068: [FEMININE FLOW] Endometriosis, inflammation, treatment, & more with Katie Edmonds

Did you know that 1 in 10 women suffer from endometriosis? From cramps, and fatigue, to no symptoms at all endometriosis is a condition that affects so many women - yet is wildly under-studied. It is one of the FEW conditions out there where women are told: "There is no cure". Today's episode is about diving deep into this condition, treatment options, and about some powerful science behind the mind-body connection. 

My guest today: Katie Edmonds, an endo warrior, nutritional therapist, Paleo Autoimmune Protocol coach, and author of the incredible book - Heal Endo (the most comprehensive piece of text on endometriosis - out there). 
 
What we cover:

• What is endometriosis (plus many misconceptions about this disease)
• The inflammation x endo flare connection
• The link behind endometriosis & anxiety
• Can endometriosis ever go into remission? What to know + how to get there. 
• Tangible lifestyle, food, and movement tips for treating endometriosis

+ SO MUCH MORE

 About Katie

Katie is an endometriosis-focused author, educator, and Nutritional Therapist. Her best-selling books, "Heal Endo: An Anti-Inflammatory Approach to Healing From Endometriosis," and "The 4-Week Endometriosis Diet Plan," offer invaluable insights into managing the condition. Based on the North Shore of Kaua`i, she resides beside the largest mahogany forest in the United States, where she lives with her husband and two children. Katie is deeply committed to empowering women with endometriosis, channeling her passion into transformative support and education.

  To connect with Katie:
 
IG:  heal.endo
FB: heal.endo

Chapters

• 0:02 Exploring Endometriosis
• 15:32 Reducing Stress for Endometriosis Management
• 22:25 Endometriosis and Immune Dysfunction
• 29:09 Redefining Endometriosis as Inflammatory Disease
• 36:59 Understanding the Life Cycle of Endometriosis
• 43:09 Holistic Approach to Endometriosis Treatment
• 52:00 Managing Endometriosis
• 59:49 Healing Endometriosis

Transcript

Kasia: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Other Way, a lifestyle podcast exploring uncommon, unconventional or otherwise alternative approaches to life, business and health. I'm your host, kasia. I'm the founder of Inflow, a woman's wellness brand that designs intentional products to help women reconnect to their unique cyclical rhythm and find a balance between being and doing. This podcast is an extension of my mission within Flow. Here we provide intentional interviews with inspiring humans, trailblazers, researchers, spiritual teachers and more on the journey of doing things the Other Way. Hi everyone, Welcome back to the podcast Kasia here.

Kasia: 0:52

Well before we dive into today's episode, I have what might be a slightly more lengthy intro, but I think is very important for this particular episode. So just to give you a teaser, I am speaking with an incredible guest on today's podcast episode. I'm speaking with Katie Edmonds, who is a endometriosis author, researcher, educator, nutritional therapist and paleo-autoimmune protocol certified coach. I discovered Katie probably about three months ago when I stumbled upon her incredible blog Kiel Endo, which I will deep link below, and then ended up reading her book on endometriosis shortly thereafter, which is truly. It was a groundbreaking book for me, the most comprehensive body of work on endometriosis that I've ever found, and I've read several books leading up to this. But before we dive into all of that, I want to start by defining endometriosis, sharing a bit of my story, and then I'll talk about what we're going to cover. So just to share some context. If you're listening to this and thinking, oh my gosh, well, I don't have endometriosis, so I'm just going to tune this out, you know, if that resonates with you, please go ahead. But I want to share that.

Kasia: 2:19

Endometriosis is quite a mysterious and severely underdiagnosed condition. Who estimates that roughly about 10% of reproductive age women and girls globally have endometriosis, and I would probably reckon and Katie agrees that this number is actually much higher, because it takes on average seven years to get a diagnosis. Diagnosis is typically done laparoscopically, which is a type of surgery, and that is for women who have severe symptoms, who typically seek that out. So the rate of diagnosis might actually be a lot higher. And so if you are a woman listening to this podcast, if you have experienced painful periods or had horrible fatigue around your cycle or just really have an experience of a struggle around your cycle or it might actually be outside of your cycle as well and it's gotten a bit worse over the last couple of years it might be worth listening to this episode because there might be a lot of wisdom a lot of wisdom actually, that might be relevant for you. So just to kind of define endometriosis, it is a disorder. It's not like your OBGYN might end up diagnosing you if you get seen and they find it via ultrasound, but it's typically diagnosed via laparoscopy, as I shared, it's a disorder in which tissue similar to the tissue that lines the uterus grows outside of the uterus in places where it doesn't belong.

Kasia: 3:52

Endometriosis is an interesting condition and we get into it on this podcast because there are many stages. Some of the most severe stages of endometriosis can result in tissue growing all the way up to the lungs or the brain, which is wild. Symptoms of endometriosis include painful periods, fatigue, heavy bleeding and gastrointestinal upsets and, with endometriosis, the deposits of tissue that act just like the tissue lining the uterus that are developing outside of the uterus. This tissue thickens, breaks down and bleeds with every period, and that leads to some of the symptoms that I just mentioned. Now a couple of facts that I think are important to share before we dive into things, because this episode is really almost like an intermediate introduction to endometriosis when it comes to treatment.

Kasia: 4:48

A lot of the narrative around endometriosis is that, a there is no cure. B it's a progressive disease, and that is absolutely heartbreaking to hear, and I speak from personal experience. I was diagnosed with endometriosis probably about three to six months ago. My OBGYN had very little to offer in terms of words of wisdom or anything. It was like I'm sorry, you'll probably need surgery, no information as to what this was, what is causing it, you know. Is there anything I can do? And Katie and I actually touch on this quite a bit because even though I had a hunch that I had endometriosis, because I'd known that endometriosis is a condition which you know, symptoms include painful periods, getting a diagnosis, that kind of shares that your body is doing, this weird glitchy thing for which there is no cure, was really, really disheartening. And it's interesting because a lot of other chronic diseases or even diseases like cancer, tend to have a much more hopeful narrative. There are treatments out there, there is something you can do. You know, for a lot of women up until really these recent years, they weren't even really diagnosing endometriosis. There isn't, you know. There's now a lot of research coming out about it.

Kasia: 6:15

But when I think about my mom, who most definitely has endometriosis, whose cycles, you know, were extremely brutal to witness. There wasn't really a narrative around what it was, what could you do about it. It was just this thing that you lived with, and actually for a lot of years kind of maybe like a decade or two ago a lot of women were just kind of told that they were crazy, that their symptoms were all in their heads, and actually I would probably reckon that a lot of women still get those comments today. There's nothing wrong with you, your blood tests look fine, you know your uterus looks fine and the symptoms you're talking about they're in your head. And so this episode, I think, will be super empowering for women out there who struggle with maybe they're not endometriosis symptoms, but especially for women who have diagnosed endometriosis. I want to let you know that you're not alone. I have it. My symptoms have been brutal for many years, and my intention with this episode is to share really important knowledge, research-backed information about endometriosis and also share some hope because it is possible to get into remission. Katie the clients Katie has worked with the people Katie has mentioned in her book. They have achieved that, and so if you are someone who is struggling with endometriosis.

