Endo Battery

Endo Year Reflection: #15

• Alanna • Episode 104

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In this episode of Endo Battery, we reflect on some of the highlights in our Endo Year Reflections series and explore key insights from this years conversations. From tackling the complexities of diet and endometriosis to discovering natural remedies for pain management, this episode covers it all. 

In this episode, we discuss:

  • Key takeaways from episodes 86 & 87 with Sarah Rae on the relationship between food and endometriosis
  • The dangers of diet culture in endometriosis care and the importance of individualized nutrition
  • Why working with a registered dietitian can make all the difference for symptom management
  • Aloe vera’s potential for managing endo pain and related conditions like interstitial cystitis, featuring Heather Florio from Desert Harvest in episode 91
  • How aloe and CBD can complement physical therapy for holistic pain relief
  • A reflection on the transformative conversations this year and what’s to come in the new season

Don’t forget to subscribe and follow Endo Battery on Instagram for more episodes and updates!

Try out the Desert Harvest products and get a discount. Just use code Endobattery10 at check out.

Website endobattery.com

Speaker 1:

Welcome to EndoBattery, where I share my journey with endometriosis and chronic illness, while learning and growing along the way. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice, but a supportive space to provide community and valuable information so you never have to face this journey alone. We embrace a range of perspectives that may not always align with our own. Believing that open dialogue helps us grow and gain new tools always align with our own. Believing that open dialogue helps us grow and gain new tools. Join me as I share stories of strength, resilience and hope, from personal experiences to expert insights. I'm your host, alana, and this is IndoBattery charging our lives when endometriosis drains us. Welcome back to IndoBattery. Grab your cup of coffee or your cup of tea and let's settle in at the table for one of the last episodes of our IndoYear Reflection Series. As the year winds down, I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude for all the incredible guests, conversations and, most importantly, you. Every message, every shared moment of connection reminds me why this podcast exists. You inspire me to keep seeking answers, even when the journey feels heavy. Thank you for trusting me and allowing me to sit alongside you in this space.

Speaker 1:

This season, we've explored so many facets of life with Endo, from the science of healing to the humanity of it all. Two episodes that really made me pause were episodes 86 and 87 with Sarah Ray. I have a complicated relationship with food, as I know many of us do. It felt daunting to even approach this topic, so I knew I had to find the right person, someone who truly understood the complexities of endometriosis and its challenges, while staying rooted in evidence-based care. Sarah delivered in every way. She broke down the science behind nutrition in a way that was compassionate and individualized. It wasn't about promoting one diet or another. Instead, it was about understanding the research and reframing how we think about food and our relationship to it. One of the most powerful things she shared was how diet culture has crept into endometriosis care, often causing harm, and how we can shift our mindset when it comes to addressing symptoms through food.

Speaker 2:

I think trying to get people out of diet culture is one of my main goals. So diet culture has found its way into endometriosis, even though it's not necessarily geared towards shrinking the body. We now have all of these programs that are being sold to heal, cure, you know, reverse your endo, and I think kind of getting people to reject that and just tune into their bodies so that they're not restricting anymore, so that they're not just looking for the next best quick fix. The next like prescriptive thing is something that I'm having to work with a lot.

Speaker 1:

Sarah also emphasized the importance of weighing the risk versus benefit of restrictive eating. The risk versus benefit of restrictive eating For some it might be helpful, but for others, especially those with a challenging history with food, it can impact both the mental and physical health of someone. Listen to her explain why this is so important to understand.

Speaker 2:

Some of the criticism or fears around intuitive eating is that there's a step in there that is allowing yourself to eat everything, and so people who have restricted for a long time will tend to eat a lot of whatever they haven't been allowing themselves to eat when they've been on a diet or an elimination diet and things like that.

Speaker 2:

And I actually I'm on an endometriosis diet group and there was some advice written by an administrator about going through your cabinets and clearing out everything and only shopping the perimeter of the grocery store to support your endo and I was just like no, this is so much diet culture and not what I would recommend for people at all.

Speaker 2:

But that's just kind of what we've been trained on, and when we give ourselves permission to eat those things, most people, once they've tuned into their body, get past that sort of binging or like just eating everything because it doesn't make you feel good to live on cinnamon toast crunch for breakfast every day. It's delicious and maybe if you haven't been allowing yourself to eat it for five years, you may like have a box or two and then you're kind of ready to move on and eat what you were eating before, and so that's kind of a myth has been in the media and things like that. It's just not true and that's not what we're seeing, with people who are tuning into intuitive eating. That is just so small and if we're really rejecting that dieting mentality, we'll get past it.

Speaker 1:

What struck me most was her reminder that diets, no matter how they're packaged, are still diets and they need to be approached with care. Sarah stressed the value of working with a registered dietician, especially since most insurance plans in the US actually cover it. This can open the door to individualized care without the one-size-fits-all approach that often misses the mark. But as I look forward, I realize that finding symptom relief is essential, especially for those navigating the waiting periods before surgery, recovering from one or simply seeking ways to manage pain day to day. That's why I was thrilled to talk to Heather Florio of Desert Harvest in episode 91 about the incredible potential of aloe vera.

