Understanding Endometriosis w/ Katie Edmonds

Welcome back to the Endo Belly Girl Podcast! I am thrilled to have Katie Edmonds on the show today.  Katie is what you might call a powerhouse in the realm of endometriosis. She's not only a researcher and author but also an educator and nutritional therapist. 

Katie shares her own journey with endometriosis, a journey that's been marked by both challenges and profound learning experiences. She's here to shed light on what endo really is, beyond the misconceptions and myths that often surround it.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

-How endometriosis develops in the body.

-What endometriosis is, and what we've been led to believe it is.

-How endometriosis functions like cancer in the body, and environmental factors such as phthalates and other chemicals found in everyday products can trigger its development and exacerbate symptoms.

-Chronic inflammation is attributed to how endometriosis becomes aggressive in the body.

-Endometriosis is a multifactorial disease, with immune dysfunction as a big component.

-There are many different variations of endometriosis, and everyone experiences it differently.

-Trusting your body, and intuition is the best way to manage YOUR endometriosis  

-What nutrients are important for managing your endometriosis 

-Diet is not the only factor to look at when it comes to managing endometriosis; it's essential to consider other factors such as stress, sleep, and exercise for managing symptoms.  

I'm genuinely thrilled to have Katie on today's episode. As someone who admires her work, I can't wait to share this insightful interview with all of you. There's a wealth of valuable information packed into this episode, so don't hesitate to give it a listen more than once to fully absorb all the insights she shares.

Connect with Katie:

Instagram: @heal.endo

Facebook: @healing.endo

Website:  www.healendo.com

Amazon Book: https://www.amazon.com/Heal-Endo-Anti-Inflammatory-Approach-Endometriosis/ 

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Work w/ Alyssa:

• Free Endo Diet Guide
• Work with me 1:1
• Join Endo Warrior Circle waitlist

Learn more about Alyssa

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. This may not be the best fit for you and your personal situation. It shall not be construed as medical advice. The information and education provided here is not intended or implied to supplement or replace professional medical treatment, advice, and/or diagnosis. Always check with your own physician or medical professional before trying or implementing any information read here.

Transcript

Alyssa Chavez [00:00:01]:
Hello and welcome back to the Endobelly Girl podcast. I have a special guest on today who I am very excited about.

Alyssa Chavez [00:00:09]:
I feel like I say that every time I have a guest. I'm just always excited to record the podcast. If I'm perfectly honest.

Alyssa Chavez [00:00:15]:
It's like my favorite thing to do during the week. But really, truly, I am beyond excited to have this particular guest on because I am just a personal fan of her work. She is the author of two books which are probably the not probably, they're.

Alyssa Chavez [00:00:33]:
Definitely the books that I recommend more than any other when it comes to.

Alyssa Chavez [00:00:37]:
Endometriosis, and she is just a wealth of knowledge. She has so much to share with you all today. So I'd like to welcome on Katie Edmonds, who is an endometriosis author, researcher, educator, nutritional therapist, trauma certified HTMA practitioner, and a paleo autoimmune protocol certified coach. That's a lot right there. She also is the author of two books, the four week endometriosis Diet Plan and Heal Endo, in antiinflammatory approach to healing from endometriosis. And those books are absolutely fabulous. I have both of them and use them frequently myself. Heal Endo is just like the guide to actually figuring out what's going on in your body, getting to that place of being able to heal from the inside out.

Alyssa Chavez [00:01:33]:
I know she's going to share a lot about that with us today, just even the basics of what this is all about, how our diet and our lifestyle choices even impact endometriosis. She has so much information. She also has a wonderful blog. If you go on her website, healendo.com, I will share all of the links, of course, for everything in the show notes for right now. Just enjoy. Dive in and I'll let Katie take it away.

Alyssa Chavez [00:02:06]:
All right. Hello, Katie, and welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you on here today. I know we have so much to talk about. So welcome.

Katie Edmonds [00:02:15]:
Hi. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I'm always excited to talk endometriosis. Nice.

Alyssa Chavez [00:02:21]:
I know you have a lot to say. That is perfect. Well, I would love if we can start out by just getting to know you a little bit, if you can tell us a little bit about your personal history with endometriosis, how that has led you to doing what you are doing today, and a little bit about what you do.

Katie Edmonds [00:02:41]:
Yeah, I joke because I feel like everyone who has an endometriosis story could write a small novel about it. Like it could be the whole podcast. And I've gotten it pretty succinct at this point, but my endo, it started like, there's a lot of women that it just came on hard and fast. To be honest, I was having sex, and I felt the most intense pain I've ever had in my life. I felt an organ had ruptured. Like, if it wasn't my uterus, it was an ovary or my appendix. I had no idea. But I couldn't move for the rest of the night.

Katie Edmonds [00:03:10]:
I was pretty floored. And I googled it. It couldn't be endometriosis, right? Because it wasn't my period. This was just horrible pelvic pain. I definitely had cancer, and I was probably dying. Like, this is 23 year old me on Google, and I go to the doctor, and she's wonderful. She's been my gp for a while. And I say I'm lucky because I live on a small island and we honestly have terrible health care.

Katie Edmonds [00:03:32]:
But because our doctors see so many different people and are really well established in the community, I feel like we're not written off so easily. We know, as I've heard from other women around the world, they're so easily written off. But this doctor was like, no, Katie, I think you have endometriosis. Let's get you imaging and get you diagnosed. And I was like, it's not. And it was. It was suspected endometriosis. We didn't do laparoscopy, but all the tests looked like it.

Katie Edmonds [00:03:58]:
It sounded like it. So I was given the same treatment that every woman then was, and today was. And probably her grandma was right. It's like birth control. Maybe Lupron. If that's not working, definitely consider hysterectomy if you're really over it. And in the meantime, try to get pregnant, because that's, like, top notch priority. So I'm 23, sobbing the most ugly sobs.