Kasia: 7:43

This is going to be an episode that is chock full of knowledge. We're going to cover, obviously, some of the science, the research behind it, the types of endometriosis, the stages, some of the symptoms, because it can be all over the map. We're going to talk about progression and the life cycle. We're going to talk about some other interesting terms, such as limbic system impairment and how that is really related to stress and how a lot of women with endometriosis actually might be physiologically predisposed to react to stress in a very more acute way than women who do not have endometriosis, and what you can do about that. We're going to talk about the root kind of misconception, which is that endometriosis is a disease of a dysfunctional immune system, and we're going to talk about what that means, how it you know there is a connection, of course, between endometriosis and estrogen, which we're going to get into, but really how to reframe that. And we're, of course, going to talk about the pillars of holistic healing for endometriosis and so much more.

Kasia: 8:50

This is an incredible episode. I think it warranted a slightly longer intro and now, without further ado, let us jump right into it, and I hope you enjoy it. Katie, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited. I already said this before, but I feel like it warrants another kind of message for the audience but I absolutely loved your book and I am so obsessed with whatever knowledge you are keeping and I'm just so pumped to have you on here to talk about endometriosis.

Katie Edmonds: 9:25

Oh thanks. Yeah, no, I'm not keeping any any information. It's all all there in the book. It's just so much heavy information, but I'm so glad that you're enjoying it.

Kasia: 9:34

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Well, we have a lot to cover. As we talked about, almost like every part of the outline that I prepared could be a podcast episode in and of itself. So a lot to go over. But before we jump into all of that, I would love for you to share three words that you would use to describe yourself.

Katie Edmonds: 9:53

Okay, so this is kind of easy because I'm doing like this new mantra thing. So it's actually the three words I'm describing myself to myself with is love, joy and confidence. Those are my three, three adjectives yeah.

Kasia: 10:09

Oh my gosh, I love that Slight tangent. Can you tell me about that mantra? What is this? Is this like an affirmation practice or yeah?

Katie Edmonds: 10:18

Yeah, this is something. This is okay, so I am keeping some information. This is like my new rabbit hole that I've gone down with the brain and brain health and endometriosis and it's something I touch on a lot in the research about stress and the nervous system function Like we all get it. There's something so much deeper, I think, with a lot of women with endometriosis and probably chronic disease in general, but it's the almost the inability of the brain to truly enjoy and I don't want to say like just be present or be mindful. I know this is something that you focus on a lot in your own work, but it's like counteracting the millions of ruminating thoughts we have every single day and it's like these ruminations and we're very hard on ourselves. A lot of people with endometriosis have heard it described as like an endometriosis personality type that almost exists a bit of a perfectionist, taking care of others before ourselves, kind of obsessing over things way too much, being highly sensitive and not like in a oh, you're too sensitive or a negative way, but like feeling so deeply that the things that other people are able to shrug off we can ruminate on not just for days, but like weeks, months or years, Like you could think of something in your head 10 times a day that happened to you 10 years ago, right, that you're embarrassed about, or something you said, or misstep, or maybe someone you might have offended, so. So this is called limbic system impairment and it can actually occur even due to a physical trauma, like it can come on after a disease like endometriosis, where you are dealing with a lot of physical traumas. You know, having severe pain every month or throughout the month is traumatizing, to say the least. But I honestly think a lot of this comes beforehand.

Katie Edmonds: 12:04

So, diving into this nervous system piece where a lot of us you would you asked us this something I would laugh about with my clients, I would ask if they're stressed, and it was like 90% of them would say no, I'm not stressed. And then they'd go on. Really yes, they would say that. And in my head I'm like, okay, how am I going to help them understand that they're stressed, Because literally all of their paperwork is saying they're stressed, off the charts. But they had no idea that they were living in that much stress because it was normal, right? It's like when you live with foot pain all your life and someone tells you oh, your feet aren't supposed to be in pain. You might be like what? Oh, I thought it was normal to feel that. So for a lot of my clients it's become so normalized to feel very anxious, Like if you have chronic anxiety, you're chronically stressed, you have the it's stress hormones are flooding your body, right.

Katie Edmonds: 12:52

If you're depressed, you have chronic stress hormones flooding your body and you know if you're ruminating, if you have ruminating thoughts, if you're negative all the time, if you have very little joy or happiness, or if you're sucked into obsession with your disease, whatever it is, you are stewing in those stress chemicals. So it's shifting out of the stress chemical reality. You know there's, there's the that's almost a whole physiology, a chemical makeup that someone can have. You're constantly flooded with cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine, which is C-A-N you could call it CAN physiology. And on the other side of the spectrum are the things like joy and motivation and actually living in the presence and and not ruminating, stewing or having your brain control you all the time.

Katie Edmonds: 13:37

Brain is constantly controlling you, right? So either distract yourself or whatever it is, so you don't need to distract yourself, you don't need to constantly be thinking of being grateful or whatever. You've actually changed your brain physiology to. That's your standard now and those are the dose chemicals dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin. So that's kind of where that came from. That is a long tangent to where that came from. But there's a, there's a program that helps you retain your physiology, and a big part of that is constantly telling yourself what is your current presence, without saying what I hope is my current present. You just assume that that already is like. You already are the healthy person that you wanted to be and you kind of aim to trick your brain by repetition yeah, so that's my, that's my mantra.

Kasia: 14:21

Oh my gosh, Wow, OK, that is first of all. That is so powerful. I feel like we just jumped into like like a whole rabbit hole in and of itself. I mean yeah.

Katie Edmonds: 14:33

Yeah, sorry, I do that. I'm so awful at information dumping.

Kasia: 14:36

Do not apologize, that is insane. It is actually so validating to hear this because kind of even having, like the term I think you called it limbic system Disregulation, is that impairment right, like you know it's it's so fascinating to me. I'm obviously somebody who struggles with this. I struggle with a lot of anxiety and obviously there are lifestyle things that make it worse, like, for example, jam packing my days or having a lot of very social days, like for my system, that are draining, like high stress, high work, lots of deadlines, like those environmental things will make it worse. But I would say that by default I operate kind of in just a general like kind of stress reaction. I feel that all the time Open your emails.

Katie Edmonds: 15:22

No, I'm about your rushing and like you have a podcast to prepare for and you feel like so yeah, it's like the things you're normally doing. Even though you remove those triggers, you're still reacting to life rather than responding to it. So it's kind of a different perspective.

