The Real Reason Endometriosis Keeps Coming Back | Dr. Mark Hyman & Dr. Elizabeth Boham

Key Takeaway

Endometriosis affects 1 in 10 women, yet takes 7-10 years to diagnose. Functional medicine reveals it's not just a gynecologic issue—it's an inflammatory, immune, and hormonal disorder driven by gut health, toxin exposure, and estrogen metabolism. The most actionable insight: Start with your gut. Eliminate inflammatory foods, support your microbiome with probiotics like Saccharomyces boulardii to reduce beta-glucuronidase (which recycles estrogen), and eat cruciferous vegetables daily to optimize estrogen detoxification pathways.

Episode Overview

Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Elizabeth Boham discuss endometriosis through a functional medicine lens, exploring root causes beyond standard gynecologic treatment. They examine how gut health, immune dysfunction, toxin exposure, and estrogen metabolism drive this condition. Key topics include: - The gut-hormone connection and how dysbiosis increases estrogen reabsorption - Xenoestrogens (environmental toxins) that disrupt hormone balance - Personalized testing for estrogen metabolism, microbiome health, and detoxification pathways - The 5R approach to gut healing and targeted nutritional interventions

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Real Reason Endometriosis Keeps Coming Back | Dr. Mark Hyman & Dr. Elizabeth Boham from The Dr. Hyman Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Now, if you've ever been told that debilitating period pain is well, just part of being a woman, I want you to hear this really clearly. It's not. One in 10 women lives with something called endometriosis. endometriosis. endometriosis. Yet, it takes an average of 7 to 10 years for women to get diagnosed if they have that problem. And during that whole time, lots of women are prescribed birth control, pills, pain medication, told surgery is the only real option. And sometimes surgery's necessary, but nobody really asks the deeper questions.

Why is this happening in the first place? That's what functional medicine is. It's the medicine of why. Not just what disease you have, but why do you have it? And endometriosis isn't just a gynecologic condition. Not just a uterine condition. It's an inflammatory condition. It's an immune condition. It's a hormonal disorder. And it's also connected to your gut health. It's also connected to how you metabolize estrogen and even environmental toxins and your blood sugar and stress and the overall health and terrain of your whole body.

So today for endometriosis awareness month, I'm joined by my friend and my colleague of decades, decades and decades, Dr. Elizabeth Boham from the Ultra Wellness Center. It's our practice in Lennox, Massachusetts, where we take care of all sorts of patients, including those who have this condition and many other chronic illnesses. She's an expert in functional medicine. She's an expert in women's health. And together, we're going to go on a deep dive into the root cause of endometriosis. Not just managing the symptoms, but addressing the inflammation, the hormone imbalances, the whole immune dysfunction that drives it.

Because severe pain is not normal and it's not fun, and you deserve answers beyond just trying to suppress the symptoms. This episode is brought to you by Function Health, empowering you to live a 100 healthy years with over 160 lab tests at just $365 $365 $365 a year. Sign up today at functionhealth.com/mark functionhealth.com/mark functionhealth.com/mark and use the code mark2026 to get $50 toward your membership. So, welcome Liz. Great to see you. Thank you, Mark. It's really great to be with you and I think this is such an important topic to speak about and really help people understand how we do it differently with functional medicine.

Not just suppressing symptoms, but asking that question why and and looking upstream. And you started to mention some of those things that can get out of balance in somebody's body and influence why they may have endometriosis. And what we're learning is I think which is so interesting is it's not just a disease of the pelvis, right? It's like you were saying it's a systemic disease where we want to think about it really comprehensively and systemically and and ask that question why so we can treat our patients individually.

come up with a personalized plan for why do they have this endometriosis going on and what can we do to help them feel better? Exactly. Okay. So, let's get into it. Like what is it like briefly like because it's a it's a complicated so briefly tell us what is endometriosis because it's a big medical word. Most people don't understand it. Uh so tell us what it is. So endometriosis occurs when the cells from the inside of your uterus that endometrium leave the uterus and they go into the pelvic uh cavity or the peritineal cavity is which is the area outside of the uterus inside the abdominal area so to say and cells get stuck there.

these endometrial cells get stuck there and they create inflammation and that can go on to create a lot of pain and because of this tissue can grow um outside of the uterus it can be around areas of like the fallopian tubes and the ovaries and so that can impact people's uh women's in uh fertility and so that's been associated with infertility and it also causes a lot of of um symptoms symptoms from yeah pain and it can cause a lot of digestive symptoms which can make it somewhat difficult to sometimes diagnose you know bloating, constipation, diarrhea um and as I mentioned uh infertility.