Katie Edmonds [00:04:20]:
Like, I can't believe this is my new normal. And unfortunately, it was my new normal. It was like that pain never quite went away. And in my book, I call it the unraveling by endometriosis. It's like the pharmaceuticals they gave me to address the endometriosis gave me other symptoms, which then had to be sort of whack a mole by another pharmaceutical, which was whack a mold by another pharmaceutical. So I was taking 800 milligrams ibuprofen a day, like a multivitamin. Right. I think I damaged my stomach for life.

Katie Edmonds [00:04:47]:
And because I was damaging my stomach so much, they gave me antacids. To take every day. So now I'm really not absorbing any nutrients. I have this huge bloated belly. I have chronic pain, and I'm doing everything right, everything the doctor said. And my boyfriend at the time, now my husband, he was like, why don't you look into diet and lifestyle? And I just remember being so mad, like, you are so dumb, like, boys, really, to stop my uterus, to be stuck to my bowels. Like, who are you? And then I was like, well, okay, I'll look it up. And that's when I did do some diet and lifestyle stuff.

Katie Edmonds [00:05:20]:
But, like a lot of people, it's like, it helped a little bit, but not that much because I was just cutting out every food I could, and then that kind of helped. So I thought, well, cut out more foods, and it's not really helping everything. So I'll just detox, detox, detox, detox. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just throwing one at the Wallacebo and stick. But the end of eight years, I'm sicker than I've ever been. Like, I now have chronic fatigue, I have terrible digestive issues, my endopains. All the time we're trying to get pregnant.

Katie Edmonds [00:05:46]:
I've had two surgeries, and there's no reason I shouldn't be pregnant. My fallopian tubes are open, et cetera. And I just get really mad because I felt like I'd been lied to. I didn't know why. I just felt like everything was wrong and no one was actually looking at me or taking my case seriously. It was like everything was just, oh, that's just endometriosis. That's just a symptom of endometriosis. And my very analytical brain was like, why? I don't understand why I have chronic fatigue.

Katie Edmonds [00:06:14]:
If I have some lesions growing on my uterus, I do not understand that. So that is actually what fueled me to start researching endometriosis on pubmed, which is where I should have been in the first place. But I was reading all the blogs and the little endometriosis websites where they say, we don't know anything about endometriosis. All you can do is manage symptoms. So it seemed like, since everyone was saying that, that was appropriate. And the first thing I learned was that endometriosis was not a hormonal disease. And here I was for the past eight, nine years of my life, trying to destroy every ounce of estrogen in my body, which I thought was overloaded with estrogen and fueling endometriosis. And I was like, my brain exploded, like, wait, what? Endometriosis isn't a hormonal disease.

Katie Edmonds [00:06:55]:
It's not that roller coastered into me just doing my practice. I actually found the diet and myself factors that actually do influence the disease. The disease being one rooted in immune dysfunction, a multifactorial, heterogeneous disease, which is so much more than a period problem or hormonal disease, is vastly complex. So when you understand the complexities, you can start to address each complexity one by one by one, which I did reclaim my fertility. I now have two wonderful kids. I am healthier. I'm almost 39, and I think back at me at 21 and like, oh, I just want to give that girl a hug. So 20 years later, I'm feeling great.

Katie Edmonds [00:07:37]:
And this is why, I guess, I do what I do. Writing the books and the blogs and everything else.

Alyssa Chavez [00:07:44]:
Nice.

Katie Edmonds [00:07:44]:
Yeah.

Alyssa Chavez [00:07:45]:
It's so interesting. Every time I listen to different people's stories, there's so many similarities in there, and just, I think that lack of awareness of what endometriosis even really is and what's going on in your body because you're so right. Like, the chronic fatigue, why in the world is that related to endometriosis lesions? And I think there's so many symptoms like that, the pain. I think we all can kind of make that connection. But many of the other symptoms, the bloating, the fatigue, these weird symptoms that come up that, oh, yeah, that's really common with endometriosis. But I love that you are just always asking that question of why is that happening? Why is that related? And certainly, what can I actually do about it? So. Love that. Cool.

Alyssa Chavez [00:08:37]:
Well, I would love to start off because I know you've done a lot of research about the development of endometriosis and the factors that can contribute to the growth and development of endometriosis and what's actually true as far as we know. And I think that's going to be helpful for so many people. I would love if you can dive.

Katie Edmonds [00:08:58]:
Into that a little bit. Yeah. So it's a ton of information, right? It's a brain dump, which is something I'm good at, but it can really overwhelm people. So if you're listening to this, all of this information is separated into chapters in the book, so you can get through each little step individually. But when I started researching the book, I did so with some inherent myths in my mind that I think are really common. And what we see on social media is this, like, the dichotomy between. Oh, endometriosis is caused by retrograde menstruation, or you're born with it. Right? These are these two things.

Katie Edmonds [00:09:35]:
And so endometriosis activist sites are like, it's not caused by retrograde menstruation. That is so false, because so many people have retrograde menstruation, and not everyone has endometriosis, which is absolutely true. So their idea of trying to blow up retrograde menstruation based on that theory is correct in certain ways, but it's also totally misleading. So no one is born with endometriosis. No one, to date has ever been born with endometriosis. What you can be born with is an endometriosis like cell, and these cells are not endometriosis. They are precursors. You can have a cell your whole life, and it can never become endometriosis.