Speaker 1:

I've always known aloe as a powerhouse plant, but Heather opened my eyes to just how versatile and effective it can be, not just for endo but for conditions like interstitial cystitis. From its pH balancing to its natural antimicrobial and antibiotic properties, aloe offers benefits I didn't really fully realize. Heather also shared how Desert Harvest products, including the aloe and CBD. I felt like she was handing us an entire toolkit to put in our tool belts for managing pain and supporting our bodies. Take a listen.

Speaker 3:

We talk about the interstitial cystitis. We're actually studying our CBD right now with our aloe vera in combination, so this is again acting as a carrier. So this isn't full spectrum, this isn't broad spectrum. It doesn't have any other endocannabinoids on it.

Speaker 3:

We focus specifically on CBD and the reason is is we found that it's what was best at isolating different pain mechanisms in our research at McGill University, and so we studied different pain models chronic nerve injury pain had a 56% reduction after 24 hours. Bladder pain had a reduction after 78% reduction after 24 hours, and similar for chemotherapy pain, surgical pain and so what we're trying to do right now is develop models that will then look at other women's health conditions, such as endometriosis, pcos, uterine fibroids, and see what kind of effect it has on these conditions where we lack treatments, we lack resources, but we sure as heck deal with a lot of pain. And how does this respond to those mechanisms of pain? Because, as anybody probably knows, cbd out on the market cannabis products, things like that are like it takes care of everything, and we know that's not true. We know that in our research we found that muscular pain, joint pain, those types of things didn't really respond well to the CBD that it was specifically for neuropathic type pain.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. That's really fascinating what you just said. As far as it being the neuropathic pain is amazing. But then I think about me personally, who has muscular skeletal issues with joints and other things. How do these play and marry together to be beneficial as a whole body component?

Speaker 3:

Well, that's where you really have to kind of go into. So the Relivium is naturally going to go systemic. Glycocaine has been proven effective on muscular pain externally because it can go through all the layers of the dermis. Interestingly enough, cannabis products cannot. Cannabis is inert Cannabis topically, it just sits there on the top of the skin. It is a great moisturizer.

Speaker 3:

But you'll see things like camphor, menthol, arnican, lidocaine, things like that. These are ingredients that have shown to be transdermal and go down and have effects in the muscular tissues and be able to go transdermal. But cannabis, cbd, all that stuff, no, not at all, and that's been proven in our research as well. So for us, when we're looking, the relivium would make the best sense, and not atopically. In that sense, if you are looking to address something from a topical perspective, the cbd is going to be your ingestible and ingestible um related to that.

Speaker 3:

And then when you talk the mescal skeletal system, that's where you really need to get into pelvic floor physical therapy, because that actually has your pelvic floor is your hammock to your entire body and so you are literally, when you have an injury or pain anywhere in your body, you it's going to affect your pelvic floor. So you imagine, like when you get into a car accident or something and everything tenses up. That's what's happening to your pelvic floor when you have pain or injury anywhere else in your body. So, for instance, just to give you an example, we have our Pelvic Easy Magic Theravons. These are pelvic floor tools that can be used at home in conjunction with pelvic floor physical therapy to help release trigger points in muscles, either internally or externally.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 3:

And those really help with the hypertonic pelvic floor. Because our initial thought is let's go to Kegels, and that is not what you want to do right off the bat. That's why it's always good to go to a pelvic PT, get your musculature evaluated, because if you're hypertonic and you start doing Kegels, you're going to make things worse and, as such, it's just going to get tighter and tighter. Imagine, like a dish rag and you're wringing it out. It's just going to keep wringing it out, and so you really need to be able to release those pelvic floor muscles. Because, for instance I was going to mention in the UK, all the UK footballers utilize our pelvic ones to get out because an injury at anywhere in their body. It doesn't matter where they do pelvic floor physio physical therapy, because it gets them out on the field three times faster than if they had not had pelvic floor physical therapy.

Speaker 1:

If you're intrigued as much as I was and want to explore these products, I have a discount code Indobattery10, on the Desert Harvest website to help you save and support this podcast. It's a small way I can share tools that have made a difference in my own life, both on the hard days and on the more hopeful days. Reflecting on these conversations reminds me why I love this work Learning alongside you, uncovering new approaches to care and sharing what we discover together. If you missed episodes 86, 87, or 91, I encourage you to check them out on your favorite streaming platform. As we come closer to closing this chapter, I can't help but feel a little bittersweet.

Speaker 1:

This year has been transformative and I've loved looking back at all we've shared. While there's just one episode left in our Indo Year Reflections series, I'm so excited for what's ahead in this new year. We have incredible guests and topics lined up and I can't wait to keep growing and learning with you. Make sure to subscribe and follow Indobattery on Instagram so you don't miss a thing. Until next time, continue advocating for you and for those that you love.