Yeah. So so basically the lining of the uterus the endometrium gets like deposited around the abdominal cavity on your bladder on your bowel on your fallopian tubes all over the place and and so when you have your period it gets activated right and so that's kind of what's got going on. It's this weird weird thing that it's like it's almost like your kidney tissue would get transplanted in other parts of your body which is kind of a weird thing but it's it's really unusual but it's extremely symptomatic and painful.

and painful. and painful. Yeah. And and this thought that even 10% of women may be dealing with this and it's tricky to because it's it can be tricky to diagnose that it's so and goes often undiagnosed for many years. And um and and what we're what we know is that when that endometrium the endometrial cells start to deposit outside of the uterine lining, they create this sort of feed forward inflammatory cycle. And then those endometrial cells can create they can actually create their own estrogen through this process of of of aromatase and we can talk more about that but that can then create even more growth and it so it becomes a a often a vicious cycle as do a lot of things that happen and often we think about it as a gynecologic problem you know like it's it's just it's just a hormone problem and it is hormonally affected but but there's some evidence that it's an autoimmune disease right can you talk about how the immune system plays a role in Absolutely.

So we know that that a lot of inflammation can occur locally and can create more growth of this tissue and then more inflammation. And so um we've got to think about what can be triggering this inflammatory process in the body. And and so in as as we were saying in functional medicine, we go upstream and we say, okay, is that because of issues with disbiosis or imbalances in the gut microbiome? Is that it because of issues with estrogen metabolism and how we're getting rid of our estrogen?

Is it because of of issues of inflammation in the whole body or immune dysregulation? And so those are things we've got to ask so we can help that patient feel better. I find it really fascinating that it's just this immune condition because you know we think of it you know the uterus and and you know your period is mostly hormonally regulated but it seems that this this condition is is regulated in large part by the immune system and and the gut plays a huge part in this.

So can you talk about the whole role of gut health and inflammation and even as a as a root cause of autoimmune and immune dysregulation? You know, we're we always say in functional medicine, start with the gut, right? Because because so much inflammation and autoimmunity and immune dysregulation can stem from the digestive system. It can stem because of increased intestinal permeability, because of dispiosis or imbalances in the gut microbiome and also because the gut microbiome is really involved in how we metabolize our estrogen. And we know that estrogen can cause endometriosis to become become more problematic, right?

So we we think about the the gut for all of those reasons. We know that there's, you know, women with endometriosis have a two to three times higher risk of having inflamm irritable bowel disease. So it's really connected with IBS or irritable bowel disease. And we know that women with endometriosis have a higher rate of having food allergies, food sensitivities, non-siliac gluten sensitivity, and even ciliac disease. So, so there's a lot of connection. And what I thought was most fas is is so fascinating is this connection with the gut microbiome.

But not just the gut microbiome, but they're also looking at the connection between the vaginal and um and cervical and uterine microbiome influencing risk of endometriosis. So we know that when women have dispiosis in the um in the vaginal uh cervical area that that can be associated with more endometriosis just like dispiosis in the gut microbiome is associated with it as well. well. well. Yeah. Fascinating. And you know, you use a lot of big words like dispiosis. That just means like bad bugs in the gut.

Like you should have a nice like it's like think about like weed weeds in your garden and you should they do all kinds of nasty stuff. So you want good bugs not to bad bugs. And you talk about permeability. That's what we call leaky gut where you all these bad bugs and food proteins kind of leak in and then your immune system's right there and then it gets triggered and then it creates inflammation and that means the immune system is constantly activated and that can actually influence you know the the the endometriosis.

So do we do we have any understanding about that mechanism in which in which the autoimmune regulation dysregulation from the gut directly plays a role in in endometriosis? Well, well, there's research to show that when there's there there's certain patterns in the gut microbiome that are associated with endometriosis and certain patterns in the gut microbiome that are associated with or I'm sorry, imbalances in the vaginal microbiome that's associated with it, which is fascinating. We know that there's certain imbalances in the microbiome that trigger more inflammation in the body, both locally and systemically.