Kasia: 15:34

Yeah, 100 percent, 100 percent. And I've always found it so fascinating because, you know, my husband is the complete opposite. It takes him it's almost like you can imagine like his cup of stress is constantly on empty and so he can just keep pouring it in until it does overflow, maybe eventually. But it's so much easier to kind of empty out or to like deal with a cup that is mostly empty every day versus, in my kind of analogy, I feel like my cup is 75 percent full and I'm filling it, you know, to the max, so it's always overflowing. And so just to even know that there could be like a physiological predisposition to that, obviously knowing that there are things you can do, feels very, very validating, because it can be very frustrating to feel like, oh my gosh, like I'm doing all the things I'm meditating, I'm going to therapy, I'm going for walks Yet by default, you know, I feel like that fight or flight, like instinctually Right.

Katie Edmonds: 16:33

So that's where you actually want to retrain that, so that that's gone Right and you can do that. So things like therapy, like talk therapy, may actually make something like limbic system impairment worse If you're, it's kind of constantly focusing on the negative, constantly focusing on something like I have anxiety, I have this, I have too much stress, and it's this constant focus. What limbic system retraining does is it teaches your body to switch from the can physiology to the dose physiology, and it can take up to six months. There's some really specific programs tailored exactly for this process. The one that I love is it's called DNRS. You can find that retraining the brain dot com and it's like a five step thing. It tells you exactly what to do. It's not like, you know, when I my book is like find your own triggers. Here's a hundred triggers, you know, seek yours out. It's like you have five things to focus on and this is all you focus on for six months. You know, leave talk therapy to the side. We, you know, meditation is neat, but that's not your focus. If you only have limited time, just do these few practices and you can alter your brain chemistry and I have found such amazing success from it. It's.

Katie Edmonds: 17:53

Actually I don't know how I'm going to incorporate any chapter in my book, but I think for so many of us with endometriosis, we're stuck here. We are so stuck here and I, you know, I say that my silver lining is having endometriosis. So I can't like relate to everyone rather than just be like a researcher who doesn't have it, like living and breathing this disease alongside everyone else and thinking, wow, like this is how a brain is supposed to function. And I didn't realize it for so long because ever since I was a kid, it was like stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, living a stressful world, the whole worried, rushing, that rushing thing of, like you know, my heart rate beating. Just from waking up in the morning thinking about my to do list, was not like let's check out what I have to do. It's like, oh my God, what do I have to do today? I better grab a pen because I have to, you know. And it's like, why am I reacting this way? It's ridiculous. And you know, your husband versus you is like a really good Tetris player, right, like you keep removing those stress lines and that's how you keep playing Tetris, you know, until level 400 or whatever.

Katie Edmonds: 18:53

And if you can't remove the stress. That's actually what trauma is. You know, trauma is a word that's used, mistakenly, a lot as a substitute for the word stress. Like oh, I just had such as like a traumatic class. My professor was really hard on me. It's like no, that was a bit stressful for you. Trauma is if you don't know how to release that stress and it actually becomes a part of you and you're thinking about that 10 years later, like, oh, my professor was really hard on me that day, rather than that was a blip in my life. And now I'm not ruminating on that anymore because the only person that's hurting is me, like it's making me sick. So we have to learn to be that incredible chess player that we aren't changing our lives, we're not moving to tropical paradise and never have to work and you know, someone's just giving us all this money and we can do whatever we love forever. Like that's not it. But we have to create our perfect life and the life that we've been given and that takes brain focus Absolutely.

Kasia: 19:50

Hi ladies Kasia here. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to take a moment to double tap on what Katie shared about how important reducing stress is in the progression and symptoms of our endometriosis and the power of lifestyle practices and helping us do that. So if you're a longtime listener to this podcast, you probably already know that, in addition to producing this podcast, I'm also the founder of a woman's wellness brand called Inflow, which is based in cyclical living and designs tools for productivity and personal development through the lens and in alignment with feminine cycles. Our first product is a planner that helps women align their schedules with the ebbs and flows of their hormonal cycle, and I will share that. It was very intentional for me to design a physical product, a physical planner, and for those of you who have been listening for a while, you know that my background is actually in tech.

Kasia: 20:52

I have designed and created a lot of software products over the course of my 11-year career. The choice to create a physical planner was actually rooted in the incredible benefits of pen to paper activities how that helps us tune back into our bodies, how that helps us bring mindful moments into our day, because, as we talk about type A, stressful, ambitious people, there can be a tendency to rush through life, to disconnect from our bodies as we try and achieve all of those goals, and so Inflow isn't just tool that provides scientific insights into your cycle, daily tips around mindfulness, around movement, around your diet, and also, of course, daily prompts, but it is actually a physical tool that we have seen through our beta, through our trial with our early customers. It is a tool that helps women tap into a sense of connection to their bodies, a sense of awareness with their bodies, and by doing that they can reduce stress in the moment and practice mindfulness in real time. It doesn't have to be something that you just practice at the start of your day. Now, if this sounds interesting to you, I would love for you to check out our website, infloplannercom, and, of course, for all of my listeners, I would love to offer a code for a 10% discount. You can use podcast 10 for 10% off.

Kasia: 22:25

Now back to the episode. Before we kind of shift gears to some of the other prepared questions, I do want to ask I know that it's pretty early in kind of your research journey here, but are there any insights into why is it that women with endometriosis kind of skew to be this type? Is it kind of a result of some of the inflammation in their bodies? What have you uncovered so far? I know you don't have this chapter really broken out in your book in detail with all of this yet, but I'm curious.

Katie Edmonds: 23:04

So there's two sides of the coin, just like there's two sides of the coin with almost everything with endometriosis. So to anyone listening who's a little unfamiliar, it makes more sense if we just back up and say endometriosis is not one thing, it is a process that happens inside the body and it can be caused by different things and develop into different types of disease. So there's over 65 different types of endometriosis. Some of them are really aggressive. Some of them are very slow growing, right. Some stop completely during pregnancy. Some a few of them actually progress during pregnancy. Some are highly associated with things like infertility or pain, and others are associated not with infertility or pain. So you can kind of think about it like cancer, in a way that you can have a pretty minor melanoma that was like easily taken care of, or you're going to have stage four, triple metastasized liver cancer, right? Some types of cancer are so aggressive, some are painful, others are not. So endometriosis is actually no different from that. So it makes a lot more sense when you talk about well, bacteria is associated with some types of endometriosis more than others. Or estrogen is really associated with some types of endometriosis and others doesn't seem to be so radically affected by estrogen. So the same thing is with this nervous system dysfunction.

