One of the reasons it can be so challenging to get an Endometriosis diagnosis is because you can have some unusual symptoms that don’t often get recognised as Endo symptoms. In this article I’m looking at 3 of these more unusual Endometriosis symptoms: back pain, pain in your legs and thighs and difficulty breathing.

Endometriosis can end up anywhere in the body, not just your pelvic area. And that means you can have symptoms anywhere is your body.

3 Unusual Endometriosis symptoms

Back pain

One area where Endometriosis can be found is on the spine. Interestingly, one theory for the cause of Endometriosis that is currently being researched is that Endometriosis originates from stem in the spine, and distribute through the body via the spine. This may, or may not be the case, but we do know that Endometriosis tissue can be found on the spine that can give you back pain. The pain you experience will be different from more common types of back pain: it is often felt deeply in the body, sort of at the front of your spine, instead of between the skin on your back and your spine. Movement or changing your body position won’t reduce the pain and you can’t massage it away. It often gets worse around your period, when the tissue on your spine sheds and bleeds.

Painful thighs and legs

Painful thighs and legs are becoming more recognised as a symptom of Endometriosis. The most likely cause is that Endometriosis impacts nerves that are responsible for the sensation in your legs. Endometriosis can be found on the sciatic nerve, the longest nerve in the body that runs all the way down to the bottom of your feet. Another contributing factor to this pain is your underlying inflammation, which will also affect your nerves, making them supersensitive and a bit quick to fire off messages of pain.

Reducing inflammation will, over time, reduce the pain. You can also look at taking a supplement called Palmitoylethanolamide. It is not a pain killer as such but can be really helpful to reduce pain, and heal nerves. You can read more about this supplement here.

Difficulty breathing

The third unusual symptom has its own name: diaphragmatic Endometriosis. Your diaphragm is a like a sheet of tissue that sits just below your ribs and above your stomach. We often think that our lungs are responsible for breathing, but it is actually the diaphragm pulling down that creates the in-breath, and pushing up that creates the out-breath. Because the diaphragm is a muscle, if there is Endometriosis on it and it moves (which it does all the time, so you keep breathing) the muscle can’t move as freely as it should. You may notice that it is more difficult to take a deep breath, and it usually worsens around your period.

What these 3 symptoms have in common is that Endometriosis ends up in places that we don’t usually associate with it. It is important that they get acknowledged as Endometriosis symptoms when you see your doctor or a specialist. It can be helpful to track them for a while: rate the severity of the symptom daily (when you get up and when you go to bed) on a scale from 1-10 (1 being no discomfort; 10 being unbearable discomfort). Make sure you track your menstrual cycle at the same time so you can see if the symptoms worsen leading up to and during your period. It will be valuable information to take to your doctor. And most importantly: trust that nobody knows your body better than you do! You know what you feel, and how intense the symptoms are.

If you’d like to have a personal chat about your unusual Endometriosis symptoms and how nutrition can help to reduce their severity, book a complimentary Endometriosis SOS Call: https://theendometriosisnutritionist.online/endometriosis-sos-call/