And so, we need to, you know, we're always learning more in this area. And I know there's more that we need to learn, but but that I think that's it's a fascinating area and something we can test for, right? We can we can look at the microbiome. We can look at what balance of bugs somebody has and how pro-inflammatory they are and how likely are they to produce this substance called beta glucaronidase. And um betagluteronidase is this enzyme that that certain bugs in the gut can produce and that will result in more estrogen being reabsorbed in the body.

I think that's one you know one reason why dispiosis is associated but probably not the only reason that's for sure. Yeah I mean that's an interesting point. So basically you've got these certain bugs that grow in there and they produce a certain enzyme and normally when your estrogen is used up in your body your your liver processes it. It packages it up in little nice package and then it goes out into your bile and into your digestive tract and you poop it out. But when it hits this enzyme, it's almost like it unwraps the package and you reabsorb the estrogen and you get higher amounts of estrogen.

So you've already got this estrogen dependent tissue, this weird like lining of your uterus. It's everywhere in your abdominal cavity and then you're feeding it with this extra estrogen. So that's kind of an interesting framework where you can look at how the gut bacteria directly are affecting the hormone regulation and that views more growth of these lesions and and then you know the whole irritable bowel thing is is all connected and like you said at Deltra wellness center we do test for these things. We test for food sensitivities.

We test for the microbiome. We test for bacterial overgrowth and bad bugs in the gut through breath testing. And all these are incredibly important to figure out what's going on because if you don't look you won't find it. And then like there's a real structured approach to actually healing the gut. So can you just kind of touch briefly on on the approach that we use in functional medicine to repair the gut because that often can really even help things like endometriosis. endometriosis. endometriosis. Absolutely. So that five R approach is is is kind of the framework for how we deal with problems with uh the gut and how the gut may be impacting the immune system and hormone balance.

And so the first R is remove. And that means you you want to remove foods that are causing a lot of inflammation. So, you know, an elimination diet or, you know, a great diet is is Mark your 10day detox diet because it's it's anti-inflammatory. It removes inflammatory foods and it also supports detoxification. And so, you know, so that type of a a diet, that's part of the remove. And if there is dispiosis, we need to treat it. And so depending on what's going on, you know, what we find, we can treat it with herbs or even prescription medication sometimes or or even just things that build up the good bugs, prebiotics, which are phytonutrients and fibers and probiotics sometimes.

And so that can help with rebalancing. So remove and then replace, that's, you know, if somebody needs help with digestion, uh reininoculate, those are probiotics. are probiotics. are probiotics. um repair. Those are things that you know help to heal the gut lining and uh rebalance. Those are that's really just recognizing the connection between the the mind body connection, right? Really doing things to help with activating that parasympathetic nervous system and calming down the body and which helps the body with healing. So that's that five R approach.

Yeah. And it's can get very granular like I remember learning when I first started doing functional medicine about you know food is medicine and certain fibers like flax seeds like were a thing and and they really do affect this estrogen metabolism in the gut and then know the isoflavones and soy that doesn't act like an estrogen. It sort of it's not fair to say that it but it does modulate estrogen activity and it actually can help. So, you can actually eat certain foods that actually rebuild the normal health of the microbiome, but also specifically target estrogen function and estrogen metabolism, which is which is great examples, Mark.

Yeah, because because like you said, they do they're they're working from a couple of angles, right? They're they're feeding the good microbiome, but they're also they they have they can they're they're called phytoestrogen. So, they can impact the estrogen receptor. And people think or used to worry that that meant they were causing more estrogen in the body. But actually, the opposite is true, right? Because it decreases your own estrogen uh binding to the estrogen receptor or even those xenoestrogens from binding to that estrogen receptor. Yeah.

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If you are someone out there listening who's got menstrual issues, cramps, pain, abdominal pain, endometriosis, whether you're diagnosed or not, you know, you're going to get just the standard care, which is here, take the birth control pill or here, you know, just we'll modulate your hormones with this or that. Uh, or we'll put you into premature menopause. you know, that's one of the treatments which is terrible, I think, treatment and and uh and there's some granular things we can do. For example, you mentioned this this weird enzyme that certain bad bugs make in the gut.

