It’s about time I wrote about Adenomyosis because I know that quite a few of you either have both Endometriosis and Adenomyosis, or just Adenomyosis.
With Endometriosis, there is endometrial-like tissue outside the uterus, often on the ovaries, outside of the uterus, the bowel, the bladder, and other organs and tissues in the pelvic or abdominal cavity. You can have a wide range of symptoms, from pain to cysts to digestive issues.
So how is Adenomyosis different? Well, the main difference is the location of the endometrial-like tissue.
The wall of your uterus contains a very strong muscle that helps to shed the endometrium when you have your period and creates the contractions when you’re giving birth. When you have Adenomyosis, endometrial-like tissue has somehow started to grow on this muscle in the uterine wall.
As with Endometriosis, this tissue responds to hormone levels, and in particular oestrogen levels. When it is time for your period the endometrial-like tissue shed and bleed, just as the tissue inside your uterus.
But where the tissue inside your uterus has an exit route, the tissue in your uterine wall doesn’t. So you shed and bleed into your uterine wall, which can be excruciatingly painful. The spasming of the muscle also causes pain because the tissue that sits on it makes the muscle less flexible and makes that spasming more painful.
Now, as with Endometriosis, we don’t really know what’s causing Adenomyosis, so there’s not much in the way of a cure yet.
What we do know is that inflammation is also a factor that’s where an anti-inflammatory diet can help to relieve the pain and reduce any other symptoms you may have. Please know though that pain is difficult to get on top of. (If you’d like to know a bit more about pain, read ‘The advanced guide to managing pain’).
To make your diet more anti-inflammatory, remove all processed foods, sugar, caffeine and alcohol, and gluten and dairy products. Eat more fatty fish like salmon, tuna and mackerel. Eat a mostly plant-based diet with small amounts of high-quality meat.
If you want to take it a step further, work out what your personal food intolerances are and remove those from your diet as well.
If all this feels a bit overwhelming you can book a free Endometriosis SOS Call where we can have a chat about your symptoms and what your options are for using nutrition.