Endometriosis Fertility Treatment: Natural, Medical, & Surgical Options
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Natural, Medical & Surgical Treatment of Endometriosis Infertility
Endometriosis (endo) is a common condition that affects up to 10% of all women globally. But most people do not realize this condition’s impact on a significant proportion of women. Endometriosis and pregnancy complications are a common coincidence. Up to 50% of women with infertility have endo.
Endometriosis and pregnancy can be problematic for patients. And sometimes, endometriosis treatments are needed to conceive. Keep reading to learn more about fertility options for women with endo.
Read More: How Does Endometriosis Cause Infertility?
Lack of Evidence-Based Research Stalls Treatment Options
Endometriosis is sometimes like the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss or do enough research. However, that needs to change because endometriosis is often a disabling condition, and people should know about it. Not only does this condition impact the patient’s quality of life, but it also affects the potential for some of these patients to have a family. This situation can affect a marriage, other family members, a partner, etc.
Options for treating women with endometriosis and pregnancy issues can be natural, medical, surgical, or surgery-assisted. Let’s review the latest fertility treatments and courses of action for women affected by endometriosis. First, we will briefly discuss how endometriosis and pregnancy are related.
Can You Get Pregnant with Endometriosis?
Natural
Getting pregnant with endometriosis is not always easy, but it’s a reality for most patients who have the condition and want to conceive. It’s important to emphasize that the body can and still does get pregnant. There are things such as an endometriosis diet that might help. Let’s look at the good numbers. Up to 70%, according to some studies, of women with mild to moderate endometriosis will become pregnant without medical intervention.
Medically-Assisted
Statistics show that about 75% of women with severe endometriosis (stage III/IV) will conceive if they desire. Two-thirds of those pregnancies occurred naturally, and one-third with the help of the endometriosis fertility treatment.
If you have endometriosis and are having troubles getting or maintaining a pregnancy, and you wish to carry full-term, here are some medical options that may interest you:
- Freeze some eggs: Your ovarian reserve of eggs can decline due to endometriosis. Therefore, some endo specialists recommend preserving your eggs in case you wish to conceive later. Just note that this can be an expensive option.
- Superovulation and intrauterine insemination (SO-IUI): If you have normal fallopian tubes, mild endometriosis, and a partner with healthy sperm, this might be the best choice for you.
- Fertility medications: Doctors can prescribe medications to produce up to two or three mature eggs. There are also progestin injections that are often used to help fertility issues.
- Frequent ultrasounds: If a person is trying to get pregnant, they may go in for frequent ultrasounds to identify when the eggs are most mature. At that time, a doctor can insert the partner’s collected sperm.
- In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF): This treatment involves the extraction of the egg and sperm. The egg is fertilized outside the body and then implanted into the uterus.
Endometriosis Surgery For Infertility
Many women with endometriosis do become pregnant without medical assistance. However, studies suggest that endometriosis surgery does help a woman to become pregnant without difficulty.
- Removal of endometriosis tissue: Evidence shows that pregnancy rates improve if the endometriosis tissues are removed surgically.
- Removal of tissue or large endometriosis cysts: Large cysts and tissue accumulation can contribute to infertility. Removing these can help the patient conceive.
- Routine follow-up: Women with endometriosis often have cysts that relapse after treatment. It is crucial to complete follow-up visits and possibly have complementary surgeries down the road.
How Your Stage of Endometriosis Impacts Fertility
A diagnosis of endometriosis is a heavy thing to take in, primarily since it’s known to impact a woman’s reproductive organs. Studies have shown that the extent of endometriosis present during laparoscopy correlates with fertility.
Do You Have Concerns About Endometriosis and Fertility?
We want to hear from you. What is your biggest concern about the fertility impact of endometriosis? Or does it concern you at all? Leave your answers in the comments below. If you need medical attention that is not emergent, be sure to find a vetted endometriosis specialist who is familiar with the disease and modern treatments.
Endometriosis and Fertility: Statistics, Facts, & Fiction
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Debunking the Myths Surrounding Endometriosis and Reproduction
Disinformation about endometriosis and how it can impact reproduction is thick. As a matter of fact, not just endometriosis and fertility, the entire disorder is shrouded in junk information, and so it often goes misunderstood and mistreated. To learn more on this topic, read our previous article, titled: “Endometriosis Facts and Myths: Dispelling the Misconceptions.”
Does endometriosis cause infertility? In some cases, yes. However, in most cases, women with endometriosis can and do get pregnant without any medical assistance or intervention of any kind. There is still a myth that if you become pregnant, that can manage the endometriosis (endo) symptoms and even help resolve disease progression.
This statement couldn’t be further from the truth, and it’s an example of a widespread myth about endometriosis and fertility. Furthermore, this school of thought can put additional pressure on women with endometriosis to get pregnant as quickly as possible once they get a diagnosis. As you can imagine, this dangerous misinformation can alter their expectations in terms of treatment for fertility and their outlook on endometriosis in general.
