Are you okay ignoring your cramps? I’m not, and here’s why.
The research on chronic pelvic pain in women should be changing the way we think about menstrual cramps, and today’s episode will help you question your own cramps, think about possible diagnoses that could be contributing to your cramps (like endometriosis) and give you insight into why we need to take care of your cramps - like yesterday. Endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain has always been this elusive conversation. People’s pain is not correlated to the size of their endo lesions (meaning you can have very small lesions but very big pain), pain is also present after surgical removal and pain can persist when we give people medications that suppress hormone production (which in theory makes endometriosis and cramps very quiet). Why does this happen? Probably central sensitization. The research on chronic pain has looked at the changes that happen in the brain and central nervous system (which includes the spinal cord) rather than only looking at the changes that happen at the “spot” that it affected. Endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain actually change your brain. It makes your brain feel pain more often, and to a lesser “stimuli” than before. THIS is why we need to assess you. The diagnostic delay for endometriosis averages 8-10 years, which means that people experience pain for years before we finally flag them appropriately. Which means that the brain has plenty of time to learn that the world is painful. And that’s what it does. I want you to listen to this episode and think about your own pain experience. Do we need to support you better to reduce your daily or monthly pain? Do we need to test you to be sure that you don’t have endometriosis or some other condition (like IBS) that’s affecting your pain? We can change your brain and your pain experience, but only if we flag you and support you. Enjoy the episode, and if you need support, reach out to Clarity Health in Ontario to get support. We have an entire team of practitioners who work with people with endometriosis. This episode was sponsored by our Women’s Health Summit in January 2023. You can grab a ticket to attend virtually (or a VIP in-person ticket) here.