Bristol Endometriosis Centre experiences/tips please

[tiredBFmum]

Hi I'm hopefully getting referred to St Michaels’ Hospital Bristol NHS Foundation Trust Endo centre to see gynae and have ultrasound.

I had a frustrating and pointless experience years ago with weston super mare gynaes and was looking for honest feedback on St Michaels please.

I have daily bowel pain, ovulation pain and period pain that require painkillers and time off work as well as chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, painful sex and frequent abdominal pain.

Thanks

[humanbean]

Sorry, I can't help you with St Michael's Hospital.

I had very severe endometriosis plus associated problems, but unfortunately for me my problems occurred before the internet really existed in any useful form. I have read some things since then that I've found interesting, though far too late for me.

Have you ever heard of serrapeptase? If you google "serrapeptase and endometriosis" you should find some experiences that suggest it is helpful to quite a few people with endometriosis (and no doubt quite a few experiences which achieved nothing). Serrapeptase can be bought online or in some supplement shops. I did try it but my gut problems prevented me taking it for very long.

I don't know if there is any agreement amongst doctors on whether endometriosis is an autoimmune disease or not. If it is then gut health is crucial for managing just about every autoimmune disease, and it is also essential for people with thyroid disease.

Many people who are hypothyroid don't absorb nutrients very well. It is well known that optimising iron levels can reduce the amount of blood loss during periods. This would probably help. You would need to get an iron panel done, if possible. You can get this done privately without involving a doctor by using a finger-prick test :

medichecks.com/tests/iron-s...

If you did this you could ask for feedback by posting the results and the reference ranges in a new post.

I saw your post from a few months ago :

healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

I would say your folate was too low at that time, your vitamin D was also too low.

It isn't possible to say if your iron and ferritin levels were fine on just the basis of a ferritin result.

Vitamin A may turn out to be helpful, but it has to be the right type :

hormonesmatter.com/altered-...

People who are hypothyroid can't convert beta carotene into real vitamin A, so you could be deficient.

See this page on the subject of vitamin A and hypothyroidism :

thyroiduk.org.uk/tuk/treatm...

Note that not everyone agrees about vitamin A being good for endometriosis, but if they were taking beta-carotene they might not have been converting beta-carotene into vitamin A very well. Who knows if their levels were good or bad? I use retinol palmitate, not beta-carotene.