Katie Edmonds: 24:20

You see that some sufferers actually have their endometriosis symptoms come on after a hugely stressful event. So it's sort of like I call it. You know it's the trigger that we usually have all this kindling laid, just like any chronic disease, and then your trigger could be something like STD. Some people feel their endometriosis symptoms come on after a genital infection, a really dead yeast infection or an STD. Some feel it like after a really big stress you know they got in a car accident, they had a surgery which was very stressful on their body, a divorce, you know all of those things. And then there's a really big association between actually, women with adverse childhood traumas, stuff like severe abuse, psychological or physical abuse, are almost twice as likely to develop endometriosis, which is like whoa, that's a really big impact, right.

Katie Edmonds: 25:08

So with limbic system impairment it's almost like you can think about it like your security camera that's always checking for threats and it can get hyper stimulated, so to speak that if it is thinking you're under threat, radical threat, then it's going to signal to your body it's your hypothalamus is right there in the limbic system Symbols to your pituitary gland which goes to your adrenals. Hpa access right. So it signals right there. Adrenals surge your body with all the stress hormones, so your brain picking up for any danger. You're checking your email without you realizing it. Your body is signaling danger. You know that from your symptoms Too much to do, too much, overwhelmed. Did someone say something that whatever your worry is about opening emails and then you get surged with those stress hormones.

Katie Edmonds: 25:56

And we know that the stress hormones are associated with endometriosis progression, with the symptoms and with establishment. So it's not like it's sort of annoying, it's very annoying as a sufferer when someone points out you're stressed because it's like of course I'm having stress, it doesn't get anywhere. So this is from one suffer to another to be very non offensive, that the stress isn't like something in your head that's creating imaginary symptoms. Stress is a chemical reaction within the body and those chemicals signal quite literally to your immune system to flood your body with inflammatory immune factors, the exact inflammatory immune factors which are associated with endometriosis establishment progression that they've shown in animals that you're. Actually, by blocking stress hormones they actually had better success regressing endometriosis than by blocking estrogen.

Katie Edmonds: 26:49

So potentially for some of us it's actually a bigger trigger than estrogen. So you know, this is my whole problem for the first 10 years of my endometriosis journey is I thought endometriosis was caused by estrogen. So I was doing everything possible to like axe estrogen. I didn't think, like, oh, maybe my estrogen is really low, like, my symptoms were actually of low estrogen plus endometriosis, which is very possible, you can have that. So this is just another part of the factor that like, yes, some people can react really terribly to estrogen. But some of us like what, if, what if?

Katie Edmonds: 27:19

Stress is your personal trigger, the stress hormones, I'm going to say to make it a little more physical in our mind, it's not like our brain, the actual stress hormones coursing through our body communicating to our immune system saying grow, endometriosis, grow, there's a danger, you better survive here. Because that's what our endometriosis is trying to do. It's trying to grow and survive in a dangerous environment. It's an immune system that's radically misbehaving and it's not doing it to be mean to us. It's doing it because it's getting all of the wrong signals, just like any disease of immune dysfunction and inflammation. All of the wrong signals are fostering this disease and surging of your can chemicals, although stress hormones can be a big part of that, for, I think, many of us.

Kasia: 27:59

Oh my gosh. Oh, I love the background of the chickens. So good, I'm so left. Oh my God, that's like my dream. You're living my dream right now. Okay, like I want chickens in the background. I'm not quite there yet, but very soon, very soon, I think.

Katie Edmonds: 28:14

Well, these chickens are wild, I'm telling you, they're trouble. They're not pet chickens, they're the tropics, they're wild chickens.

Kasia: 28:20

Oh my God, just really vicious, vicious chickens over there, wow, okay, other than the chickens totally blowing my mind, I have to say that when I read your book. Well, first of all, I think the concept of endometriosis being an immune dysfunction, like a disease that is inflammatory, rooted in immune dysfunction, completely blew my mind, because to me I feel like a lot of doctors. I don't even know how they officially call it, but I feel like it's like some sort of hormonal issue or a woman's disease of some sort. I don't even know how they would categorize it, right, I know what they say. I know it's like excuse me, like a hormonal disease, like what. I don't get that.

Kasia: 29:09

But when I read the way that you described it in your book and you really go into a lot of detail, not just explaining what it is, which is the endometrial-like tissue because it's not exactly endometrial tissue, right, that kind of grows outside of your uterus, in other parts of your body but to also have that be reframed as an inflammatory condition and something that is affected by your immune system, I think that is a complete game changer. Because the way that and you go into this in your book, of course, but the way that endometriosis is typically treated is with hormonal birth control. So I'm curious, like with that framing, which is totally mind-blowing, to recognize that perhaps it's not just a quote women's issue or hormonal issue that women experience, but it's actually an inflammatory issue related to immune dysfunction. How should we be thinking about endometriosis differently and treating it differently?

Katie Edmonds: 30:09

great, great questions, big questions, and I think what blew your mind is what blew my mind, like eight years ago, nine years ago, when I started jumping into this research too. I say I was fueled by anger, which can be good at sometimes. Right, you need those stress hormones to fuel you when you have chronic fatigue, and I was just so.

Kasia: 30:30

Nothing like stress hormones that are growing your endometriosis to fuel your endometriosis research, Like if that is the greatest.

Katie Edmonds: 30:40

Yeah, it like popped me out of bed. I was like I'm sick of being so sick and tired. I'm like 29. I was doing everything the doctor said, right. So they kind of you know your kind of sort of thing is true. They say this is kind of the doctor description. They say it's your endometrium growing where it shouldn't. It's like you as a woman are glitching out sort of thing. It's your body just doesn't know what to do. Your reproductive system is like confused and it's the endometrial lining is just living where it shouldn't. So we know that it's caused by estrogen, which is not caused by estrogen. But they kind of say it's this estrogen issue, so we're going to put you on birth control, so we'll override your hormones, and what that can be is actually a really great treatment option for some people.

Katie Edmonds: 31:22

I'm very for pro birth control for some people, but as a tool in the toolbox, not necessarily like a long term tool or a tool that everyone should be on, because there's definitely side effects of long term birth control. But for some people it helps them so much they think, oh, this is a treatment option, right, because some women are like, honestly, night and day the birth control. They're fine. But then there's this other subset of people that they are not fine, but you're sort of categorized. Well, no one really knows anything about endometriosis. We don't know why birth control works for some people, not others, but since it's caused by a uterus, your wayward uterus, maybe we'll just like do hysterectomy or put you on, you know, chemical menopause. So none of this is offering us the quality of life that we need. And so the truth is, endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory disease and the rooted in immune dysfunction is, honestly, it's the same for any chronic inflammatory disease, because inflammation is a process of your immune system.

