Endometriosis: The Missing Piece Behind Chronic Pelvic Pain

When women are diagnosed with endometriosis, the options presented usually look like pain management with birth control or hormones, or removing the tissue surgically. So essentially we end up treating it like a localized gynecological issue—grand error.

Symptoms with endometriosis often include: severe menstrual pain, digestive issues, fatigue, infertility (50% of cases), mood swings, and immune dysregulation. Other than the symptoms that it comes with, as with most conditions, endometriosis itself can now commonly cause other problems like dyspareunia (genital pain before, during, and after sex) and/or rectal bleeding.

Why Conventional Treatments Fall Short

Surgery may remove endometrial tissue, but if we’re not fixing the root cause, what’s to stop it from coming right back? That’s why recurrence rates are so high. Likewise, hormone suppression may reduce symptoms temporarily, but it often comes at the cost of shutting down the body’s natural regulation. Both approaches focus on controlling the outcome rather than correcting the cause.

The issue with treating endometriosis like a local issue is we’re not even going after the causes suggested in the research—massive inflammation and an immune system component. I’m always intrigued by the associated symptoms with any health concern, not because I want to chase the symptoms, but because sometimes it gives us clues into other areas of the body that can be disrupted.

The Body as a Master Compensator

If you’ve read any of my blogs before, I often talk about the body as a master compensator. So... did the problem start in the endometrium, overcome the body’s adaptive ability, cause a myriad of problems elsewhere, and then we started getting severe menstrual pain? OR did the problem start elsewhere, cause the body to compensate so much that now there’s growth in the endometrium to such a degree that it can no longer adapt reproductively and has now begun experiencing symptoms back toward the root?

To better explain what I mean, let’s take a deeper look into a few of the symptoms we listed earlier: digestive issues, fatigue, and mood swings.

The Immune System Connection

Studies consistently show systemic monocyte abnormalities rather than just local peritoneal changes. Woah... that’s a big deal. To put this into context, anytime you see me mention the word monocyte, you should be thinking bacteria. These monocytes will create a “feed-forward” loop of inflammation, not just leading to local fibrosis and pain, but also increasing circulatory pro-inflammatory cytokines.

By now you’re probably thinking, “well obviously I know I have pain,” but the fact that this can be coming from bacteria is a really big deal.

The Gut-Bacteria Link

There are so many bacteria that can wreak havoc in the body. E. coli is one of them shown to commonly be involved with endometriosis. E. coli is a gram-negative bacteria, often coming from the digestive tract, that releases lipopolysaccharides (LPS), which commonly cause inflammation and fatigue (we mentioned these as symptoms earlier). Starting to connect the dots?

Dysbiosis involving this bacterium, particularly SIBO, will raise beta-glucuronidase activity, leading to “leaky gut” (aka metabolic endotoxemia), allowing systemic LPS—which is a huge component of endometriosis. E. coli is also highly resistant to antibiotics; so if it’s not obvious by now, we need a new approach. We need to look to frequency medicine.

It’s Not One-Size-Fits-All

So we just talked a lot about bacteria and the gut, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all. Other potential root causes can include several factors such as estrogen metabolism issues, emotional trauma, mold exposure, parasites, and impaired methylation, among others. Don’t give up because you’re living in your doctor’s health box—go after the root causes and watch miracles happen.