Endometriosis: what we still don't know
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What is endometriosis and why does it feel like a “period on steroids”?
Periods suck. They're not supposed to be so painful that you can't get out of bed. They're not supposed to leave you bleeding for a year without stopping. They're not supposed to make sex incredibly painful or leave you with chronic fatigue or years of uncertainty as doctors struggle to say what the heck's going on with you. See, it's more than just a period on steroids. This is the reality for people who experience endometriosis. It's a disease that doesn't let up for its sufferers. With a multitude of symptoms and flow-on effects to every aspect of your life. But for something that's so shockingly common, and not just in women, there's a lot of mystery, confusion and politics around endo, its diagnosis and treatment.
Nat Tenchich here, and in this episode, we're going to dive deep into endo to better understand this debilitating condition. You'll hear how it's affecting girls as young as 13, right through to women who are trying for kids and beyond, and why it's taken some people over a decade to to get diagnosed and treated plus we'll talk about the huge impact it has on sex and relationships so are you still confused if it's not a bad period then what the heck even is endo it's
basically where um some cells or some tissue that should live inside the uterus lives outside the uterus so most commonly in other places in the pelvis but there's um Every now and again, they'll be in some really other kind of funky spots in the body, up close towards the chest or in some other spots.
That's Dr Charlotte Elder, gynaecologist and spokesperson for RANSCOG, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She specialises in paediatric and adolescent gynaecology, so she's helped a lot of young people go through endo. But even for someone who's an expert in the scene, the cause of endometriosis is still a big unknown. There are heaps of theories that have been thrown around over time, but still, today, no one can pinpoint what is actually going on in there. So what do we know?
We know that people who bleed more are more likely to have endometriosis spots, so people who have heavier periods or more periods. or longer periods and we know that people who don't have periods at all it's very unlikely to get very very unlikely and we know that some people runs in families a bit so maybe some people maybe they're just their bodies are a bit stickier inside their belly so it can kind of stick onto their pelvis or maybe they're just not as good at clearing it up because we do know that people some people are really good at clearing endometriosis up so some people can heal their own endometriosis So it's a really interesting, and we don't know if maybe there's like three or four different diseases that right now we just call them all endometriosis, but actually they're all separate things.
It's so complicated. Yeah. Now, I want you to meet Ella from Narrakort. She's been struggling with painful periods and excessive bleeding since she was just 14. Even though these are two pretty big signs of endo, finding out for sure isn't that simple. She told a story as part of the ABC's Haywire competition because for years she's been suffering without answers.
I'm the one girls come and talk to about their periods. They talk to me about advice I've had from their doctors. I'm glad I can help them out, but I wish I didn't know period pain so well. I have it all. Back pain, cramping, body aches, migraines and nausea. It started when I was 14. I was a typical teenage girl. I was getting A's in my school subjects, playing representative basketball and netball. But one day, the pain struck me out of nowhere. I was exhausted. My iron levels dropped. I was wearing everything you could and still bleeding through within half an hour. I stopped going to school, scared I was going to leak. People gossiped, assumed I was wagging. The doctors couldn't work out why it was happening.
Eventually, I got to see a gynaecologist. I did everything the specialist said. I tried three different contraceptive pills over nine months.
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