Katie Edmonds: 32:17

So I used to think that inflammation was something you got and I could kind of explain it really well with something like a bee sting or a fever that like OK. So the bee stung me and it made my hand swollen and itchy and painful for days. It was because the toxins in that bee sting, or I got the flu and I got this sky high fever because the flu is giving me the fever. And that's not it at all. If you didn't have an immune system, you could get the flu but you wouldn't get a fever and you would get a bee sting, but it would never swell. Right, if you remove the immune system, because it's your immune system that's attacking. It's saying danger. We are this biological organism in a crazily dangerous world that's crawling with microorganisms and toxins and chemicals and think of everything we breathe and eat every day that could kill us if it wasn't for our immune system that constantly cleans up house. So your immune system shuttles what I would consider the immune army, which other people call inflammation. Your immune army comes to the scene and it attacks the bejesus out of whatever is trying to hurt your body, in this case the toxic bee sting. If you didn't have immune system clean it up, it could potentially migrate to your organs and kill you the flu without you coming in with a strong fever. Can you know? That could kill you as well. These are really damaging things for the body. So your immune system attacks.

Katie Edmonds: 33:35

The thing about the immune system attack is that it should very much only be short lived, like any war. Right, it should be short lived. Long term, war creates incredible amounts of damage, and that's what happens with chronic inflammation. For whatever reason it can be, the trigger is not removed. Or the trigger is removed, but the body is really confused and it doesn't know when to stop attacking. And so what we have is basically chronic inflammation.

Katie Edmonds: 34:01

Chronic attacking is associated with just about every single disease of our day. Then I call this the chronic disease inflammation spectrum. And on the left hand side you could say, there's the less severe, like the acne or the eczema. They are inflammatory diseases. You know, acne is kind of another one that's not caused by estrogen but it can be triggered by estrogen if you have cyclical acne but it is inflammatory in nature. All the way to the more severe side of the spectrum is going to be your autoimmune and your cancer. They can kill you, they can render you in a wheelchair and endometriosis can be anywhere on the spectrum.

Katie Edmonds: 34:32

So you say that little army attacking is actually the problem. They're attacking without end. So that little army that's attacking is responsible for everything from the creation of the cell it's part responsible for that, for this creation of a very aggressive endo-like cell to the establishment of the cell. So it's actually a rogue immune response that sees this cell and it's not a normal cell. Therefore, your immune system should destroy it and take care of it. That's what it does every day. It takes care of mutated, abnormal cells and takes them out of the body.

Katie Edmonds: 35:04

In the case of those with endometriosis, it appears to let it stay and it establishes it into your body. With blood supply, nerve supply, and it's called neo-angiogenesis is the creation of new blood supply. That's your immune system that did that. We don't give our immune systems healing capabilities enough credit, but it does. If you have a cut, it establishes new blood supply to all those new skin cells as your cut heals. So same thing with endometriosis. And then it's the chronic inflammation, the chronic attacking that actually leads to things like start tissue adhesions. It's not your endometriosis lesions making like spidey webs all over attaching your ovary to your bowel. It's actually your immune army that is so confused, attacking without end, that actually damages your tissue. So every single step of the process is associated with the immune system's action of inflammation and its dysfunction as well. So it's not a normal behavior. What's happening? That's kind of the quick synopsis of how it's an inflammatory disease.

Kasia: 36:05

I mean honestly, when I read this in your book I almost teared up because, as somebody who has recently diagnosed probably about three to six months ago but I've always suspected that I had endometriosis, because I have the worst period I mean I can't say the worst, actually, people have way worse than I do but I'm talking like debilitating for three days, day one or two that I get my period, doesn't matter how much Motrin I take. I'm like heating pad, fatigue, everything. And I noticed first of all it was like what do I do about this pain? And then I also noticed that my eczema would flare in a cyclical fashion, so like right around ovulation and then the week before my period and the second I got my period, it would just like stop flaring. And so I noticed this cyclical nature to my eczema.

Kasia: 36:59

I noticed obviously the horrible symptoms of endometriosis and I feel like it's never been explained in this way and also I've never quite grasped that perhaps it has a life cycle, because I think that's the other powerful thing here. To kind of call out is like it's so scary to think about your immune system army, like attacking your body to try to protect you. But I think there is something also that you kind of talk about in the book, which is that endo doesn't just like grow. It can in some cases continuously, but there is a life cycle component to it, and so I think it just completely reframed my condition for me and, like brought a lot of light to whoa. Like these symptoms are probably connected, mm-hmm.

Katie Edmonds: 37:46

Yeah, are you talking about, like how the behavior, how it can progress or regress? Yeah, like it's a living, breathing sort of thing. Right, that is. It's honestly the most hopeful thing that we can hold on to as endometriosis suffers. Because I hate, I hate the tagline there is no cure. There's literally no need for that tagline because there's no cure for cancer. But cancer patients are not stumbling around saying there's no cure. They're saying I'm beating cancer, I'm finding treatment plans that work for me and they are feeling freaking empowered. Well, not all cancer patients. It sucks, right, my dad just died from cancer.

Katie Edmonds: 38:22

I can't say that, say that lightly, but to take away that hope, that like it's like the only condition I know that people have accepted this tagline amongst millions of people is there's no cure, and I think it's so ridiculous. I will never say it because what we do know is that there is an exceptional treatment plan and people who are suffering today honestly have been suffered because of medical negligence. You know these really long delay times and the inability for the medical community at large to understand how to take care of a chronic inflammatory disease. This is because Western medicine is not set up for that, but it does not mean that, when you look at the whole picture, that we can't have a better treatment plan and we know a better treatment plan, Like if someone was diagnosed with endometriosis today. I mean there is like a four step plan that they should follow to prevent it from becoming the I call it the catastrophe that endometriosis has become. So, instead of saying there's no cure, we say we're being treated for endometriosis, I'm treating my endometriosis to hopefully get into a state of remission, because that's what you aim for with cancer and autoimmune. You aim for remission, right? You don't want to suffer with acne forever. You aim for addressing your trigger so the acne subsides and you don't have to deal with it anymore, and that's what we want for endometriosis too.

Katie Edmonds: 39:37

So when it comes to that idea that there's no cure and it's only a progressive disease, this is something that terrified me for years and I was so scared to come off birth control to get pregnant because I thought about this every day. What if I go off birth control and I try to get pregnant for six months and I can't get pregnant, and then my endometriosis grows for the six months and it was this total backwards, like as if the birth control was curing me or keeping it was just stopping symptoms. Right, your endo can grow or not on birth control, and it can grow or not without birth control. So what we know about endometriosis is that it can do three things. It can progress, and this is when you can either have certain types of endometriosis that are, honestly, it's almost like a bad luck of the draw, I want to say, and they are just way more aggressive and way more sensitive to maybe all the stimuli, and they can progress very, very quickly. And then there's types that are more slow growing. So there's potential for a type difference. But the big factor is, if you take away inflammation, if you take out the immune army, then you're not endometriosis lesions. They have less immune system kind of the attack and the establishment of them to grow, the lesions turn them into worse forms of disease. It actually increases the amount of estrogen right there.