Well, if you you can take an antibiotic sometimes to kill them, but you can also take an a probiotic called sacroyces bullyard, which is a very specific probiotic that you can take that helps lower the levels of this particular enzyme in the gut and these bacteria that are producing the enzyme. So it gets very specific and very granular and I think it's it's very different than what you'd get if you go to a regular OB/GYN and try to say hey how do I deal with this endometriosis stuff I got and that's that's really the point here is that there's a whole new way of thinking about treating health and disease not just obviously endometriosis but pretty much everything and and we're we're sort of agnostic to disease at the Ultralo Center because it really doesn't matter what you have we understand the underlying root causes of illness and even if we've never seen a problem before we can often help because we we are used to following basic laws of nature, the the I call the laws of biology that that we can apply across any disease and often they'll work in surprising ways that I mean I I just you know treat someone with ALS and I don't really see many ALS patients but I like okay well here's here's our underlying principles and here's what we can do and like I just got a text from him and he's doing amazing years later which is you know most people would be in a wheelchair by then.

So anyway, um it's just it's really exciting to kind of talk about this because people don't really understand that there's a whole new paradigm happening in medicine and science they're not getting when they go to traditional doctors. And that's that's why I'm so proud of what we built at the Ultra Wellness Center. So before we go kind of the next topic, I want to kind of get into the toxin thing. Now you mentioned xenoestrogens and this is a big one. Um xeno means foreign estrogen. So talk about this idea of estrogen metabolism, xenoestrogens, this whole theory of estrogen dominance, estrogen dysregulation.

It's not just about high estrogen. It's some this whole this whole there's a whole mishmash of things going on that that creates all these hormonal disregulations that we can actually do something about, but we we have to understand what they are. So, can you kind of unpack that for us, Liz, because I know you're really deep in on this stuff. stuff. stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So, xenoestrogens are those toxins in the environment that can impact estrogen levels in the body. They can bind to the estrogen receptor.

They influence how estrogen is broken down. they they they they impact our estrogen levels in the body and you know it's we've been learning a lot about this over the years right so BPA is kind of the first xenoestrogen we started to pay attention to that hard plastic but we know that xenoestrogens are in in lots of uh chemicals unfortunately in our environment from from parabens to phalates to dioxin to pesticides to herbicides and um and the hard plastics like BPA and so and you know this is something you want to try to decrease your exposure to as much as possible but but we also have to just work on supporting the body's detoxification system.

Um, we know unfortunately that sometimes these exposures to these xenoestrogens happened when we were when we were in our mom's belly. So when we were a fetus and and or early in life and that influences our risk of diseases later in life and sometimes that's frustrating because you feel like well what can I do now? But but what I always work with with women on is and all people actually is just whatever we can do to lower our exposure and then support our body's detoxification capacity and and and so that really does tie in with estrogen metabolism too, right?

So because the way that we break down our estrogen and metabolize it influences how uh dangerous it is for our body, right? So there's certain types of metabolites of estrogen that are more potentially um inflammatory in the body and so we can influence that. That's why everybody talks about uh the the glucosinolates or sulfurophane that are in your cruciferous vegetables because they help you Yeah, exactly. Broccoli, broccoli sprouts, right? Cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts. They help your body metabolize your estrogen in a healthier way. But we can measure that and I think that can be really helpful to know why does somebody have this situation that feels like they have too much estrogen in their body and what can we do to um uh manage that and so we'll look at things like the betaglucarase we were talking about before we can measure toxin levels we can look at how the body is metabolizing estrogen yeah I think I think I want to double click on that because this is this is something very unusual you know maybe people heard about poop tests You know, one of the most enlightening things I ever learned about as I was sort of studying hormone hormone metabolism was this whole science, this body of literature that seems seemingly totally ignored by traditional gynecologists that has to do with how your estrogens are metabolized.

And there's no such thing as estrogen. They're estrogens and they're all different and they all have different roles. and and we can, you know, do a 24-hour urine collection and we can see all the different pathways that the estrogen is going down kind of like a like a pinball machine, whether it's going down this pathway or that pathway. And it, you know, there's estrogens that get produced that are very protective and are protective against cancer. Other ones that are that are more carcinogenic and problematic. And there's also a whole set of genetics we can test that around hormone metabolism and and genetics that we can so we can say, oh, you have this little kind of weak pathway here.

We're going to support it in this particular way. And this is where we really talk about personalized medicine, individualized care. It's not something that you get when you go to the regular doctor. So, I want people to understand that there there is hope and help, but it's it's hard to find. And that's why I think, you know, people need to understand that there is a world of functional medicine that there are clinics like ours at the Ultra10 Center that do this kind of work. So, let's kind of dive into the second piece.