So, Can You Get Pregnant If You Have Endometriosis?
The real truth is that the connection between endometriosis and reproduction is complex. Can you get pregnant if you have endometriosis? Yes, many people can and do. However, having the right endometriosis specialist to help you along the way can make all the difference in your journey. Click here to learn more about finding vetted endo specialists near you. In this article, we will review the disease and lay out the facts regarding endometriosis and fertility.
What is Endometriosis?
Endometriosis is an inflammatory disorder in which tissue similar to the uterus lining grows in places outside the uterus. Often these growths happen on the surface of the uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, or other organs within the pelvic cavity – such as the bladder or bowel. In some cases, these endometriosis growths have occurred in distant organs.
Endo growths can cause pain, scarring, and sometimes infertility. Because this tissue is similar to the uterine lining, it also bleeds and sheds once a month during hormonal changes. Typically in the uterus, this period tissue and blood have a means of escaping through the vagina. However, this blood and tissue often accumulate inside the body with endometriosis and causes inflammation and pain. As one can imagine, over time, scar tissue growths with subsequent menstrual cycles develop. Eventually, this scar tissue can fuse organs, immobilize organs, and even damage the fallopian tubes.
Alarming Statistics About Endometriosis & Fertility
- Endometriosis is widespread, affecting between six and ten percent of the general female population. That’s more than 170 million worldwide.
- In patients with pelvic pain, infertility, or both, endometriosis frequency is higher – between 35 percent to 50 percent.
- Between 25 percent to 50 percent of infertile women have endometriosis.
- Between 30 percent to 50 percent of women with endometriosis are infertile.
- Endometriosis affects approximately the same number of women around the world that have diabetes.
- The cost of endometriosis in the US is between $86 Bn – $116 Bn.
- It takes, on average, eight years from the onset of symptoms for a patient to get a diagnosis. This can impact all patients, but especially those of who wish to keep their fertility intact.
Endometriosis Facts About Fertility and Reproduction
- There are ways to get pregnant with endometriosis.
- Hormonal therapy does not cure endo.
- Endometriosis is related to your menstrual cycle and hormonal changes within your body.
- Endometriosis tissue can be removed during laparoscopy. Depending on the location of the growths and the extent of damage, this can sometimes restore fertility.
- There is a type of endometriosis that can cause cancerous lesions, typically dark chocolate brown.
- The causes are uncertain, and there is no “cure” for endometriosis.
- Genes seem to play a role in the occurrence of endo.
Myths About Endometriosis and Fertility
- Pregnancy is not a cure or a way to relieve symptoms of endometriosis. Women should not be pressured or encouraged to get pregnant to help with endometriosis and fertility or alleviate pain or other symptoms. While some women experience less endo pain and symptoms during their period, that does not mean it works the same for all women.
- Do not believe any physician that tells you a hysterectomy is the “gold standard” treatment for endometriosis. As mentioned above, there is no “cure” for endometriosis. Until a specialist is inside the body and can view the number and the placement of the endometriosis lesions, they cannot decide whether a hysterectomy would even solve the problems. Also, some women might make themselves infertile (whether they mind or not, it is an emotional part of this disorder) by having a hysterectomy done that was never needed.
- You do not need to have a major medical procedure to get an endometriosis diagnosis or remove some growths and lesions. With modern equipment, skilled specialists, and advanced technology (often robotic surgical equipment), you can have endometriosis diagnosis and treatment with laparoscopy. This type of procedure is minimally invasive and only leaves behind a few puncture wounds.
- Abortion does not cause endometriosis.
- Endometriosis does not cause ovarian cancer. Although a type of endo involves cancerous tumors, this does not mean that having endometriosis makes you more likely to develop cancer.
- The most important myth to bust is that there is no treatment for endometriosis. Just because there is no “cure” for this pelvic inflammatory disorder does not mean there are no treatment options, even when it comes to endometriosis and infertility.
If you have endometriosis, what is the most common thing you have heard regarding endo and reproduction?
Impact of Living with Endometriosis and Mental Health
(All research studies mentioned in this article about the impact of endometriosis on mental health enrolled people with assigned female gender at birth. However, to be inclusive to all people with endo, we use people throughout the article.)
Being diagnosed with endometriosis (endo) and living with it can bring up a lot of emotions. It can mean making space for changes that you may never have predicted or accounted for. Endometriosis impacts nearly 200 million people worldwide, but there is pernicious misinformation and a lack of awareness and understanding among the medical community and the larger society. This misinformation and lack of awareness stand in the way of receiving a timely diagnosis.
It takes, on average, over seven years for a person who has endometriosis to get a diagnosis. Essentially, this means experiencing intense pain, feeling unheard over and over, and being gaslit at a systemic level for at least seven years.
In most countries, managing the pain and heavy periods remain the first line of treatment for endometriosis. If one is lucky, they can access endometriosis excision surgery. However, the impact of endometriosis goes beyond just the physical. The effect of endometriosis on mental health and the emotional wellbeing of the person is enormous.