Katie Edmonds: 40:52

You take away all of these triggers and what we see is that endometriosis can stabilize so it can exist in your body and not grow. It can grow so it's not causing trouble. I was just thinking everything I did was causing my organs to be stuck together and that's not necessarily the case. It can very much exist without causing damage, and it can also regress. It can shrink in volume. Endometriosis lesions can. Potentially it can disappear.

Katie Edmonds: 41:17

This feels contentious sometimes to say so. This is not me making up behavior. This has been observed in numerous studies and through actual visualization of humans and not animals. So this is going into women, either through surgery for repeat laparoscopies or through imaging with an MRI, and that was looking at. You can look at ovarian endometriomas or bowel endometriosis, so the deep infiltrating bowel endometriosis, and what we see is that collectively it's something like 60 to 90% of women, depending on which type of endo they had stabilized or regressed, and so 30 to 10% of women actually had the endometriosis progress.

Katie Edmonds: 42:00

So it shouldn't take away the dire need for interventions for the women that do have endometriosis progressing, but the truth of the matter is endometriosis is more likely, via these studies, to stabilize or regress than it is to progress, and this is why endometriosis actually might be a lot more common than 10% of women. It might be something that comes and goes, but the only way they have right now to diagnose it is through surgery. So it's going to be the women who are suffering the most that have the endometriosis diagnosis or end up having a stage four diagnosis and it can be the women who aren't suffering that maybe they have endometriosis but it's not causing any trouble. That happens Women who go to have their tubes tied after having a very fertile life, not having terribly painful periods, and they're diagnosed with endometriosis at the time of getting their tubes tied and they're like what I had no idea. And then women who are so symptomatic, right? So just know that this understanding of endometriosis shows us how much power we have in our hands and in our lives to hopefully help direct the behavior of the endometriosis.

Katie Edmonds: 43:09

So nothing set in stone, none of these studies are saying oh, we did A, b and C and we shrunk the endometriosis. What they've done is they've looked at that extensively in animals, lab animals, so a little bit different than humans. But they're saying you can add on all these antioxidants and boom, endometriosis is shrinking. You take away the stress hormones and boom, endometriosis is shrinking. You increase stress hormones and, oh my gosh, the lesions grew twice the size. You increase inflammatory factors and the lesions are growing and turning into a stage. So and that's what the book looks at it says look, endometriosis can do all these things. It can go forward or backwards and let's do everything we can to stack the deck in our favor to support endometriosis stabilization and regression.

Katie Edmonds: 43:51

And you know that does not negate the need for surgery and I think that's really, really important, especially when I'm talking on channels of people who are very interested in holistic healing, that I am even open to this day that if my endometriosis came back, you know I say I'm in a full clinical remission, like I'm 38. I still have what like 10 more years. I have, you know, periods that I am open if I need to have a surgery. I never had an excision surgery and if something happened and it's just because endometriosis is very different from other immune diseases, that it involves the pathological growth of a tissue, much like cancer. So we can do sometimes all the right things. You know all the things that are stacking the deck in our favor, but we need a surgery.

Katie Edmonds: 44:34

I'd say some people will not heal the way need to without a surgery, so it has to be on the table. But some women won't need a surgery, and this was me and it was the surprising thing after hearing one surgery one time. Everyone needs a surgery. It's the only way to handle endometriosis, but I could not afford a surgery, and it's so. It's honestly so messed up that it's.

Katie Edmonds: 44:55

It's just touted by all the medical professionals now in the endometriosis world, I think, as like the only solution when so many people can't afford it. It's like, well, what's a backup solution? Here, and this is what the book looks at we have to reduce all of the inflammatory triggers systemically and locally and then always keep that that in mind that you might need a surgery, especially if your symptoms are lingering or there's a really big concern of you've had a delayed diagnosis. So you know, people are delayed seven to 10 years on average and if you haven't been addressing those triggers, you've just been, you know, going forward in living life normally, as you were for the decades before. That can lead to significant progression, right, the marching forward of the endometriosis, and in that case you might be much more in the category of. You would feel so much better, so much quicker if you can do the specialist surgery.

Kasia: 45:45

So powerful. So powerful because you know you're right that the narrative out there is that surgery is the only option and I understand that that might be the right option for a lot of women. But even with the surgery, to know that you know you can do something to improve your symptoms, go into remission like, have some sort of autonomy and control around you, know aspects of your life, that you know you can at least adjust the future forecast and progression of the disease, because I think surgery isn't like a cure all either.

Kasia: 46:20

Like in a lot of cases, it might grow back right. I don't know like what the stats on that are.

Katie Edmonds: 46:26

There's others that you know. I think all that information about surgery is great in that it's telling us like a generic surgery by your OB-GYN you know who does your pap smear and delivers babies is like inappropriate for a disease like endometriosis, sort of like you wouldn't have. Like a podiatrist's treat to cancer, you know you'd go to an oncologist who specializes in it. It's the same thing for endometriosis like you need a specialist to go inside and look, because a lot of doctors, generic doctors they're not trained honestly, and even what endometriosis looks like, it can have so many different colors. It can be anywhere. Right, yeah, they're not looking at your bladder, necessarily your bowel, maybe they're just looking at your uterus or so you have a specialist who understands all these things and they still are human. So you can have microscopic endometriosis that regrows. You can potentially have endometriosis and, you know, regrow in the same place. That has been observed by some surgeons. The thing that Dr Cook, who wrote my surgical chapter in my book he wrote it. You know I'm a surgeon, obviously, so I'm not writing the surgical chapter, but he is great and he says surgery takes care of the lesions, it removes the lesions, it does not give vibrant health. And he, you know, talks about even two different types of endometriosis patients and he says some come in and they're honestly really healthy. It was like endometriosis is almost a blip in their life and they do surgery and they seem to go on fine. And then there's the women who come in with like a full health collapse, right, and this was kind of me and my book. I refer to it as the unraveling by endometriosis. I felt like I was healthy before endo. I look back now and I wasn't. I was just like energized by youth, right, like drinking my wine and, you know, eating all my whatever foods, but just coffee will do that for you. Oh, you're such a drug. But. But then I just kind of, you know, fell apart in every way and there's all of these comorbidities associated with long, tremendous endometriosis. You know other autoimmune diseases, things like pelvic floor dysfunction, pelvic inflammatory disease, mast cell activation syndrome, celiac hypothyroid, so you can just have a bunch of stuff. And then when you drink the Kool-Aid of the surgery, which is a powerful healing tool for endometriosis lesions, you can come out feeling worse, potentially, because your body was actually so sick, having a really big surgery without laying these healing foundations beforehand, creating a strong body. You can. You know people who have had surgery and had that hair fall out. You know, had like their then autoimmune condition come on after that because of the enormous stress. That's a reality and then the other thing is coming out saying, well, I feel like 50% better, but I just spent 50 or $60,000 on the surgery and I was kind of promised the world and it's like if it was a little more honest and I do think some of the greatest surgeons they really are honest. This is there's. There's such a wide variety of surgeons, right?

