If you are a woman who doesn’t have endometriosis, consider yourself lucky! Over 10% of the women worldwide have endometriosis. So there probably is someone in your life who has it. Today, we’re going to explore the options available to manage the pain.
What Is Endometriosis?
Endometriosis is when the tissue that usually grows within the uterus is found in other parts of the body, like the ovaries, fallopian tubes, and even the brain in some rare cases. This causes irritation and pain. Those of you who have to live with endometriosis know how painful and serious it can be. Sometimes, the pain can be debilitating and make life difficult. So the tricky part is managing the pain.
Just like period cramps, the level of pain due to this condition can vary in every woman. Some women don’t experience much pain, while others experience severe pain that makes it hard to move or even breathe.
What Are The Alternative Methods?
Before we get into the different options, I’d like to insist that these options are not a replacement for what your doctor or specialist prescribes. Always confirm with an endometriosis specialist or your doctor that the method opted is safe and will not have a counter effect on your health.
I have personally tried and recommended to my clients the different natural options presented here. Since we are all unique individuals, these treatments will work differently for anyone trying them out. It also depends on the experience of your practitioner, so always make sure you get referrals of practitioners from friends or family or other doctors to be on the safer side.
Acupuncture
Despite being a pain management method associated with holistic medicine, acupuncture is based on science. When your pressure points are hit, your pain can subside. Visit an acupuncturist and explain your pain areas. They’ll be able to tell you what they can do to help manage your endometriosis pain. When you do so, just make sure the practitioner actually knows what endometriosis is and has treated patients with endometriosis before.
Osteopathy
Osteopathy is the manipulation of bones, tissues, and muscles as a way to relieve pain. This is a holistic treatment that focuses mostly on stretching and moving joints, massage, resistance therapy, and pressure techniques. The main benefit of osteopathy is that it relieves tension in the body and increases blood flow.
Relaxation Therapy
This is akin to osteopathy in a wider sense. This technique focuses on tightening and releasing specific muscle groups in a sequence to help you be more in tune with and mindful of your own body. It also helps relieve pain and stress.
Meditation, Hypnotherapy, and Mindfulness Meditation
Sometimes, pain can be a “mind over matter” issue, which is why being more in tune with your body can greatly relieve endometriosis pain. Techniques like meditation can help relieve past pain trauma, retraining the brain to react better to pain. Mindfulness meditation puts a woman more in tune with her body, allowing her to ease the pain within it. Hypnotherapy is another way the brain can be retrained to react differently to pain. Once a woman is hypnotized, a therapist will help her adjust her subconscious reaction to pain.
Emotional Freedom Technique
The emotional freedom technique (EFT) is one of my favorite modalities. It is a healing technique that draws on energy healing therapies, such as acupuncture, acupressure, shiatsu, and kinesiology, and various other alternative medicines such as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and thought field therapy (TFT). During an EFT session, you focus on a specific issue tapping on the “end points of the body’s energy meridians.” The idea behind this technique is to heal the body by rebalancing emotional and physical health.
Other Treatments
Sometimes, the solution to pain management is as simple as changing your diet.
- You can start with a food elimination diet, for example, that will focus on eliminating the main inflammatory foods that can increase or cause endometriosis pain. We also need to consider that estrogenic foods fuel the development of endometriosis cells in the body. Hence, reducing the intake of such foods will prove helpful in managing endometriosis pain.
- Herbal treatments can also be a great way to relieve pain as long as you consult a professional herbalist about your condition.
- Body cleansing or detoxification can also be a great way to relieve pain as they help lessen the toxic load in the body.
Endometriosis and its pain may not go away overnight, but you have your options to complement the current treatments. They can even help greatly when such treatments are not working.
