Shownotes
I haven’t talked about Endometriosis for a while, so today I want to share with you what I have been learning about Endometriosis/adenomyosis from my mentor and how I have been approaching treatment with my patients. It is a complex disease and it needs frequent testing, monitoring and adjustments in protocols. It is possible to heal, but we need to understand a couple of things first. Tune in to learn more.
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Key Takeways
3:33 Unique expression of endometriosis symptoms
7:06 Tracing disease development timeline
10:41 Puberty's impact on endometriosis
14:45 Generational aspects of fertility issues
22:57 Questioning conventional endometriosis wisdom
Memorable Quotes
"We have to first stop the root cause of why that disease is progressing and then help the body heal."
"Your fertility is a reflection of your entire life. And truthfully, it's a reflection of your mom's health during pregnancy, your mom's and your dad's health, but your mom's health more so because you grew in her womb."
"Even though approximately 1 in 10 women are struggling with endometriosis, not a single woman will express that disease in the same way. Some women will have tremendously painful periods where they cannot live without painkillers, while others will have very little pain."
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Transcripts
see it not a lot in endometriosis, but I'll see it with premature ovarian insufficiency and even with pcos, when we just
don't have enough of these hormones, if you will, or this connection that's strong because there was such a high period
of stress in the teenage years. So I'm going to look at that, and then we're going to go even further and we're going to
look at what happens between that. 0 to 10, 0 to 11, any big moves, any divorces, any big traumas, bullying, you name
it. And specifically, I want to look at infections and how often. What was your immune system functioning like?
Pregnancy is a natural process, so if it's not happening or if it's not sticking, something is missing. After having a family
member go through infertility and experiencing a miscarriage myself, I realized how little support and education women
have around infertility. I want to change that. Jane I'm Dr. Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural
fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 9am for insightful case studies, expert interviews, and practical tips on how
you can optimize fertility naturally. If you've been struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women's health issues, or
you just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life, this show is for you. All right,
ladies, I'm due to talk to you about endometriosis. Last time I recorded a podcast has probably been a year ago now,
which is crazy to think about. I get a lot of questions about endometriosis. Unfortunately, many of you are struggling,
either endometriosis or adenomyosis, which are basically the same disease, just more progressed. And the big questions
that I always get is, is it possible to heal endometriosis? Is it possible to get pregnant naturally? Is it possible to get
pregnant, period? In order for me to be able to answer that question, there's a couple things that I want you guys to
understand, and there's a couple ways that I want you to start thinking about endometriosis, or any disease for that
matter. Like, it doesn't matter what the diagnosis is. What we really need to be asking ourselves is, why do I have the
diagnosis? When did it start developing? And what is driving the disease to continue to progress? Because something in
the body is driving the disease to progress, whether it's pcos, endometriosis metabolic disease, autoimmune conditions,
thyroid conditions, you name it. So we have to first stop the root cause of why that disease is progressing and then help
the body heal. So the first thing that I want you guys to understand is there is no one size fits approach, one size fits all
approach. Why? Because Even though approximately 1 in 10 women are struggling with endometriosis, not a single
woman will express that disease in the same way. Some women will have tremendously painful periods where they
cannot live without painkillers. Some women will have very little pain, some will have really heavy periods, some will
have very light periods, some will experience a lot of bloating and discomfort, while others will get pain in their back or
in the rectum, especially around the period where that pain is shooting. I remember I made a real about that and
everyone went nuts where they didn't realize that could be a sign of endometriosis. So every woman will express disease
differently. We are unique snowflakes ladies. We have our own different genetic makeup. There's literally nobody in
this world like you. And so instead of putting you in a box and saying, well, you have endometriosis and therefore you
have all of these symptoms or you have, we need to get specific into what is driving the disease. When did it start, and
what is the level of endometriosis you have in your body, Meaning the level of inflammation, the level of tissue, the scar
tissue, the. Do we have any cyst? How is the body expressing this disease and what do we need to do to stop it? I've
talked about the triad of endometriosis on my social media account. This is where we're looking at estrogen dominance,
we're looking at histamine, and we're looking at disregulated immune response. And the triad. Each one of those things
is feeding into another. So when you have endometriosis, you have a dysregulated immune system. It is starting to be
recognized as an autoimmune condition. And I think in the next couple of years, it's going to be classified under that
umbrella, if you will. Right now, they're still questioning if that is the case. But if you think about the disease and the
endometrial tissue growing outside of the uterus and the immune system, not recognizing it and not cleaning it up, that
is an immune reaction. It's a poor immune response. So I believe it's going to be classified under the autoimmune
condition, which is there's a lot of diseases where they have the same processes in terms of how they develop, but how
we treat them will change based on your unique situation. So there is a deranged immune system response. There is
usually very high levels of inflammation that comes with that. Usually it is dominant, estrogen dominant. So it is driven
by estrogen. Estrogen tends to make things worse. Remember that hormones are not the root cause. Everyone always
says, I have endometriosis because I have high estrogen. Then my question to you is, why do you have high estrogen?