Katie Edmonds [00:10:14]:
So there's something like 10% of fetuses are seen to have endolike cells in the cul de sac. So they're actually born with the cell already outside of the uterus, but only something like 4% develop endometriosis there. That means 60% of cases had the cell, but it never became endometriosis. So that's a really important thing to distinguish. You can have a cell and you haven't been introduced to all the inputs that have established and activated it. So the first step is getting that cell. And these cells are generally believed to be endometrial cells, the normal cells that line the inside of the uterus, that should be beacons of fertility, right? They are these beautiful, loving cells that will nourish a baby should a fertilized egg implant, and should it not, it will shed with menses and obviously go out your vagina. So with the endometriotic cells, they can be genetically and epigenetically altered to behave radically different.

Katie Edmonds [00:11:16]:
And instead of beacons of fertility, they actually become very aggressive. They can become proliferative. They can grow extremely fast, highly sensitive to estrogen, up to 140 times more sensitive, which is a huge amount more receptors. If you think about that. Progesterone resistance, where you have an endometrial cell, should have ample progesterone docking sites. These ones don't. So it's sort of like all growth, no cooling. And the way you can kind of think of the difference is when you hear someone say, oh, it's just misplaced.

Katie Edmonds [00:11:45]:
Endometrial cell is if you have liver cancer that metastasizes into your lungs, they're not saying oh, that's a misplaced liver cell. They're saying that's liver cancer, right? It started out as a liver cell, but it's so epigenetically and genetically altered beyond belief that it's now attacking your own body and growing into healthy tissue and destroying it. That's the same thing with endometriosis. At one point was an endometrial cell. It should have been, but due to circumstances, it's now behaving radically different, to the point we don't treat it like an endometrial cell. You have to treat it like endometriosis now. Just like you wouldn't do a liver cleanse to get rid of liver cancer in your lung. A weird thing to think about, but it is like how a lot of doctors or people are explaining endometriosis.

Katie Edmonds [00:12:29]:
So this cell can. There's things out of our control, like our genetic inheritances. It's highly likely everyone who has endometriosis has someone else in their family above them, a family line of endometriosis. So the susceptibility is there, but just like your susceptibility for colon cancer, there doesn't mean you're going to get it. So there's all these other factors that go into it. So endocrine disrupting chemicals are a huge one that change a normal endometrial cell into something highly aggressive, damaging, proliferative, all of those things. So we're talking about phthalates, right? That are in just about every skincare, hair care plastic product in the world. So what are we all doing? Like drinking out of plastic, eating off of plastic, putting on really beautiful organic skincare that even has the ingredient perfume in it? Perfume.

Katie Edmonds [00:13:21]:
It's usually perfume fragrance. Because of a loophole. It can be chock full of phthalates. So even a product that says phthalate free, if it has fragrance perfume in it, can actually still have phthalates in it. So it becomes, I don't want to say confusing because I don't want to throw it out there. It just becomes more complicated and it takes a little bit more work to find the products that are going to be phthalate free. Pesticides and herbicides. There's an enormous list.

Katie Edmonds [00:13:45]:
Just think of chemicals and how they can cause cancer, how they're associated. Basically the exact same chemicals are associated with the development of this endometriosis like cell. So that's the first step, right? Is that cell actually? The other thing, I think that's important to talk about, trying not to info dump too much is chronic inflammation leading to these endolike cells? And a big reason why is because one of the holding sites for endolike cells is actually in your uterus. So this is rarely talked about that. Our normal endometrial cells can be behaving a lot more like endometriosis. So we almost have endometriotic cells inside the uterus, which a can be a huge problem for fertility. It can be one reason why we're experiencing unexplained fertility. Even though our fallopian tubes are open, everything's a go.

Katie Edmonds [00:14:34]:
Semen strong, everything. That can be one of the reasons why. And the inflammation factor is part of what makes cells turn really aggressive. So when you have a stem cell, which are really cool. Right. Like, we don't think our endometrial lining actually sheds and regrows every month. It's like a lizard that loses its tail and regrows it. We can't do that any other area of the body, but our uterus is doing it.

Katie Edmonds [00:15:01]:
So these cells have amazing regenerative properties. But when stem cells meet chronic inflammation, they kind of scream, and in their terror, they turn into this other type of cell that is a survival mechanism for stem cells. But the survival mechanism is what allows it to flow throughout the body and establish in places far and wide and be very aggressive. So the chronic inflammation factor either within the uterus when we're talking about uterine infections, something like endometritis, or pathogenic overgrowth of the reproductive tracts, which are a really big factor to take into account with endometriosis, or outside of the uterus and your peritoneal cavity. And this is people who develop endometriosis after, like, pelvic inflammatory disease, something like. Or they have just an infection of the peritoneal cavity. It's correlated on each side inside the uterus and outside of the uterus, so that chronic inflammation itself, the inflammation can create an endolike cell, which is fascinating and horrifying at the same time. Right.

Katie Edmonds [00:16:04]:
Okay, so that's step one.

Alyssa Chavez [00:16:09]:
Oh, my goodness. It just shows you what a rabbit hole this is to dive into.

Katie Edmonds [00:16:16]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:16:16]:
There's so much happening in our bodies, and it's so interesting how I think oversimplified this all is in most of the information that's out there. So, personally, I really love that you're taking a nice, deep dive into this and what all is going on in your body. This may be one that you all want to go back and listen to more than once, because there's a lot to take in, but no, I love it. I think it's great because I'm a big fan of knowledge is power, right. The more that we know and understand about what's going on in our bodies, the more it empowers us to be able to do something about it and be able to get to a place where we feel healthier and better, and we're not living with some of these chronic symptoms that are going on.

Katie Edmonds [00:17:01]:
So I love it. Yeah, I'm the same way. And I think it's one of those best ways to retrain any part of your body is you have to know what's going on with it, what's going wrong. And I was one of the women who would do, like, the 30 day things, right? As if 30 days would heal me because I didn't know what was going on. But you read about this, like, 30 day full body cleanse, like, 30 day diet for full body health or whatever it was, and it's like, okay, that's going to be it. And then I'd throw myself into these things and they wouldn't work, and I would have this thing of, well, I'm doing everything and nothing worked. But I was doing everything. I was doing a lot of things, but none of it was directed at endometriosis.