We talked about eliminating, you know, all the, you know, household cleaning products, you know, you know, your food, reducing toxic load, makeup, you know, there's a lot of ways and the environmental working group has a lot of great resources, ewg.org on on how to actually reduce these exposures and I'm on the board, but it's really a great resource. And the second is um what do you do to support your body's own detoxification pathways? You mentioned cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, collar. Um what else can we do?

Absolutely. So, you know, this is where we try to really increase the amount of fiber somebody has in their diet because fiber is really great for of course helping you have regular bowel movements, but um those fibers really help bind to toxins and help your body get rid of them. We know even things like good exercise and sweating and sauna use all help your body with mobilizing toxins as well. You need to make sure you're getting enough nutrition, right? So sometimes if if we're cutting back on protein or not eating enough, that can influence how well we're able to detoxify.

So um you know we're really thinking about it from a whole body perspective of you know regular bowel movements lots of sweating movement for lymphatic circulation and um and drinking sufficient water and good healthy water right all those things are really important. Yeah. So important. And I think also, you know, we we also understand that there are are nutritional supplements that help regulate these pathways like that help, you know, go down this this pinball pathway or that pinball pathway so that it's actually beneficial. So, can you talk about some of the nutritional supplements that can be helpful and how we guide people around that?

that? that? My, you know, my favorite supplement is sulfurophane. It's it's a glucosinylate with morassinase that then in the body gets converted to sulfurophane and A lot of big words, Liz. I don't know. I know. Can you break that down? It's a lot of big words. That's a lot of big words. What are you talking about? Essentially, you're looking for sulfurophane. The products will say sulfurophane on them. And and they It's broccoli in a pill is what like broccoli sprouts in a pill essentially. And it is great because it helps support both phase one and phase 2 detoxification.

It helps the body produce more glutathione, which helps the body with detoxification again. And um it's probably my go-to, you know, I use it so much in in my practice. We also think about methylation. You know, methylation is involved in estrogen metabolism. And so we will measure markers of of methylation from homocyine to methylonic acid. And what does all that mean? What does all that what does all that mean? Yeah. All that means is how many B vitamins do you need? And if you do need B vitamins, you need them in in a in a specific form that's healthier for you because it's the methyl folate.

So it it's, you know, you don't want to just go to um the regular drugstore and pick up a B complex. You really want to go to this is where you want to there's a lot of places where you want to spend the money, but that you really want a good quality. The one here that it's going to make a difference. It's for some people it's going to work way better. So that's important. And this whole thing of methylation is a key part of detox and many many other functions but it's like B6 B12 folate and then you can measure these tests which we do homocyine methylonic acid you mentioned which are better than the regular blood test for folate or B12 that you get maybe at your regular doctor and so we can start to really dive deep on what's going on with you personally.

We also look at magnesium which plays a role in a lot of this can be very helpful. So the these things are things we can measure, we can identify and then we can treat. even genetics around methylation. We know there's genetics that affect different people's individual needs for different amounts and different forms of different nutrients. So, you can have true personalized care. So, I think I think this is a real big one. So, we talked about the immune dysregulation. We talked about the gut. We talked about now we talked about the toxins.

And I think there's a few other tips here around like filtering your water and don't cook in plastic and choose clean beauty products and don't eat ultrarocessed food. I mean, the common sense stuff. But the idea is you want to reduce the estrogen load that's coming from this estrogenic environment. That's why like these little kids are eight years old. the girls are getting their period because we're living in a sea of of estrogen- like compounds that are not re actually estrogen but that are mimicking estrogen and are quite concerning.

So let's talk about kind of other things because you know this this is there's other things we can measure toxins like heavy metals. We can look at toxin levels and and help people but but sometimes people do do need to find out what's going on and and surgery may be necessary but but it's not the whole picture. So can you talk about how surgery plays a role and laparoscopic surgery can help and what what role that plays in in the management of endometriosis? endometriosis? endometriosis? Yeah.

So um you know uh sometimes surgery is done both for diagnosis you know as well as treatment. So especially if if women are having significant pain that's not getting better um and or they are having fertility issues, surgery where they debulk some of those that tissue that end that endometriosis tissue to help with decreasing pain and to help with fertility if that's an issue. The but the issue is with surgery is you're not getting to that underlying terrain. you're just pulling away the thing that's causing a lot of that pain and inflammation, which is which is sometimes very important to do.

