10 Rules to Get Pregnant with Endometriosis
Transcription :
March is endometriosis awareness month. So this video I thought would be perfect to talk about endometriosis and how it can affect fertility and reproductive function. Endometriosis is a condition that affects about 10% of women and it’s often misdiagnosed. If you’re struggling with endometriosis, please know that you’re not alone, but there are solutions and options to help you get through it. In this fertility TV episode, I’m going to talk about the 10 tips that you need to be doing if you have endometriosis so that you can improve your condition. If you’re trying to get pregnant and start a family, these are must do tips. So keep watching so that you can start to make some changes.
My name is Dr. Marc Sklar, also known as the fertility expert. I want to welcome you to Fertility TV, your YouTube channel dedicated to everything fertility and helping you get pregnant. I’ve been working with couples from all over the world for the last 18 years, whether it’s through my online programs or right here locally in San Diego at my clinics, and I can help you too. Keep watching so that you can learn more about how you can improve your fertility. Before we get started, I do want to invite all of you watching to join me for a free training that I’m going to be doing in just a few weeks. This training can help you progress positively on your fertility journey. So if you want to register, then just use the link below to join me for the free training.
Okay, so we’re talking about endometriosis today. Endometriosis is so much more than painful periods and so much more than a gynecological disease, endometriosis is a full body disease. If it’s a progressive type of endometriosis, it can affect multiple systems and different body parts. It also not only affects us physically, but also affects us emotionally. By affecting different body parts or different systems, it not only affects your ovaries and your uterus and reproductive function, but it can affect your endocrine system, it can affect your gastrointestinal system, it can affect your urinary. So it has a profound effect. I’ve even seen severe cases where when a woman menstruates, they also start bleeding from their nasal passages because the endometrial tissue has proliferated to so many different areas of the body and it has been so far reaching.
So here are some key aspects of endometriosis. Endometriosis can cause pelvic pain all month long due to increased inflammatory response and a higher amount of nociceptors. Endometriosis can also cause painful intercourse, which is never fun when you’re trying to have a baby and want to have a more intimate relationship with your partner. It can cause elevated prostaglandin fluids, which can have a profound effect on the motility of the gastrointestinal system, which makes it more difficult to have bowel movement or to manage your bowel movements. Endometriosis lesions can also cause brain fog and fatigue. This points to the far reaching effects that it can have as well. And one of the more important pieces as we’re talking about fertility is that endometriosis can negatively impact about 30% to 50% of women who struggle with it on their fertility journey because of the inflammatory response and the impact it has on the uterine environment.
It’s because of this far reaching effect of endometriosis that the best treatments and the best approach for it is an integrative approach, where we’re addressing all of these different aspects, the inflammatory response, hormone balance, sleep, stress management, diet. It has to be a comprehensive approach to really begin to control the endometriosis proliferation and get a handle and improve your fertility. That’s why right now I’m going to talk about the 10 tips to improve and get a better handle on your endometriosis.
Tip number one is something you’ve probably heard before and maybe questioned it, this is about going gluten free. Yes, I know you may have heard it, but I’m going to tell you why it’s so important. First and foremost, one of the more common allergens that we have is to gluten and it can cause an inflammatory response and help keep that going, it makes it harder to control the inflammatory response. So getting a control on this process and reducing your gluten intake is a big positive on your endometriosis journey. But this is why I’m actually going to read the study right now to show you why. So evidence suggests that a gluten-free diet may benefit individuals with endometriosis. One study of 207 women with severe endometriosis pain found that 75% of them experienced significant decrease in pain after 12 months on a gluten-free diet. I know that 12 months might seem like a long time to make that commitment, but I bet that many of you can start to see positive improvements in just one to two months if you start now and then have long-term benefits in the 12 month timeframe.
Tip two, still on the diet piece of it because this shows you how important diet is to managing your overall health, hormones, fertility, and endometriosis. So trying a low food map, FODMAP F-O-D-M-A-P. Some people pronounce it food some people pronounce it fod. Either way, trying a low FODMAP diet can be beneficial to reducing the inflammatory response. And for those of you who have GI issues that are similar to IBS, getting better control of those as well. Additionally, I want to hear from all of you, have you already tried getting rid of gluten? Have you tried a low FODMAP diet? Have they benefited you? Give a comment below, let me know if you’ve tried it and what the results were like.
Whether you have endometriosis or any other condition that might be impacting your reproductive health, diet is one of the key variables that needs to be adjusted and addressed. And we all need specific changes for our needs, which is why I’m doing a free training at the end of the month to discuss diet and so much more to help you on your fertility journey. If you want to join me for that free training then use the link below to register.