Because estrogen is high for a reason. Is it because there's no progesterone that's there to balance that estrogen? Is it
because you have high environmental toxic load that's driving the estrogen and mimicking and driving that estrogen to
be high? There are certain molds that are associated, like orchid toxin, that are associated with higher estrogen levels. So
we need to figure out what's causing the high estrogen. But estrogen tends to make everything works. It tends to make
the immune system response more deranged, and it tends to make that histamine reaction worse. Histamine might be
something that's you're not familiar with. A lot of the times when we think histamine, we think of allergies. And I've had
lots of patients who have not had any symptoms of allergies, but what they did have is water retention. And water
retention is driven by this histamine, meaning that you just feel puffy. You can't seem to lose weight. You feel like that
weight is just hanging out. And for some of my patients, it's that weight is hanging out on the lower half of their body.
Like it's just not draining. There's too much water. There's too much water retention. So I think about that triad. I want
you to guys start to think about that triad. This is how the disease. We need to get the estrogen down, we need to get the
histamine down and figure out what's driving. Then we need to figure out the immune system. Okay? And so our
immune system is the microbiome. The gut is probably going to be the epicenter of this whole thing. But of course,
there's the microbiome of the reproductive system. The skin, the lungs, the gut is kind of what's driving everything. And
here's the connection I'm going to help you make on this podcast. One of the first things that I do with my patients when
I first sit down with them and I'm taking on a case, is I like to draw out the case and I Want to see when did the disease
actually start to develop? Because a lot of you, when you've been diagnosed with endometriosis, it's a fairly new
diagnosis, and you've probably been fighting for a diagnosis anywhere between five to 10 years. That's on average how
long it takes for a woman to get a diagnosis of endometriosis. When you've gotten the diagnosis versus when the disease
actually started developing could be 5, 10, 15, 20 years. And so as a practitioner, I want to know when were the first
signs, what triggered the disease to start, and how long has it been going on for? Because if it's been going on for two
years versus 20 years, the treatment approach will be different and the expectations that we should have on our body
should also be different. Meaning just cutting out, like fixing your diet. Don't get me wrong, those things are important.
But if you've just changed your diet, you've changed your lifestyle, you kind of taking some random supplements, but
they haven't been specific to you, you've never done any functional lab testing. So you have no idea what's going on in
the gut, you have no idea what nutrient levels you have, you have no idea what infections you have. You're not going to
notice as big of an effect as you are hoping to notice. Even though it takes a lot of effort. Right? I don't want to discount
your effort. Changing your diet, changing your lifestyle is a lot of effort. But when we're doing general advice instead of
specific advice with lab testing, you're going to plateau. And a lot of people just stop and give up on their body because
they think their body isn't responding. But it's not that their body isn't responding, it's that you're actually not doing the
right thing. You've stopped improving because you need to take the next step. And that next step is usually doing some
testing. So back to how I approach the case. So I'm going to look at. I usually draw this line out and I go zero to now. So
maybe you're 32, 35, 37, 38, like whatever. I want to know everything that has happened and when did the disease
actually start to progress? I'm looking at some big points in your life. Of course we want to look through your fertility
journey. So what kind of treatments have you had? Ivf, retrievals, transfers, anything successful? Have you been
pregnant, ever? Miscarriages, or have had successful pregnancies, or never had a pregnancy? I want to know all the
details about your fertility journey, how long it has been and everything that you have tried in that time. And then I'm
going to go ahead and take it back to maybe it's early 30s, maybe it's early 20s. I want to understand any stressors. I
want to understand how long you've been on birth control for and why you came on birth control. Usually the college
years are actually really stressful. From the perspective of you are, it's very demanding hours, you're not sleeping very
well, you're not eating very well, and usually you're drinking quite a bit. So there's a big hit in your 20s in terms of
stress. And usually us women, this was me as well. I was on birth control. So not only was I on birth control now I was
drinking three or four times a week. I was eating donuts, I was staying up late. I was. And then going up to class early to
study and I wanted to fit in and all this stuff. But like, if I think about that, I'm like, oh my God, there was so much
energy that I wasted reflect a better term. But like, I couldn't believe it. When I look back, it's like, man, I can't believe
my body held up. So we have to understand that how many hits has your body had and when did the disease actually
