Dr. Lucky Sekhon

Endometriosis is a condition that you might have heard of.

It's getting a lot more airtime because there's a lot of outrage over the fact that it's traditionally taken a long time for women to get a diagnosis.

But it's typically this condition that's chronic and can be associated with chronic pelvic pain, really painful periods.

And it's basically very fascinating.

No one really truly still understands why it happens, but it runs in families.

And it's a situation where

the tissue that lines the inner cavity of the uterus that builds up and sheds whenever you get a period, for some reason, cells that act like that tissue are found in other parts of your body.

Most often, your pelvic cavity, and so that's where the pain usually predominates, and it's fed by the hormonal changes of your menstrual cycle.

But I've had patients who have it in their lung cavity,

who have a collapsed lung every time they get a period.

That's an extreme example.

People have found it in the brain.

People have found it in the abdominal wall.

So it's a really weird, mysterious illness that is debilitating for so many, and it can cause infertility through a variety of mechanisms.

So a lot of the young patients I see with infertility have endometriosis.

About a quarter of my patients, up to a third of my patients, have endometriosis.

They just don't know it yet.

you can't really always diagnose it on imaging so it's like taking a good history the gold standard way is to do a minor minimally invasive procedure to visualize it directly but it's something that if anyone listening has painful periods please talk to your doctor and know that many people have had to speak to multiple doctors and really self advocate to get a proper answer on that that's really important to know okay I'm really glad you said that

Yes.

I mean, you specified 20s and 30s.