Tip number three, again, continuing with the theme of diet is about caffeine and alcohol. Caffeine and alcohol can increase the inflammatory response, not for all of us, but for many of us. And more importantly, it’s about the chemicals in each one of those different products. So it’s a little bit less about the caffeine and coffee and more about the way coffee is processed and the chemicals and pesticides used to protect the bean because it’s such an important crop. The same is true for wine. Often we’re consuming wine that has tons and tons of Roundup and other chemicals in it and we’re not even aware of it.
So I’m encouraging all of you to make a switch first and foremost, away from coffee to something that’s a little bit cleaner and healthier for you and helps to support your adrenal function. So there’s lots of new alternatives away from coffee one of which would be just some regular green tea which in minor amounts, small amounts is okay. But also making a switch to more adaptogenic mushroom blends that can also help your adrenal function, your immune system, and give you tons of other benefits as opposed to the negative impacts potentially attributed to coffee. I’m going to leave a link for that down below, again, in the description. I want to give you all the resources that you can to make the necessary changes and make it easier for all of you. When it comes to coffee, like I just mentioned, not only is it the alcohol, but it is the chemical toxins found in the coffee because of the way it’s grown, especially here in the US.
So my first recommendation is that we cut out alcohol, but if you want a little bit of wine on occasion to celebrate some big milestones or just after a hard week, maybe one glass of wine will be fine. But again, it’s about the quality. So I’m going to leave an excellent source for clean wine for all of you down below in the description. So then when you do need to have a glass of wine or really want to have a glass of wine, you’ve got something clean and healthier that’s not going to also impact the inflammatory response that can impact endometriosis.
We’ve been talking about inflammation, so tip number four is along those lines about how can we help facilitate the reduction of the inflammatory response in the body. One of my favorite ways to do that is using curcumin or turmeric because it helps to reduce inflammation. I’m going to read a research study here as well that talks about it, “Curcumin is the primary active ingredient in tumeric.” Which had just mentioned. “It’s known for its anti-inflammatory properties. And in 2013, a study suggested that curcumin may help with endometriosis by reducing the estradiol production.” That’s one of the estrogens, “A 2015 study suggested curcumin may suppress tissue migration of the lining of the uterus.” When inflammation proliferates, the tissue migrates to different parts of the body and this is suggesting that curcumin or tumeric can help reduce that proliferation.
So incorporating curcumin and tumeric into your regular eating, so using it as a spice would be great, but also taking it as a supplement would be also excellent as well. Again, going along the theme of giving you all the resources that I can to make this process easier for you, I’m going to leave a link in the description below for an excellent tumeric that I think can benefit you greatly.
Tip number five. Yes, we’ve been talking about tumeric and that’s a potential supplement as well as a spice that you can incorporate. We’re going to talk about another supplement, which is fish oil. So omega 3 and omega 6 that is found in fish oils can be beneficial to reducing the inflammatory response again, with endometriosis. We see a theme here, we’re trying to reduce inflammation as it relates to endometriosis because that’s a big part of the disease. Reducing pain and inflammation is something that omega 3 and omega 6 that is found in fish oils can absolutely do. And along the lines of giving you all the resources, I’m also going to put a link for one of my top and most favorite fish oils, FH pro omega, in the description below again, to make that resource easier for you to find.
I do want to mention that fish oils across the board when it we talk about fertility and reproductive health is important anyway, but it’s even more important in endometriosis. You do want to make sure you’re taking a good nice dose at least 1,000 milligrams officials if not higher, I might even go 2,000 to 3,000 if we want to really boost that anti-inflammatory response.
Tip number six is something that is near and dear to my heart, it’s acupuncture. Acupuncture is amazing for endometriosis, it helps to reduce the cytokine response, it helps to reduce inflammation, it does have anti-histamine benefits as well, and it increases circulation. And if it’s done by the right person and done the right way, it can help increase blood circulation into the pelvic area to move that stagnant blood and decrease the pain. So it’s wonderful in an acute pain situation as well, but even more so on-goingly to help reduce that ongoing inflammatory response. And in addition, as I’ve mentioned many, many times, acupuncture is also beneficial for fertility and hormone regulation overall. So combining those two together makes a wonderful approach to help you on your fertility journey and to help you manage your endometriosis.
Tip number seven, we are making our way all the way to number 10. And number 10 is an amazing one, so make sure that you stick with me all the way to the end so that you can learn all the tips. But right now we’re talking about tip number seven. And tip number seven is about reducing the chemical and toxic burden on the body. This can come in many ways, but reducing our exposure to environmental toxins and chemicals that have an impact on our endocrine system and can actually raise our estrogen levels because they have many phytoestrogen in them.
So reducing your exposure to plastics. I know we have heard about this in many, many ways, but plastic often we think about it in terms of bottles, but there’s so many other things that we use plastic for, especially when it comes to the kitchen and cooking. So we do store a lot of things in plastic containers and the chemicals in the plastic can leach into the food. So storing in glass is important. Never reheating in a plastic container is extremely important and also not drinking from plastic bottles as much as we can prevent.