start to progress? The next one is the big one is going to be puberty. When did puberty actually start? You know, did
you start your period at like 8 or 9 years old? I consider really young. Anything before 12, I'm thinking like G, that's
young versus really late. And why was it late? So anything after 14, 15, 16, if you had that period, what was the period
like when it started? Was it always painful right off the bat or did it become painful a little bit later down the road? I
also want to know about the stress levels that you had around puberty. Meaning was there any big moves? Maybe there
was divorces, maybe there was trauma, maybe sibling passing away or getting into a car accident or a grandparent that
you were close to that passing away, maybe you were bullied. I want to know what happened during that time because
that is the time where the ovaries in the brain are solidifying their connection. And so if there is a lot of stress present
when there is big shift in the body already, and I don't want to call it a stress, but like it's a big shift to go from the
ovaries in the brain not talking to another to learning how to communicate. If there's a lot of stress at that time, I Find
that connection can be. It's disrupted, it doesn't become as strong, so it's a little bit more fragile. I definitely see it not a
lot in endometriosis, but I'll see it with premature ovarian insufficiency and even with pcos when we just don't have
enough of these hormones, if you will, or this connection that's strong because there was such a high period of stress in
the teenage years. So I'm going to look at that, and then we're going to go even further and we're going to look at what
happens between that. 0 to 10, 0 to 11, any big moves, any demand divorces, any big traumas, bullying, you name it.
And specifically, I want to look at infections and how often. What was your immune system functioning like? Did you
have strep throat? So then your tonsils got removed because your mom got tired of giving you antibiotics? And how
many rounds of antibiotics? Every single one of my endometriosis patients had either had some sort of infections when
they were a kid. So whether it's east infections, recurring urinary tract infections, they had tummy troubles, they had
eczema or allergies or some kind of immune dysregulation. Now immune system is going to be driven by a microbial
imbalance. Okay, so I'm going to connect this all together for you. But every single one of my endometriosis patients
has had some sort of history of getting sick, not being, well, having this weakened immune system. And not everyone,
but a lot of my endometriosis patients had a really high toxic exposure. And so maybe that is a parent that was smoking,
maybe a mom that smoked right before she got pregnant, not during, but smoked right after. And so you were exposed
to secondhand smoke and basically still had, you know, all the chemicals and the toxins from the cigarettes floating
within the mom's womb. So then you had a very high toxic exposure and obviously turn on some of those bad genes that
are going to express endometriosis. Maybe you lived in molds, maybe you lived in the industrial area or military base,
and there was a lot of heavy metal exposure that you weren't aware about, or, you know, even radioactive elements. I
like to take a really good history and understand what are we dealing with here and how long has the disease been
developing? Because what I see a lot is practitioners are not going deep enough, and they're just kind of staying around
the fertility time. And so when we're just treating the fertility and trying to optimize fertility. It's assuming that your
fertility is only based on what you've done the last couple of years, where in reality, your fertility is a reflection of your
entire life. And truthfully, it's a reflection of your mom's health during pregnancy, your mom's and your dad's health, but
your mom's health more so because, you know, you grew in her womb. And we can even look back, we know there is
the trigenerational effect of the health of the grandmother when she was pregnant with your mom, because that's when
the usite were developing the eggs. What eventually became your cells. Infertility, including endometriosis, including
pcos, including premature ovarian insufficiency, is a generational disease. And so if you're only looking at what
happened in the last two, three, five, 10 years, you're basically missing, you know, more than half of the puzzle. You're
missing 75% of the puzzle. And so when I'm done doing that with my patients, a lot of the times they go, oh, my God,
that's a lot. My body has been through a lot. Sometimes they can feel a little bit discouraged because you're like, oh, my
God, how am I going to be able to fix that? There's so much. How can I take it back that my mom smoked, you know,
when she was pregnant with me, or that we lived in mold? And the point is not to make you guys feel bad about what
happened to you, but to help you understand that your body is doing what it's doing for a reason. There's something
driving the disease. And so if you still have the disease, that means that stimulus is still present. And so we have to find
it so we can get rid of it. The way that I like to look at it, imagine if you have a weed in the garden and you just cut the
top of it and you don't do anything about the roots. Do you think that weed will come back? It's like a hundred percent.