Katie Edmonds [00:17:39]:
So when you have a disease, you have to know what the disease is in order to address it. Like, if you have celiac and you're trying to do a bunch of gut health diets, but you're still being contaminated with gluten because you play with your kids playdoh every day, you literally are never going to get better. So you have to know what you're dealing with and with endo. That's why I came from my anger of not knowing what the disease was. And once we know, we can make really big leaps in addressing that. Like, if you have a surgery, right, and you don't want the endometriosis to come back, but you are like, I was as a teenager, obsessed with fragrances and what is that? Body shop. It was the body shop back when I was like, bodyworks is the other one? Yeah. Scented everything.

Katie Edmonds [00:18:24]:
And I'm spraying Febreze over my clothes before I leave the door and extra scented laundry. And I had no idea all of those chemicals are directly associated with the endometriosis. Directly. Right. This isn't like, oh, well, maybe they are. It's like, it's in the literature very clearly. So once you know those things, you can say, oh, this is why I'm moving to essential oils, you now know, and you're not going to fall back anymore. It's sort of like those cheating things or like, oh, I'm going to start being good again soon.

Katie Edmonds [00:18:54]:
It's like you really have to make this your lifestyle in order to beat it. Especially for us, dealing with it chronically. Right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:19:00]:
Yeah, absolutely. Now, you had mentioned a little bit earlier, I know this is something that you talk a lot about, too, about how endometriosis is, there's a big component of immune dysfunction. And I love also, by the way, how you talk about how it's a multifactorial disease, right? It's not like, oh, there's one thing. Because even just the explanation you were giving us, just that introduction to what endometriosis is and how it develops, look at how many different things you're talking about, even with that, right. The phthalates in our fragranced things and toxins that we're exposed to and all of the different things that go on. But the immune system is absolutely something that's a huge piece of the puzzle. And I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about that and what that connection is, because I know that's something that may not occur to people right off the bat. Again, we're taught that it's a period problem.

Alyssa Chavez [00:19:55]:
It's a reproductive disease. So what does your immune system have to do with all that?

Katie Edmonds [00:20:01]:
Right? So if you have the precursor to endometriosis, you have this endolyke cell. Now come those theories of how it gets out, and this is where you hear you're born with it or retrograde menstruation. Both are very great theories to show how those endolic cells appeared outside of the uterus. They are both very well viewed in research. If you have an endolic cell inside the uterus that comes out, or it's already born outside the uterus, that's been seen both ways, but it's not endometriosis. Right. So what activates that cell into an endometriosis? Lesion is your immune system, and this is exactly the same as cancer. This is cancer and endometriosis are so similar in this regard.

Katie Edmonds [00:20:45]:
So when you have a cell, an endolike cell, it is a weird, abnormal monstrosity that your body should take care of. It takes care of these things all the time. Right. Any damaged tissue, a bacteria, a virus, strange, abnormal mutated cells just like this one, your immune system should be cleaning up and taking it out. This is why normal people grow cancer like cells all the time, every day, and your immune system clears those things out. So with endometriosis, you have this cell and your immune system is doing a few things. One, it's not cleaning it out, it's not seeing it as a threat, which is a potent form of immune dysfunction, one form of immune dysfunction. So it's not doing things that it should getting it out.

Katie Edmonds [00:21:29]:
The other thing it's doing is actually activating that cell into your tissue. It's so confused. It says, well, it looks like an endometrial cell. It's not where it should be. It's behaving very strange, but I'm still going to establish this in the tissue. And what these immune factors do, so to speak, is sew the cell into your tissue, establish blood, lymph and nerve supply, and now you have an activated endometriosis lesion. This is when you officially have the disease. It would be microscopic at this point.

Katie Edmonds [00:21:58]:
No surgeon would be able to see it, but it's there, a microscopic lesion. So what we see in normal, healthy women is microscopic endometriosis. Lesions appear and disappear on and off. So it is very possible that endometriosis, maybe it wouldn't be called endometriosis, but this process is a normal bodily process that happens in healthy women and has forever. These little stem cells want to make up shot. Maybe some immune system issues happen, but then your immune system actually gets rid of them once they're established. It says, oh no, that was a mistake, we're getting rid of you. So with endometriosis patient, that's not happening.

Katie Edmonds [00:22:36]:
The cells stay, and then again, they're aggressive, they're estrogen sensitive, they're super sensitive to inflammatory immune factors, et cetera, et cetera. Long book worth of options there. And what they do is they grow and progress. And there's different types of endometriosis based on the type of cell you have, the type of exposure, it's have the type of genetic susceptibility you have, that you can have very slow growing endometrioma that may never cause you problems. You can have a rapid fire growth of endometriosis that just moves so fast and it takes over so many of your organs, and you have a dense endometriosis very quickly. There's no one way this disease works or behaves. There's over 65 different types and counting. So, like, there's over 100 different types of cancer.

Katie Edmonds [00:23:27]:
You can think of that similarly, and that's why your endometriosis will be very different. Than my endometriosis, and also why it's different in how we treat the endometriosis. So if the doctor blanket approach doesn't work, but it actually can work for some people. Right? Like, some women go on birth control and they literally feel fine, and they go off birth control, get pregnant, and they're like, no, it worked. I don't see what the big deal is. It wasn't a problem. And others, like me, go on birth control and have entire health collapse. Right.

Katie Edmonds [00:23:55]:
Others may not have any symptoms, and they end up having stage four endometriosis, and they only find out because they're trying to get pregnant and they can't, and they have literally no symptoms their whole life. So I did some research on that with Dr. Dan Martin, and it's cruel and it's fascinating all the same time just how different this disease behaves.

