When Sylvia Freedman was diagnosed with endometriosis she sought out options on how to manage her disease.
But a pain relief method suggested to her by one GP left the then 21-year-old in shock.
“I, like many other women with endo, was actually told that a baby could help my pain,” Freedman says.
“I was extremely unwell. I was a sick girl. I wasn't making it to uni, I wasn't able to work, I was losing my job, what good would I have been as a mother to a child that I couldn't parent, didn't want?”
Professor Jason Abbott, from the University of New South Wales, says the idea of a ‘baby cure’ is rubbish.
“It’s an absolute myth that having a baby will cure endometriosis,” says Professor Abbott, who’s been dealing with endometriosis as a researcher and a gynaecological surgeon for 22 years.
Why a baby is still thought of as a possible cure could be explained by the hormonal changes a woman experiences during pregnancy.
Professor Abbott explains that one of the major medical treatments in Australia for endometriosis is high doses of progesterone.
During pregnancy a woman naturally has very high levels of progesterone, so he says pregnancy for an endometriosis sufferer can have the same effects as receiving a hormonal treatment. While breastfeeding, women have very low estrogen levels because they have high prolactin levels - the hormone that helps them produces breast milk – which can also help reduce endometriosis symptoms.
“For many women they have a little break, an endometriosis holiday, though it’s not true for all women, whilst their pregnant and even when their breastfeeding,” he says.
But Professor Abbott warns that once pregnancy and breastfeeding is over “their symptoms will simply come back because their disease hasn’t gone away particularly in the more severe forms.”
For women who have severe endometriosis with scar tissue, and deep disease in their pelvis, they will still suffer from endometriosis symptoms even when pregnant.
Regardless of all this Professor Abbott says no woman should ever be prescribed a baby for any reason.
“We would never ever recommend that a woman is prescribed a baby because if we ever got that wrong and she didn’t really want it that would be a disaster.”
“Babies are not prescriptions.”
MENOPAUSE
Professor Abbott says endometriosis “generally speaking is a disease of pre-menopausal women.”
Because endometriosis is driven by estrogen, once a woman begins menopause and stops having periods her symptoms will likely decrease explains Professor Abbott.
But he says that even after menopause, a woman may still experience muscle and nerve issues due to endometriosis.
“Things are better but they’re still not perfect,” he says.
“Whilst we say actually it’s the end of the disease because there is no more estrogen it’s often not the end of the problems for the woman both physically and mentally.”
Professor Abbott explains that for the women who’ve been unable to have a child due to endometriosis their distress can be ongoing.
For menopausal women taking hormone replacement therapy – which means they are receiving estrogen and progesterone – their endometriosis issues will unfortunately continue.
GENETICS
Is endometriosis caused by genetics?
Professor Abbott says endometriosis is “absolutely hereditary.”
“There is seven to eight times greater chance of you having endometriosis if your mother or sister or first degree relative had endometriosis,” he says.
While the research shows there’s about a 50 per cent of chance that endometriosis is related to a woman’s genes, Professor Abbott says there are certainly women who won’t have a history in their family.
This can be due to the fact that their relatives were a-symptomatic, so never showed any symptoms and therefore weren’t diagnosed, or that they are indeed the first one in the family to get the disease.
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