That's what happens when we go in for a laparoscopic surgery. We get rid of, you know, the excess endometrial tissue
outside of the uterus, and then a year later, it's just right back where it started. And that tells me that we didn't fix the
root cause. Sometimes surgery is the right thing to do. But what we need to make sure is we have gotten rid of the
reason that the endometrial tissue is growing. And so the main reason is going to be some sort of an infection driving
this inflammatory response. And dysregulating the immune system, which then drives the angiogenesis, the replication
of the blood vessels, and the traveling of the blood vessels all over this, you know, abdominal cavity, essentially. And
then that can further drive into neurogenesis, where you're actually forming new nerve cells. And that is when
endometriosis is associated with very high levels of pain. And that pain doesn't have to be just in the low abdomen. It
could be throughout your entire abdomen, because those neural pathways have now traveled right there is within the
peritoneal cavity, where the abdomen is and the uterus and all that. It's great communication. It's important for nutrients
to travel through. But when there is disease and when there is inflammation, it allows for that disease to travel through.
And so at the very beginning, it actually is driven by some sort of an infection. Okay. And we've seen it in studies that
there are certain infections, like uroplasma, for example, is a very common reason that a woman will develop
endometriosis. And so when we're looking at endo and understanding why you have it, you might not have any
uroplasma, but you might have Klebsiella, you might have E. Coli, you might have another infection that's driving the
immune system dysregulation, and that's causing the angiogenesis and the neurogenesis and all the pain and issues that
come with that. And then the estrogen is elevated because you have these environmental toxins that are much higher
than they ever used to be. You don't have any progesterone because you're stressed, and your gut function is rubbish, to
say the least. And so we see how it's this just cycle that continues. So in order to stop the cycle, this is where the test.
First of all, let's look at the timeline and say, wow, there's a lot. Okay. We can't just take some supplements and hope it
works. We probably have some traumas that we need to process, especially if there was big events that happen. So
there's some mental and emotional component that has to be there, spiritual component that has to be there. And then we
have to test, and I don't mean just some blood work or an ultrasound. Those are important. We want an ultrasound. We
maybe even need something like an Alice analysis to look at the endometrial tissue and see if there is an infection.
Sometimes there isn't. And what I see with my endometriosis patients who have done and analysis, which is basically,
you know, they're taking A biopsy of the endometrium and seeing if there is an infection is. Sometimes there's no
infection at all. Then there's also no good microbes. There's nothing. It's just empty. And so it's almost like the sterile
environment, which is actually not good for the baby. We need to have a certain level of good bacteria, the crispus, the
genii, the gun. We need to have those in there, the Lactobacilli strains and even some bifido strains to help support the
micro microbiome. That makes it a welcoming place for the baby to implant and to thrive. So if there is an infection, we
got to get it out. If there is no infection, we have to understand in the uterus, then maybe we have to check the gut,
because like I said, the gut and the peritoneal everything travels together. So if you have fungal overgrowth, I see so
much candida overgrowth all the time in the gut. I see sibo, which is small intestine bacterial overgrowth. So just a lot of
bacteria. I see E. Coli, shigella. Like you just see parasites, you see lots of stuff in the gut. And you don't have to have
gut symptoms to have a gut stool analysis that's abnormal. I literally have never seen a normal stool analysis because I
just don't think that it exists. There's always something for us to work on. So we have to look at the uterine environment,
the vaginal microbiome, we have to look at the gut. We have to look at environmental toxic load. All of my patients
with endometriosis had some sort of environmental toxic load. What kind of toxic load has been different for every
single one of them? For some of them, it was mercury or other heavy metals. For others it was BPAs, glyphosate, other
industrial environmental toxins. So you just don't know which toxin it's going to be that's causing the issue. But we need
to make sure that we address it, because that's going to decrease the load on the immune system. It's going to decrease
inflammation. It will allow allow your body to process the excess estrogen. That energy can now go towards making
progesterone or keeping that progesterone. And then we can create more balance within the system, which will then
allow you to ovulate properly and potentially to conceive naturally or with some help. I can't answer that without
knowing anything about you, because every case is different. You guys, your capacity to do things, your belief in
yourself, your financial commitment to it because like, let's face it, right? All the lab work and doing all the supplements
and like, it's expensive, you know. And I think the question is, can we heal? Absolutely. The question I have for you is
like, what are you willing to do to heal? Because a lot of the times we put a constraint, like, well, if my insurance covers
it, then I'll run these lab tests. And don't get me wrong, insurance is great, but insurance is also being paid by the
pharmaceutical company, so. So they don't care to fix the root cause. They want you on medication. That's what they're
driven by. So that is the question that I want you to ask yourself, because do you believe that you can fix this? And can
you are willing to go on this journey and heal this generational disease and uncover some generational traumas? And
what are you actually willing to do for it? Because I find most people give up much too quickly because they expect it to
get better after, you know, six months or a year of putting in a lot of work. Again, depends on how old you are, how
much time you have. Early 30s, you have more time versus late 30s, you have less time. But we have this kind of
unrealistic expectation on our body. And I want to be, you know, I'm such a proponent for the body and that its capacity
to heal. And I've done it for myself, I've done it for my patients, and I just want more people to experience it because it
is a beautiful thing. And like I said, I just want see too many people giving up too quickly. So this is my overview for
endometriosis. I hope you guys stop listening to your doctors and in perspective that like, oh, I have endometriosis and
that's why I can't get pregnant. You have to start asking the deeper question of why do I have endometriosis and what is
driving the disease? How long have I had it for? And so then when you uncover the root cause of what's driving the
disease, and like I said, there's going to be environmental toxins, there's going to be an infection. I can guarantee you.