Alyssa Chavez [00:24:15]:
Yeah, totally. And I hear that all the time when I'm talking to people, just how different everyone's experience is, how differently we react to medical treatments, how differently our bodies behave. And that's one thing that I've always found really fascinating about endometriosis, is what you were just talking about, how someone can have stage four endometriosis and not really experience any symptoms from it and not have any idea that that's going on in their body, whereas somebody else might have similar disease going on, but be in massive pain all the time, or might even have stage one endometriosis and have a whole lot of symptoms. So it's very interesting in that regard, because we think of the stages being this kind of end all, be all categorization, I guess, of endometriosis, but really it's very individual at the end of the day.

Katie Edmonds [00:25:13]:
Yeah. Which is part of that word that I say so frequently used, the confusing thing, which is why I was trying to cut through it and say, no, it's just complex. Like, don't say it's confusing. Don't tell your body it's confusing. Say it's complex. Your only job as a patient, I say, is to discover what your endometriosis is. You don't need to worry like researchers to find out every different bit of endometriosis for every person. You just need to find your own triggers, your own unique blueprint to how you got endometriosis.

Katie Edmonds [00:25:43]:
The things that went into your body and then whichever factors you have under your control, because there's honestly a lot we don't have under our control, but doing the things that we can to stack the deck in our favor.

Alyssa Chavez [00:25:55]:
Yeah, I love that. I highly recommend everyone go back and listen to that last 30 seconds or so one more time, because I think that's the most important thing, because I hear so often people feeling just overwhelmed and there's so much information out there. But that is an excellent little golden nugget there of just focus on what's going on in your body. You don't need to be the world class expert on endometriosis. You just need to become the expert on your own body, which, absolutely. I think we have a lot of intuition on what's going on in our own bodies anyway, what things we are sensitive to, what works and what doesn't work. It's maybe just a matter of learning to listen to that and figure out.

Katie Edmonds [00:26:33]:
Which is part of the problem with, I think with the social media, not obsession, but it's like we can find out so much about endometriosis on social media, but then it goes a little far, right? You start following every health account, and they have different ways to address endo or to address health in general, often because that's what worked for them, which is not to say it's wrong, it's just what's worked for them. But then I'm sure you have this, too. I have clients come to me that have tried literally 100 different diets, and they are so stressed out. And the thing that they didn't do was listen to their intuition that you said, that's there, right? Because we lose trust in our body, and it's one of the biggest, most important things we can do to heal is to actually reestablish that trust. I used to do this mantra saying, I'm sorry I left you, I trust you. We're in this together. Because I was one of those girls that would send that uterus picture, like, meanwhile in my uterus, and there's like this exploding bombs and stuff. And to me, my brain and my body were separate entities, and my body was out to get me.

Katie Edmonds [00:27:35]:
I'd say that my body hates me, like, these little things, and I would just reiterate it in my head and to the point I had lost such connection with my body. I did not have any intuition. I could not feel blood sugar issues. I could not feel the effects of alcohol. I could not feel anything. I had sort of numbed myself to it all. And once I checked back in, I started to realize, like, oh, I'm actually a little sensitive to four cups of coffee a day. I'm only just starting to realize that at the age of 30, because I've checked back in with my body, and you listen to all these.

Katie Edmonds [00:28:09]:
I don't want to say quote unquote experts because there's really a lot of experts, but like you said, you have to be the expert in yourself. I eat red meat on average about twice a day for years, and it's the number one thing I refuse to eat. I was a vegetarian for 15 years, and I listened to all the health experts. Veganism and vegetarian was the way. And I was like, you all, you're all so dumb if you aren't a vegetarian. It's so unhealthy. I had this thing, and meanwhile my joints were falling apart. My blood sugar was out of control.

Katie Edmonds [00:28:42]:
For some women, eating that much meat might make them feel really poorly, but I had to get back in touch with myself and say, like, wow, I need that much protein in order to balance my blood sugar. I'm of european descent, my mom is from Britain, and we don't do as well with high carbohydrate diets, and we do well with more satiating meat based meals. And that changed my life. But I would never have gotten there if I listened to any of the stuff online because it's all so anti meat, anti animal protein. It's going to kill you. And I had to say, oh, actually, I feel better than I've ever felt. It works for me, but if it doesn't work for someone, it's not my place to say, yes, it does. I think we all just have to allow ourselves to heal the way we need to heal.

Alyssa Chavez [00:29:30]:
Absolutely. I 100% agree on that. I had a very similar story. I was a vegetarian for about six years because I thought that that was the healthiest thing for my body and have since really learned that I am similar, where I also do much better with protein. And even when I came out of being a vegetarian, I would only eat fish and chicken for years. And it was years later before I added in red meat again. And I immediately started to notice a difference in the way I felt. I was very resistant to it.

Alyssa Chavez [00:30:03]:
But for me, and again, this isn't for everybody. Bodies are different and we all have unique needs. But I did have a very similar experience. I was like, oh, my gosh, my body really needs this.

Katie Edmonds [00:30:14]:
Yes. That's so funny. Maybe it's more profound if you're a longtime vegetarian, to start eating red meat in a way, because as a vegetarian, you are basically almost guaranteed to be deficient in zinc and iron, even if you're supplementing they look at research across the board, and vegetarians are consistently lower in those nutrients. And those are nutrients that you absolutely need to fight inflammation. So it's something that with the endometriosis, just having endometriosis can make you iron deficient. It's because of the inflammation. The iron is a factor that it doesn't quell inflammation like zinc, but it's a factor that's absolutely a critical nutrient in addressing the inflammation. Plus, we're bleeding.