Katie Edmonds: 49:23

So when I think there's a lot of people that are touting this as like this is the only way to heal, and I've even seen on social media some of these big endo accounts saying that holistic therapies are ridiculous because you're born with endometriosis or something, and it's literally so incorrect. It is 100% incorrect. You know, known as born with endometriosis. You can be born with an endo like cell, absolutely, but there's many stages for that endo like cell to A be established into an endometriosis lesion and then B to progress into something like stage four endometriosis. And it's only these holistic and integrative therapies that can really help lower inflammation.

Katie Edmonds: 50:01

You know, with surgery being an absolute tool, but these other factors we have to say diet and lifestyle and addressing things like gut overgrowth, like that cam physiology. You know we started on that chronic stress. You're chronically inflamed. Even things like poor sleep, like one night of botched sleep, can increase your inflammation levels systemically. You can measure it. So you know, when I was a new mom and I was doing everything right, I was eating well, I was trying to be active and I was sleep deprived, I felt terrible, absolutely terrible. I like developed eczema on my left elbow, I like developed some food intolerances. So there's all these little factors that we can combine to stack the deck in our favor.

Katie Edmonds: 50:44

But all goes into this interplay of what chronic disease is, why it's not one thing that's healed by one factor. Right, that's the Western medicine, like, oh, have a surgery or go on birth control and those things can be very helpful for some. But you know a lot of us are going to need a lot more work just to feel excellent. I think a lot of us women today don't feel excellent, but it's almost like that stress component we're so used to feeling lousy. Needing caffeine, needing sugar, needing dopamine hits all day. You know, being addicted to phones and screens and it shows us that we aren't, you know, living our best lives. So there's so much room for improvement of just having a great life right and like what's wrong with, you know, aiming for that.

Kasia: 51:26

I know we won't be able to go through all of the recommendations that you make in the book, because there are a lot, but could you maybe just for the audience to get an idea of kind of the high level framework that we should be thinking about? I think the common theme is really lowering inflammation, right, and then what are some of the core pillars of that? Without, of course, going into all of the incredible guidance? You'll just have to read the book.

Katie Edmonds: 51:52

Yeah, I can give this high level and I guess that's kind of my my heel endo approach is literally lowering the inflammation. So for addressing endometriosis you want to focus on, there's two sites where there is chronic inflammation. There's a site of the localized endometriosis lesion, so that's like its very own micro environment, and then there's a systemic component too, so you can measure all sorts of immune dysfunction, inflammation body wide. Instead of using the word inflammation, we could say the immune army attacking, and what you want to do is you want to stop the immune army from attacking in all those different areas. So the way to do that is twofold. One, you have to remove the triggers, like why is the immune army attacking in the first place? So removing the triggers includes things like a lot of us have dysbiosis, which is a bacterial imbalance in the gut, in the mouth, in the sinuses, in the reproductive tract, you know. So women with endometriosis are shown to have dysbiosis, like in the cervix, in the vagina, in the fallopian tubes, in the endometrium, in the follicular fluid, in the peritoneal fluid, like this is bacterial components. Endometriosis is called smoking gun behind the inflammation that's going on. So addressing the dysbiosis is a great way to stop your army from attacking. You know it's going to be complex for some of us. Some of us has things like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, sibo. You know some of us are going to need a little bit of pharmaceutical or functional medicine. Helps to get where we need to be. But a lot of this can be supported by honestly changing our diet and lifestyle, because our gut bacteria is responding to all the inputs, just like your immune system is. So things like reducing starch and sugar has shifted the microbiome within two to four days into a more beneficial makeup, right? So just focusing on things like low starchy veggies for your carbohydrates and some fruit and meat. I'm a huge proponent of animal protein for inflammatory diseases because we need so much more protein than the average person. So focusing is switching our diet there.

Katie Edmonds: 53:49

Blood sugar imbalances this is, you know, another elephant in the room of ENDO that having imbalanced blood sugar promotes endometriosis growth, establishment, progression. On the high side, where you have high glucose insulin, and on the blood sugar drop side, where you have too little glucose. And this is where your canned physiology comes in. Right your stress hormones. That's what a blood sugar drop it provokes. So addressing blood sugar is a really huge one.

Katie Edmonds: 54:16

Nutritional deficiencies are really. They contribute to immune dysfunction and what we see with those with endometriosis are deficient and like 15 different vitamins and minerals on average. Like we are undernourished and it used the term stuffed and starved, where we have plenty of calories, but our nutrients are like totally low, way too low. It's like planting a really beautiful plant in the soil with like no nutrients at all. It's going to wilt, it's going to get diseases, you know, it's going to be covered in powdery mildew. That's the same thing. We want to remineralize our bodies, we want to build up our nutrient reserves. So right there you have. You know, numerous factors that are going to have your immune system stop attacking.

Katie Edmonds: 54:59

Now the other side of this, the inflammation spectrum, because I could go down that rabbit hole. There's a lot of triggers that we can have is we want to help support the stopping of the inflammation because it can become chronic. So, pro oxidant species they are called free radicals and I think they're pretty well known. Free radical damage, but they're little chemical components our body makes. So in order to stop a free radical, you need an antioxidant and in my book I call them ninjas, your little immune ninjas, just attacking everything and causing us damage, and handcuffs are your antioxidants that handcuff those ninjas and take them out of your system. That's why antioxidants are so powerful, and what we find is that we have so much more inflammation, so many more ninjas in our body that we actually need up to 54 times more antioxidants than someone without endometriosis. So 54 times. So this is a huge amount and it's a powerful reminder to really eat fresh fruits and veggies and drink green tea. These little tiny lifestyle tips that help you think. Like, well, how much difference could that make?

Katie Edmonds: 56:03

And you could say, well, it can make a difference between stage four endometriosis or not. Like, how much scar tissue adhesions do you want to develop? The more antioxidants you have, the more you stack your deck in your favor to avoid that much damage. So there's things like resverzatrol, nac, maritime pine bark all of these are green tea extract, milk, thistle. They're all these powerful antioxidants that we see in research to actually support the stabilization or regression of endometriosis, because you are stopping the inflammation in its tracks.

Katie Edmonds: 56:32

So it's a two pronged approach, right, and everything you do you want to look at in your own life because you, like, you're going to have your very own triggers and I can't tell you what your triggers are. Even you know just from doing this podcast, because your triggers are going to be different from my triggers, although I do know that the can physiology is one of your triggers. I know that now, but I don't know if like bacteria yeah, like some people have really terrible GI issues. They have recurrent bacterial vaginosis, recurrent yeast infections, and some people don't. Like some people have really crazy pelvic floor dysfunction or pelvic congestion syndrome, which is it's like your your veins in your abdomen actually become enlarged and they can create symptoms that just like endometriosis, but it's easily resolvable.