And if you're like, no, I don't. I've never tested positive, you need to make sure you're doing the testing at the right time.
You always should be doing testing around ovulation. And then you might need to provoke because those infections
tide. And if your immune system, like, I'll test some people's immune systems and they're just in the gutter, which tells
me you Have a high toxic load or high infection load because your immune system is not even working anymore.
Anymore. And so sometimes what I'll spend time doing is just bringing the immune system up while doing gentle
killing, and then retest, and we could just see all this stuff come out, you know, and so then we can address it
appropriately. But it's not a stagnant. Like, I cannot say, just do this. I don't know what that is. I can give you general,
hey, you should have good energy, decrease your inflammation, do the testing, and then the testing will allow you to get
more personal. But there isn't just, like, a general protocol that I have for endometriosis. There's herbs that I use, but
they're very different in terms of dosages and when I decide to use them, because it's based on your individual needs.
Okay. So even within my group program, I teach my clients, my patients to do the testing. And then when they do the
testing, and it's like, oh, you have urea plasma. Go ahead and follow the urea plasma protocol. You have parasites, great.
Go follow the parasite protocol. Oh, you have this bacterial overgrown growth. Go follow that. Or fungal overgrowth.
Go follow that protocol. We can be specific. Otherwise, you're just grasping at straws because it's general advice. And
when you have a disease like endometriosis, compare it to, like, cardiovascular disease. You would never. Like, after a
heart attack, you would never be like, oh, I'll just figure it out on my own. No, you would get all the help that you could
get. And I think for. We still have some stigma to break with these female diseases, if you will, where there's a lot of
shame that we carry. We're not voicing our concerns as much, and we're, you know, sometimes, like, just straight up
being gaslit by the medical system, where they're saying that you're crazy and you don't have pain and you should just
be on an antidepressant or an anxiolytic. And it's just like, what? You know, that kind of stuff drives me nuts. I hear
stories, and I see it on social media all the time. So we need to continue to stand up for ourselves. We need to continue
to advocate. And I think that comes from. From knowledge. And when you have the testing, when you have the
knowledge, you can continue to advocate for yourself and you can heal and it's possible. And I've helped couples get
pregnant through IVF and natural when they had a diagnosis of endometriosis and told they'll never have a baby. I like
to get in there and test and get to know my patients and get the obstacle out of the way so the body can heal and just
support my patients through that. And I find the patients who really believe in themselves, who are willing to do
anything, like they make it to the other side and they're so much healthier for it. But you know, the thing that lights me
up is their babies. Their babies are so healthy. And it just lights me up seeing happy, healthy looking babies walking
around in the world knowing that they probably are not going to struggle with the same issues that their parents did
because their parents are literally reversing those diseases in themselves and they can catch it early and help their
babies, you know, set a new foundation for their health. So I hope you guys find this helpful. Like I said, endometriosis
is a hot topic. I'll continue to talk about it as I learn more and more. And this is kind of a general, broad overview of
some things that I've learned, but unfortunately it's very common. And if there's anything I can do to help you on your
journey to uncover the root cause of endometriosis and help you heal so we can stop this, you know, disease in its tracks
and stop passing it on to the future generations, then I know I've done my job. So thank you so much for listening and
I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening. To read the full show notes of this episode, including summary,
timestamps, guest quotes, and any resources that were mentioned on the episode, visit drjanelevesque.com forward slash
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