Katie Edmonds [00:30:56]:
Some of us bleed very heavily for a week, not just externally, but also internally. So there's so much going on. And I know for me, when I started eating liver, I say I had this almost profound experience, like the clouds lifted off of my chronic fatigue. There is such a nutrient dense food. I had never eaten liver before and I was horrified with myself. As a recovering vegetarian, I would do mantras again like, this is healing you, and I'd eat like a piece of chocolate cake. After not even kidding, I was like, okay, but then you can have your cake. But it started to change my life.

Katie Edmonds [00:31:28]:
And that was the realization of I am so nutrient poor. Like my body can't even function because I don't have these nutrients. And so I think I'm doing fine doing this low fat vegetarian diet because it's healthy. But I've gotten rid of all the nutrients that I've ever had stored up. And I need not only to give my daily quota, but rebuild my stores. And that took years probably, of eating really nutrient dense foods. But yeah, it's like when you have that body intuition, you can realize, right? Like, oh my gosh, this steak I thought would kill me is actually making me feel very strong today. And I need to realize that and be okay with that.

Alyssa Chavez [00:32:07]:
Yeah, actually that's a perfect transition because I know in your book heal endo, you have a lot, and on your blog as well, you have a lot of information about nutrients and how that impacts endometriosis and how we feel. And you mentioned even just now how zinc impacts inflammation and how many of us are very deficient in zinc. And can you talk a little bit about, I know that's a very broad topic, but just about how nutrients do impact our bodies, because we all hear the typical advice, okay, you should eat your veggies and blah, blah, blah, you should take vitamins. But I think really developing that deeper understanding of how nutrients really impact and influence our bodies, particularly if you have a chronic illness like endometriosis and what that looks like.

Katie Edmonds [00:32:56]:
Yeah. Yes, definitely a big broad question, but I think there's so much amazing research on it. So something that is often said in the endometriosis community is that diet and lysell can only affect symptoms. And I'm going to say that's very false. The reason why we don't have more literature supporting that is simply because until now, we haven't been able to track what endometriosis lesions are doing in people without opening them up and doing laparoscopy. So what we have is we have a lot of animal studies showing that diet and lifestyle factors significantly affect endometriosis behavior in the animals. Meaning it shrinks it or it grows it, which, if you didn't know that endometriosis shrinks and grows all the time. That's just what it does.

Katie Edmonds [00:33:45]:
Across numerous studies, we see it's actually more likely for endometriosis to stabilize or regress than it is to progress. So on average, and I actually have a blog you can link to that, has all this research, on average, it's about 30% of us with endometriosis may have it progress into worse forms of disease. Absolutely bad, right? You don't want it to progress, but we're also terrified of it progressing. What we see is there's about 30% of us end up having it stabilized. Could still have symptoms. Not saying the symptoms are gone, but your lesions aren't growing. There's not the scar tissue formation, et cetera, and 40% actually have the lesions regress. So this has been seen on ultrasound.

Katie Edmonds [00:34:26]:
Those studies were done on people, and it was during repeat surgeries or imaging at the time. And then we see this all the time with endometriomas, because you can image them very easily. We see that they shrink, they grow, they disappear. Right. There's all this stuff going on all the time with endometriomas, and there's all the research showing that potent antioxidants, Nac, can actually. That was like a really big support in shrinking endometriomas. It's one thing. So when you're online, everyone's, like, taking Nac.

Katie Edmonds [00:34:56]:
Well, didn't work for everyone in that trial. But the big important thing is that when you lower inflammation, that's what helps shrink the endometriosis. So what we want to do is, I say, stack the deck in our favor to stabilize or regress the endometriosis. Again, it is different than symptoms, but the reason why you don't want it to progress is the organ damage. We all want to preserve fertility. I don't care if you don't think you want babies at the age of 18, you might want them in ten years, and you deserve that. It's something we should have, the human right to have babies if we want them. So that's why you really don't want it to progress.

Katie Edmonds [00:35:33]:
And of course, the symptoms can be all over the place. But what progresses? Endometriosis, first and foremost, is inflammation. Inflammation is nothing more than your immune system attacking. And I say, what if we just call it immune system attack? Because most of us are thinking inflammation is some foreign thing inside of us, and it's not. It's your immune system attacking, and the immune system attack that never ends is what makes endometriosis worse. It actually epigenetically alters it to be a worse form of disease again, because of it being the stem cells and the feeding on inflammation. And two, it's the inflammation that creates scar tissue and intra abdominal adhesion. So it's not the lesions that are creating that.

Katie Edmonds [00:36:13]:
The lesions aren't like, reaching to each other and holding hands, it's the inflammation. It's like your immune factors are fighting so hard and for so long, they scar. It's like acne scarring. Like, the zits didn't scar the face, it was the amount of inflammation that swelled and destroyed the tissue that scars the skin. For acne, the same thing with endometriosis. Now, what do you do to stop inflammation? Antioxidants is a huge one. So if you have, let's just call it inflammation, an immune factor that's causing inflammation. The way to stop that is to insert an antioxidant.

Katie Edmonds [00:36:49]:
It will grab the inflammatory immune factor, the free radical, and dispose of it, so to speak. So if you're a normal person, let's say you have 100 pieces of inflammation, I'm just going to throw it out there like it's coins in your body. You have 100 pieces of inflammation, you're going to need 100 antioxidants. If you have endometriosis, you might have 200,000 pieces of inflammation. At any given moment, especially if you have active endometriosis, you might need 200,000 antioxidants around the clock. Right? So this is when you show research, like, to prevent scurvy, you need something like 60 milligrams of vitamin C a day. What they did is they gave women with endometriosis 1000 milligrams of vitamin C a day, and they gave them 64 times more vitamin E than they need just to survive. And suddenly, after three months, their pain plummeted because they were having these huge amounts of antioxidants, right.