But at the same time, we want to be working to create that terrain so the endometriosis doesn't come back or so that the pain doesn't come back because we know that that you know many women will need to go and have repeat surgery or their pain will come back if if we don't do that. Yeah. So so basically you know you have to still address all those other things, right? You have to address the immune dysfunction, the food sensitivities, the the gut dispiosis, the toxins in your system, all that stuff has to get fixed.

If you don't really change the whole terrain, you know, you do the surgery, but it's not going to solve the problem. It'll just come back. And that's that's a big thing. So, there are also just general like lifestyle interventions that as a baseline help with hormonal regulation. You know, I wrote an article years ago. It was about PMS. And when I read the literature, I was like, well, 75% of women have PMS to some degree or another, and I'm like, what's up with that? Like, that's not a design flaw.

It's not like God or nature, whoever you believe, the creator created a a mal like a malware in the system and all of a sudden these women have to suffer from this. It's because there's fundamental things we're doing that are screwing up our hormone balance. And that there are very simple lifestyle things that can help correct that. not just for endometriosis but for PMS, for heavy periods, for infertility, all kinds of stuff. So, can you break down like what are the fundamental building blocks of lifestyle when it comes to hormonal regulation and balance?

You know, the first thing to just focus on is eating more whole foods that you cook at home because when you do that, you're going to get less of these endocrine disrupting chemicals, right? Those xenoestrogens. You're going to get less of the the the phalates, the parabens, the BPA exposure. they can show that when women uh when anybody eats more whole foods that they cook at home, the amount of these chemicals found in their urine decreases substantially. So, that's really a great place to start. You know, that anti-inflammatory anti-inflammatory anti-inflammatory healthy whole foods diet is is, you know, I always love starting with food.

So, yeah. Um, and then really, yeah, focusing on getting a lot of those phytonutrients phytonutrients phytonutrients such as the glucosinylates that we talked about from your cruciferous vegetables that help your body with detoxification and estrogen metabolism. So, getting a lot of Yeah. broccoli, more broccoli. But we also, you know, that we also know that uh stress management is very important. We know unfortunately with anything that creates pain, we become more sensitive in that area to that pain. So pain can be really tricky because whenever you start to have pain in an area, you become more sensitive to it.

Not not in the brain, actually in those neurons, right? Those neurons become more sensitive. And so, so there are many things that we need to work on to help with calming down the body so it's not so um uh impacted by all of that pain. So, you know, stress reduction techniques, breath work, activating that parasympathetic nervous system, acupuncture, you know, there are some cool new patches that use infrared technology that that you can place on the abdomen that can be really helpful for decreasing pain and increasing circulation to the area.

And that's I think an important area that we need to really focus on as well. Yeah, I agree. And I I think there's, you know, there's a few special foods like black seeds and soy that can be helpful, uh, you know, when you want to customize it. But I also think that, you know, omega-3 fats play a big role, which is from, you know, wild fish or omega-3 fat supplements. The one thing we didn't talk about, which is really important, which is a blood sugar and insulin because people don't realize this, but this, people don't realize this, but your fat tissue makes estrogen.

And the more fat you have, the more estrogen you make. And that's why guys who are really overweight or drink a lot of beer whatever have a lot of carbs they end up you know getting loss of the hair on their body they grow you know breasts and it's like it's not because you know they have some kind of tumor is because they have all this fat on their body. So even for women it's the same thing. Can you talk about that whole connection of blood sugar insulin resistance uh and and how that affects hormones and regulation.

So, you know, just what you what you know, I'll echo what you said, but also insulin is a very pro-inflammatory pro-inflammatory pro-inflammatory hormone in the body. And so, when you eat foods that cause your blood sugar to spike, and that causes your insulin to spike to help keep that blood sugar normal, your body makes a lot of that hormone insulin to get your blood sugar down and and more regulated. But those high levels of insulin are very pro-inflammatory. They cause us to put weight around our belly.

They cause us to feel tired. That high insulin causes us to feel tired. But it is also just associated with increased inflammation in the body. And as we started this conversation, you know, we know that this is a s this is an inflammatory condition. And we don't want to just be focusing on the pelvis, right? And we need to be focusing on the whole body. And anything we can do to lower inflammation in the body is really important to helping the body work better. better. better.