Katie Edmonds: 57:20

So sometimes our symptoms are kind of due to these other factors more than endo. But because we have the endo, we're thinking well, it's just the endometriosis that's doing that and it's not really the fact. You can have endometriosis and resolve your symptoms. Right, like they can be gone. And you didn't. You didn't do anything to your lesions, you didn't have surgery. Your symptoms are just gone or they're manageable. Now maybe it's one day of pain and that's not so life altering, rather than three days of on the floor vomiting, right, you'd say, well, it still kind of sucks for one day. But, man, is it better than those three days and I can make it through. So I kind of refer to that as the remission spectrum. How far you get depends on your current damage, how much you can do, how many triggers you can find that sort of thing so powerful.

Kasia: 58:01

And just this kind of like some anecdotal evidence which was really validated after I read your book. But you know, I went on a meditation retreat this past summer at a Zen center and we were meditating every day for a couple of hours. Obviously that is not realistic for like my everyday life, but meditating every day, you know, I was sleeping pretty well, Like it was still like seven hours, it wasn't like my usual eight, so maybe like an hour short, but meditating every day, eating relatively clean, I would say like it wasn't as like plant based meat focused of course is I know that you are kind of a proponent of, but I think just like lowering my stress levels significantly from that mindful practice. When I came back I got my period two days after I came back from the retreat and I literally took one Motrin. Like this is coming from a girl who spends her first day on the bathroom floor like nearly puking and pain popping. Like six Motrin's in a day.

Kasia: 59:06

Like this has never happened to me before in my entire you know existence, since I've gotten my period at like age 12 or 13. And I remember being so shooketh Like why, why, how, how is this happening? I was just like going through the list of all the things I ate, I was like, should I go more vegan, like vegetarian, you know like, because I thought it was food related, Like it never occurred to me. You know, there was like a little bit of me that was like whoa, like I'm not even flaring with my eczema, Like maybe it is stress related, but it was truly just, you know, bringing down that stress that was obviously, I guess now I know, causing so much inflammation in my body.

Katie Edmonds: 59:47

It was such a game changer. Those I refer to those as glimmers. They're like, you know, you can point, you can look at all your stressful triggers, but it's the opposite of trigger. Is your glimmers Like when did you feel really good? And it's actually so powerful to have one of those moments where you can finally say wait, that's possible. I can have endometriosis and have like a very little pain period because it suddenly gives you that power. Right, like the endometriosis lesions are holding less power over me, because I'm realizing that this is a full body issue and it's a full body connection.

Katie Edmonds: 1:00:19

Like what I do influences the behavior and the symptoms of those little lesions. You know you can think of them as like poor little animals that don't know how to misbehave or don't know how to behave, and when they're freaking out they're clawing at you, and when you're soothing them they're like sleeping. This is just like a little, you know visualization you can do. They're not actually doing this, but it really is very helpful when you're creating a lifestyle to think of like what is an endosupportive lifestyle and there's all this stuff you can get. So hung up on social media. My biggest recommendation for social media is to get the heck off of it, because it's so confusing and if you're on there and you're stressing out all the time, you wouldn't be able to go to a Zen retreat and think like I'm really going to dedicate myself to like living a softer life. There's another woman who interviewed me and she is on this nervous system thing. She calls it softer life and I really believe strongly in that that. You know, we can reclaim a lot of our the softness in our lives, and there is sometimes. I want to, I want to bring in the word feminine. I think right now that is divisive in, you know, the community. There's a lot of people saying, well, endometriosis, you know men can have it, or you know there's no such thing as gender. So maybe, just for everyone who does believe that, and without trying to offend anyone who doesn't believe, you know, the gender thing For me, like being stuck in this pattern, this paradigm of like I have to go, go, go and I have to achieve and I have to do, and it really like messed me up.

Katie Edmonds: 1:01:51

I did not know how to just be and I didn't know how to like breathe into that softer side of me. I didn't know how to be someone that wasn't accomplishing stuff all the time, I just felt worthless. So, stepping out of that like societal paradigm and saying like no, you can do really great things and it's actually like the more softness you bring into your life, however that looks, you actually have so much more energy to do the things that you need to do and accomplish. You know, like if you're not stressing out all the time about things like answering emails and I was totally there like like bill payday oh my God, I was just rushing, rushing, rushing. I couldn't write fast enough, like there wasn't enough time in this world for all the things I had to do and accomplish, and that that's exhausting, right. I think we can. We can accomplish more in our short amount of time on earth by just like relaxing into it a little more. So way too simple. Yeah, really complicated.

Kasia: 1:02:47

Yes, I echo all of that on a personal level. We are actually over time. I'm so sorry. So, yeah, really for you. I could keep going, frankly, but I want to be mindful of the time we agreed to, so I apologize for taking us over. I would love to end here with you sharing how can people find you? I'm going to hyperlink everything below. It was such a joy, oh my God.

Katie Edmonds: 1:03:10

Yeah, I'm sorry if any of this was a little overwhelming for anyone with endo. There's just sometimes I feel like I have so much information in my head. But you can find all I mean. I describe all of this in my book, heal Endo an anti-inflammatory approach to healing from endometriosis. It's available easily on Amazon. Kindle is like 10 bucks, you know. So it's, it's pretty affordable. You can find me at healendocom and that is just a free blog. I have hundreds of very research-backed blogs on everything endometriosis, diet, lifestyle, etc. And then I'm on Instagram at healendo. But don't go on Instagram. Delete your Instagram and read a book and go hang out with some people who haven't done any true endometriosis podcast whatever. I'm so over social media, I think it's. I think it's damaging everyone.

Kasia: 1:04:00

So I so agree with you, oh, my God, how about that. I so agree with you. I can't, I'm not even going to go down that rabbit hole right now, but like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, I mean I've already passed it. Like I feel like I'm like, ah, not not on, you know not going to let that spread.

Katie Edmonds: 1:04:17

Yeah, as long as I don't interact with it.

Kasia: 1:04:19

It's okay. Yeah, oh, my gosh, katie, this was amazing. Thank you so so much for joining me today. Truly, it was a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks everyone for listening and see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning into the Other Way. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five star review. It really helps the podcast grow and I'm ever so grateful. If you want to stay connected, you can find information on how in our show notes. And finally, if you're curious about Inflow and want free resources around cyclical living or moon cycles, check out infloplannercom. And, of course, for all my listeners, you can use the code podcast10 and that's all lower case podcast 10 for 10% off any purchase. All right, that's all for today. See you next time.