Katie Edmonds [00:37:45]:
Just kind of cooling down the whole system. In the book I talk about every different kind of antioxidant around. Like phytonutrients are less talked about antioxidants and there basically are all of the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables that give them their pigment. That's why blueberries have a specific antioxidant in them different than a cucumber has a different antioxidant in them. So by eating the rainbow, it's such a simple thing to say. And you might say, well that has nothing to do with endometriosis, but it does, right? It's like a little simple fact. You can say this is actually helping my endometriosis and therefore I'm going to stick with it because I know I have a lot of inflammation. Every fruit and vegetable, especially if it's local, you get more if it's organic and local, freshly picked.

Katie Edmonds [00:38:28]:
That doesn't mean if you don't have access to those foods it's not going to work. Just if you can prioritize it in that order, awesome. Because the more freshly picked the more potent the antioxidant. And what you're doing is you're quelling all that inflammation. You want to stack the deck in your favor to prevent progression, calm it all down. Especially if you need a surgery and you can't afford one right now. This is why I kind of hate people who say that it only makes a difference in symptoms. Because we could be preventing endometriosis progression in a great number of people by saying eat a high antioxidant rich diet and consider supplementation if it's the correct type until you can get to that surgery.

Katie Edmonds [00:39:09]:
Because if you can't afford 50,000 surgery dollar surgery for three years, what are you going to do in the meantime? Just sit and suffer and know that there has to be this better way. And that's why antioxidants are so key. One of the biggest factors now the other factor for nutrients besides antioxidants. Well, there's a number of factors. Blood sugar is a huge one and I suffered from it. I just know you as a vegetarian suffered from it. Oh man, it was so God awful, right? I had a woman who just read my book and she reached out to say thank you. She is the first time she hasn't been hungry in her whole life because she didn't realize she just needed to up her protein.

Katie Edmonds [00:39:53]:
And I was there. I don't know, I was always a thing of, like, I'm always hungry, so therefore, I need to manage how much I eat, because I could eat all the time. So the blood sugar thing, it's probably too much to go into right now, but when you have a blood sugar spike and a crash, at the spike and the crash, both of those moments, they physiologically change your body. There's all these adaptations in your body. Your body does not want to have a lot of glucose and insulin. So the way it reacts, there's this chain reaction actually produces a ton of free radicals inside your peritoneal cavity. Those free radicals are what you don't want. And then at the crash, it releases all the stress hormones, which actually promote endometriosis, development, establishment, and progression.

Katie Edmonds [00:40:39]:
So if you have a blood sugar spike and crash every once in a while because you're at your six year old's birthday party and ate way too much cake, like me two weeks ago, that's okay. But if you're doing it every day, breakfast, snack, lunch, coffee break, dinner, dessert, all throughout the day, say, of diabetes prediabetes, insulin resistance, those are all now clinical forms of blood sugar dysregulation, you're going to need to address that and addressing that factor for some, I've actually found that to be a silver bullet, specifically with fertility. So I had some challenging clients, or they'd had challenges before they started working with me and got pregnant immediately from blood sugar control. I haven't had that much success that quick of success with a nutrient dense diet, something where you build up stores and eventually you get there. So for these women, it actually was their thing, the crux of their issue, that was holding them back. And it's why I say that blood sugar should be a non negotiable, which, again, has a pretty simple formula, right? Sort of like eating the rainbow for antioxidants and fat, protein, fiber. Prioritize those and get yourself into a balance. You have to, again, start listening to your body to see what your body needs more or less of and a lot less starchy carbs, still, without avoiding them and doing the whole keto thing.

Katie Edmonds [00:41:58]:
It doesn't need to be like that, but you should be able to eat a meal and make it 4 hours without being really hungry. That's why I say, you know, that you're really doing it, right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:42:09]:
Yeah, totally agree. I definitely did have a lot of history with blood sugar imbalance, and it's such an interesting thing, too, because I know when I first started learning about blood sugar and how important it is and how it even works in the first place. Honestly, I thought hangry was just a trait that I was born with.

Katie Edmonds [00:42:30]:
Personality.

Alyssa Chavez [00:42:33]:
That's just me. Like, when my now husband and I first started dating, he just knew that was probably one of the first things he learned about me, was like, I better feed her or she's going to be very angry very fast. And that was just my life. I was still vegetarian at the time, but also, I think I just didn't have an understanding of protein and fat and why we need that stuff. And I was definitely eating a very carb heavy diet. And, yeah, it was a lot of up and down, and I know that that's common for so many people. I actually recently did at the time that we're recording this. This episode came out yesterday, although that by the time this is released, it will have been a few weeks ago.

Alyssa Chavez [00:43:15]:
I did a full episode just on Blood Sugar, so I can link to that in the show notes as well if anyone wants to hear more about that and how all of that works. I know you have a lot of information about that as well in your book and on your blog. So between all of those resources, you will have everything you need to know about. Or maybe not everything, but a lot of things you need to know about blood sugar.

Katie Edmonds [00:43:35]:
Yeah. And it's weird because it's one of those things you hear about so much, especially with diabetes being so rampant, and you just kind of always think it's eating too much sugar. I always thought that I'm like, well, I wasn't eating a lot of sugar, not in the traditional sense. Like, I wasn't drinking a lot of soda and eating cookies, but I had no idea what the balance part was. And that's where it's another one of those annoying things for people that want to be told exactly what to do, to take a step back and, okay, like, first I just have to learn about it. I will sit down, and I will learn what blood sugar is. I will listen to Alyssa's podcast. I will just figure it out.

Katie Edmonds [00:44:13]:
And then once you figure it out, right, because of the school modules, you're like, oh, I get it. And then you make sense the rest of your life. But until you understand it, you can't necessarily make the gains, or at least for.