Even things like you mentioned lowering stress, getting adequate sleep, exercising, all those things help reduce inflammation, help regulate hormones, you know, just the foundational principles of a healthy lifestyle. Hopefully people, you know, can use this on their own and improve their health. Sometimes they may need to see a practitioner and you're welcome to come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center. We have a lot of great docs and and PAs who really are deep in on this stuff. But how do we sort of make sure people can prevent the recurrence and how do we prevent it in the first place?

Like let's just sort of go through and summarize what we just talked about. Absolutely. It is creating that terrain in the body where there's less inflammation where we are processing our estrogen well. So where there's good estrogen metabolism, we work to create a healthiest microbiome that we can. And the microbiome both in our gut and in the vaginal area, we want it to be as healthy as possible. So avoiding antibiotics whenever possible, feeding the good bugs with all of the great fibers in our diet and phytonutrients and um you know so so we want to think about it as this as this whole body uh imbalance and we want to work to lower inflammation and create good estrogen metabolism and a healthy microbiome.

to regulate the immune system, heal the gut, get your toxic load down, like get get the insulin resistance sorted, support your immune system in many ways, sleep, and you know, stress reduction and exercise, all that stuff. It's common sense, but it really works. I mean, it really does work. So, uh, you know, endometriosis basically thrives in in inflammation and hormonal chaos and it and then that's kind of like the world we live in. It's a hormonally messed up environment we live in and an inflammatory environment.

So when you get those things under control and you get metabolic stability, you know, it's hard for these diseases to to stay. So that's that's the good news. So thanks Liz for joining. I just want to kind of summarize and kind of kind of double down on what we talked about so people can have a good takeaway. You know, first of all, if you have this problem, you're not broken. There's not something wrong with you. Uh but it's an indicator that something's out of balance and the pain you're experiencing is not normal.

Surgery is maybe part of the solution, but definitely not the whole story. There's a lot of tools beyond suppressing your hormones, which is what a lot of traditional gynecologists do with all kinds of drugs, including the pill. So, I encourage you all, if you're having this to work with a good practitioner, come see us at the Wellness Center. Track your cycles, test your gut, test your hormones, test toxins, get the hormone metabolism test. All these things are really helpful and can really guide a very specific things.

And I I want you to take away a few things from this conversation. First, endometriosis is real. Your pain is real. and being told just manage it is not really addressing it. Uh surgery, like I said, can be an important part, but it's not the full solution. And hormone therapies can be helpful, but again, they aren't the full solution. We've got to get to the root cause. And that's what functional medicine is all about. It's what the Ultra Wellness Center is all about is getting to the root cause.

So, we got to look at the terrain like Liz said, inflammation, immune balance, gut health, insulin resistance, estrogen metabolism, your toxic load, metabolic health, all of that. And if you don't that you're do that, you're missing the big picture. Your body's just not messed up at randomly. It's it's responding to bad environment and bad signals. And when we change those signals, we can reduce the inflammation. We can help your body detox. We can balance your blood sugar. We can get your microbiome healthy. We can kind of calm down your nervous system.

And we basically create an environment that's in your body that's not hospitable for disease. And sort of like you you create an environment where disease can't grow basically. And that's that's not about getting it perfect. It's just about understanding that there's there consistent small steps you can do to make a big difference. Eating a whole anti-inflammatory foods. The 10day detox is great, by the way. It's a very powerful way to actually help reduce inflammation. You can support your liver and your gut health. You can reduce your exposure to chemicals like we talked about.

You can prioritize your sleep and stress regulation. You can start moving your body to build more resilience. Um, it's not just one thing. It's a whole systems approach. And that's really what functional medicine is. And yeah, endometriosis is is complex, but you know, you have to work with someone who knows what they're doing. You're not powerless. There are lots of tools. There's lots of answers. And there's lots of practitioners who understand this from a root cause perspective. And you know, women often get dismissed in medicine.

They get neglected. Uh you you deserve to be heard. You deserve to be taken seriously. And you deserve a plan that goes beyond just suppressing your symptoms. It's really about reclaiming your health, but understanding that when your body is supported properly, it has an amazing capacity to get healthy. So, thanks for joining us. If you want to find us at the UltraWellness Center, just go to ultrawellelnesscenter.com. You can check out what we're doing. Come see one of our docs to get help. If you love that last video, you're going to love the next one.

Check it out here.