So this is not a system that is going to be perfect, but we’re trying to reduce our exposures. And that’s just one way that you can minimize and reduce your environmental toxin burden and your exposure. But there’s many more and I’m actually going to be talking about environmental toxins and chemicals in my upcoming free training. So again, a reminder that if you want more information on how to support your fertility, your hormone balance, and to help you regulate your endometriosis and inflammatory response, then I encourage you to register for that free training at the end of the month, the link is in the description below.
Tip number eight is all about digestion and poop. Something that we all talk about, but don’t like to talk about the fact that we talk about it, but poop is really important. And making sure that you’re not constipated, that you have regular healthy bowel movements, and that your gut function is functioning properly is really essential to reducing inflammation, to helping you manage your endometriosis, and to just help reduce pain overall. So if you do have constipation, then one thing you can do is add in some magnesium to help with that. Magnesium also is a key micronutrient that we all need as well. In addition to that, I encourage all of you to just look a little bit deeper at your digestion because digestive health is key and important and we have to prioritize that. It’s really a key factor to overall health, especially reproductive health.
So tip number nine is about liver function. Your liver is an important organ. I know you may all have heard about it, but it’s the key and first organ in your detoxification process. So any chemicals, any hormones, anything that you’re exposed to first has to get processed and filtered in the liver. The liver needs more support to help reduce inflammation and excrete, any excess hormones that your body is exposed to.
So one of the first things that I recommend with all my endometriosis women is to do a liver detox. This is my 21 day reset detox which starts with the liver to help you clean up your diet, reduce your overall hormonal burden, and helps to minimize any excess estrogen that might be kept in the body and get it out of the liver and then out of your digestive tract. So starting here is tip number nine. And in many ways this should be tip number one because pressing the reset button and starting with a detox is a wonderful way to get things moving in a different direction and starting the process of supporting your body’s ability to manage hormone balance and reduce inflammation.
Tip number 10. Yes, this is the last tip of the video and quite possibly the most important. It sounds simple but it’s really not, managing your stress. Your stress levels or your inability to manage your stress because we all have stress, we all have it in varying degrees, and sometimes it’s more and sometimes it’s less, is one of the most important things that you can do to help regulate your hormones, reduce inflammation, and support your fertility. This is because stress makes everything worse, it causes more pain, it increases inflammation, it wreaks havoc on our endocrine system. So managing your stress is key, but it’s not so simple because we all need different things to help manage our stress.
I want to encourage you all to find the right key to open that stress management door so to speak. If that’s going for a nice walk, do it daily. If that’s meditation, do it daily. If that’s yoga, do it daily. Whatever it is, I want you all to do it. But you need multiple things, multiple different exercises and habits to help manage stress because you’re not going to be able to do one specific thing all the time, and we need some variety. So I want you to make a plan for yourself on how you’re going to manage your stress and at least pick two different things that you can do to help manage your stress. I do encourage you all to at least use one of them as meditation because even five minutes of meditation makes a profound effect on your overall stress management abilities.
I’ve just walked you through 10 tips to help you manage your endometriosis, reduce inflammation, balance your hormones, and help you get pregnant on your journey. Which one was your favorite? That’s the first question I want to ask you, comment below and let me know. And then my second follow-up question for all of you is, what is the one thing that you’re going to do new that you haven’t already done? So I want to hear that, comment below, let me know. I want your feedback on those 10 tips.
So you can see how many different aspects of your life potentially affect endometriosis. I’m going to take this one step further, also potentially affect your fertility. So endometriosis and all these other reproductive conditions are impacted by so many things, which is why we need a better, more integrative, and holistic approach to managing them, correcting them, reversing them, and helping you get pregnant. But I can’t talk about all of those in this video, although I did talk about a lot of them in this video. But I have so much more to share with you and that’s why I want to invite you once again to join me for my free training at the end of the month. This free training is where I can go in deeper, dive deeper to give you more information and help you on your journey. So I hope you can join me for that. If that’s the thing you want to do, then use the link in the description below to register for the free training at the end of the month.
For those of you watching who want more information on fertility and reproductive health and how to improve it, I’m going to leave some videos right here to help you move forward with that. If you found this video useful, please give me a thumbs up, leave a comment below because by leaving a comment below, it allows this video to be seen by more women who need this sort of help and support on their fertility journeys. So leaving that comment allows you to be part of the process of helping more women get pregnant. So leave a comment below and let me know what you thought about this video. If you’re not already a subscriber to my YouTube channel, you should be. Just hit that bell, subscribe, and get notified when I put out the next video. And until the next video, I want you all to stay safe, stay healthy, and most of all, stay fertile.