Alyssa Chavez [00:44:26]:
Yeah, yeah, totally agree. Love it. Love it.

Katie Edmonds [00:44:31]:
Yeah.

Alyssa Chavez [00:44:31]:
There's so much to dive into with all of this, but I think we have a good foundation, at least to start with here. Now. There are so many topics I feel like we could dive into maybe we'll have to come back and dive into some more stuff in a future episode. But is there anything else that you feel like you really want to share with my audience, our audience today before we finish our interview here?

Katie Edmonds [00:44:58]:
Well, I will say diet changed my life so much, and it was the start. I'd say it laid the foundation for my healing. And some women have great responses to diet alone. But healing from endo, for me, was a lot more than diet. And I see that overlooked by a lot of people who reach out to me on my blog or on instagram saying the thing, I've cut out all these foods, or it's always so food focused, like, what do I need to do now for food? And sometimes we're doing just fine on food or good enough. There's not really going to be this perfect thing. And what I say to these people now, and what I wish I could say to myself a long time ago was letting some of it go, that need to control everything. Let your nervous system start to recalibrate in a certain way.

Katie Edmonds [00:45:51]:
And there's so much association between endometriosis and the nervous system and thinking that everything is a threat. And even when we think food is healing us, but we get so controlling of food in that way, like, food has to heal me. This is the way this more restrictive diet, more this, more that food actually becomes a threat without realizing it. And that is what orthorexia is. It's an unhealthy obsession with being healthy. But because we've felt such some really great benefits from diet, it would make sense that someone would say, well, that is my golden egg. And if I can just figure out all the little secrets this diet and nutrition stuff is hiding from me, then I'll feel better. So there's sleep, right? Like, I only recently realized I was sleeping poorly because I got a WHOOP, which tracks your stress levels.

Katie Edmonds [00:46:38]:
And it told me, I'm sleeping awful at night, and my kids are sleeping through the night. And I was like, well, what's up? Well, I figured it out. It was screens. I'm on a screen for 30 to 45 minutes before bed. Yes, as, like, a nutrition professional. But I never have trouble going to sleep. I don't feel like I wake up with insomnia, but my little annoying bracelet is telling me that I'm tossing and turning all night, and I'm barely going into deep sleep. I barely have dreams.

Katie Edmonds [00:47:02]:
So I turn off the screens and suddenly I'm sleeping through the night. I have so much rem sleep, and immediately I feel my blood sugar balance more like my desire to snack. I'm like, just don't do it just because you're home all day around snacks that you want to, but suddenly it's like, no, I don't need that. And I don't need that extra coffee. And I have so much energy to go exercise right now. It was before it was like a slog, but I kept blaming it on something else. It was like, because I'm a tired mom of two young kids, but like, okay, sleep is really important. So what if you're focusing so much on diet, but you really leave it alone? Focus on sleep.

Katie Edmonds [00:47:39]:
See where that gets you. How's your movement and exercise? I have so much information on my site about cord dysfunction and how cord dysfunction is a direct contributor to Endo belly. So everyone who's obsessed with food about this bloating belly, and I'm like, does your stomach poof out when you cough, right? That means you have core dysfunction and all that pressure actually damages the tissue and makes you very bloated. So you actually need to do breathing exercises and to lift those organs back out of your belly. So it's just, I guess, a recommendation to say if you are following these channels, both of our channels for nutrition, I would say nutrition is like one little piece of many that will get you where you need to go and just to relax a little bit into your body and kind of ask her partner with her rather than demanding she healed. Because this is what I did. I really did a lot of control. I was a recovering perfectionist.

Katie Edmonds [00:48:30]:
And just keep moving, keep moving through the different modalities and see how far you can get when you add in some other things as well.

Alyssa Chavez [00:48:37]:
Yeah, I love that. That is the most wonderful advice I've heard all year. For sure.

Katie Edmonds [00:48:43]:
It's the start of the year. You got eleven months left.

Alyssa Chavez [00:48:45]:
Well, you know, but I do. I love that I resonate so much with that. Something that I say a lot is just, it's never just one thing, right? We all want it to be simple. Like, if I eat this one food or if I don't eat this one food, that all will be well. Or if I just have the perfect diet, that everything will be well. But there's so many factors at play, and I love the way you were talking to about just maybe shift your focus, right? Especially if you find that diet is really stressing you out and you're constantly worried about what you're eating. Just put that aside for the moment and focus on something else and see where that gets you. And then the more that you do that and the more that you kind of play around with that stuff, the more that you do get to get to know your body and what it needs and what things do work really well for you.

Alyssa Chavez [00:49:38]:
And that can, again, be very empowering. Totally.

Katie Edmonds [00:49:41]:
Yeah, exactly.

Alyssa Chavez [00:49:43]:
Love it. Well, I think that is a perfect note to end on there. I really highly recommend that you go back and give this episode a second listen at some point in time because there's just so many wonderful nuggets in here. But Katie, thank you so much for being here with us today. I would love if you can share a little bit about where people can find you, connect with you, learn more about you.

Katie Edmonds [00:50:07]:
Yeah. Partake. I have a very big website, healendo.com, free tons of blogs. I think there's over 200 blogs on Endo, my book, if you haven't read it, Healendo, that's available on Amazon and I think Instagram. I'm heal Endo. I should know that. Nice.

Alyssa Chavez [00:50:31]:
And I will link to all of that in the show notes as well. And yeah, if you have not read heal Endo yet, I highly recommend it. It's a fantastic book. I bought it as soon as it came out and recommend it to people all the time. So definitely check that one out. And yeah, thank you so much, Katie, for being here today day. It was wonderful having you.

Katie Edmonds [00:50:51]:
Oh, thanks so much. I love talking. Bye.