convert back to Estrogens, which is perhaps what landed up happening to me. I was perhaps simply adding to the problem after the initial win fall.
The more important organ to consider was not my ovaries or my uterus, it was my liver. See my liver is where all the hormone regulation stuff is happening. That is where it gets flushed out and ultimately decided what stays within my body and what gets kicked out. Trouble was, my liver was completely overloaded. I had a stagnant liver. Within Dr. Cabots books (available on Amazon*) I discovered that my body matched the exact descriptions of a stagnant liver. I had lipomas, puffy eyes in the morning, struggled with alcohol and fatty foods and generally felt tired and run down.
I think there is a real danger with the prescriptions and approaches taken with Endometriosis. I read it over and over again within various books and on various sites… that we need to regulate our hormones with either synthetic hormones or natural alternatives. The trouble is, we are not actually getting to the root of the problem. We are not dealing with WHY the hormones are out of balance and so the problem never really goes away. We might try progesterone creams or Vitex or any other number of supplements and they might even provide us with some short-term relief but ultimately, I believe without tackling the “stagnant liver issue”, we are never really solving anything with Endometriosis. We are merely dealing with the symptoms.
Have you ever focused on liver health to overcome endometriosis or other health issues?
Melissa
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