Link Between Endometriosis Pain and Mental Health
The mental health struggles of living with endometriosis vary from person to person. The debilitating chronic endometriosis pain, one of the most common symptoms, is a critical factor that impacts the quality of life and mental health. Along with the cyclic pelvic pain, one may also experience other types of pain in varying degrees:
- Non-menstrual pelvic pain
- Pain during ovulation, urination, and/or bowel movements
- Pain during sex
- Sciatic pain
- Pain post and during orgasms
- Widespread full-body pain.
Research published in the International Journal of Women’s Health Health looked at the link between common symptoms of endometriosis and mental wellbeing.
It found that a person experiencing chronic pelvic pain (CPP) is likely to feel higher levels of anxiety and depression, which can further amplify the perception and severity of pain, thus placing them in a vicious circle of physical and psychological distress.
Figure 1: The vicious circle of chronic pelvic pain and psychological disease.
Pelvic Pain Causes Further Effects of Endometriosis on Mental Health
A study found that endometriosis patients with pelvic pain had poorer quality of life and mental health than those with asymptomatic endometriosis. It also showed that non-menstrual pelvic pain impacts all the variables of a person’s life. Thus, the study emphasized psychological interventions as an essential aspect of the endometriosis treatment plan and pain management treatments and interventions.
In another meta-analysis of 99,614 people from 24 different studies, researchers found that chronic pelvic pain was a primary factor contributing to the higher rates of depression in patients with endometriosis. This study emphasized that treating this kind of depression with antidepressants without the efforts towards managing the chronic pain would indeed be ineffective.
The Emotional Reality of Endometriosis
Studies have tried to understand the impact and management of endometriosis within the medical healthcare system. But still, the health system has largely overlooked the effect of endometriosis on mental health.
Living with endometriosis can make daily activities a struggle, mainly due to the unpredictability of pain and fatigue. The struggle makes some tasks nearly impossible. These tasks can include planning, working, socializing, exercising, eating, or even basics like cooking, cleaning, and bathing. This inability fuels guilt and anxiety. Furthermore, the debilitating pain being reduced to “just a bad period” or “psychosomatic” often leaves one feeling gaslit, isolated, depressed, and sometimes suicidal.
This distress increases due to the lack of systemic and psychosocial support. When the BBC spoke to 13,500 people (female assigned at birth) with endometriosis, more than 50% of the respondents felt suicidal ideations.
This is a battle
For someone living with chronic pain every day, even a short-lived moment of low pain brings ease, which allows one to hope for a future not controlled by pain. However, grief sets in quickly as fatigue and flare-ups follow. These changes make life with endometriosis incoherent and an inescapable dance between hope and grief. A Swedish study concluded that people living with painful endometriosis underwent a constant struggle for coherence in their lives. It emphasized that healthcare providers should validate this struggle by understanding the disease-related grief.
The anxiety around pain and health, the grief related to the future, the loneliness and isolation often bring up the feeling that chronic pain has monopolized one’s life. Endometriosis becomes the central point around which all decisions revolve. It takes away the body’s ability to be reliable and the capacity to feel safe within it. It often changes the way one views themselves and takes the world in.
One of the ways we feel safe in the world is by feeling safe in our bodies. Then what happens to our sense of safety when the body is a constant source of never-ending pain?
The Trauma of Endometriosis
Experts define trauma as the experience of being left alone with one’s pain. Endometriosis isn’t different. Having to constantly explain one’s pain to medical doctors, families, and friends and still not being believed is an isolating and traumatizing experience. For some, this experience of being gaslit gets stored in the body and pushes the nervous system into a hypervigilant state (Fight, Flight, Freeze).
This experience of trauma can bring up various responses, anger being one of them. The anger can be at the world, the state, the body, the systems, other people, or the pain. It becomes our protective mechanism in response to the powerlessness that one feels while coping with endometriosis.
The Way Forward
In treating endometriosis, it becomes necessary to consider its impact on mental health and provide psychosocial support to people with endometriosis and their families. Unlike the conventional medical belief that solely focuses on the physiological aspects, a multidisciplinary approach integrating the mind and the body is necessary.
A trauma-informed psychotherapist specialized in treating endometriosis, and chronic pain can be helpful. A therapist trained in chronic pain management understands endometriosis, related diagnoses, and its trauma. This understanding is an integral part of the healing process. Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is complicated and sometimes impossible with pain. Verbalizing the pain, having the hardships validated, acknowledged, and believed can be an empowering experience. Just as people seek medical help for their physical symptoms, seeking help for mental health struggles is an integral part of the endometriosis journey. If therapy is hard to access, support groups for endometriosis can be a step forward. You should know that you are not alone in your experience, and you can have support. The supports that you get can be a lifeline to your mental health.
Author: Anindita Kundu, Trauma Psychotherapist.
How has endometriosis impacted your mental health? Have you considered working with a mental health specialist to help you?
