A lot of women with endometriosis end up bouncing between two extremes.
On one side you’ve got traditional medicine saying, “Here’s birth control. Good luck.”
On the other side you’ve got the holistic world promising you can fix your endo with gut protocols, detoxes, or enough supplements to supply a small apothecary.
Most of us don’t live on those edges. We live in the middle.
We live in the hybrid.
And that middle ground matters, because endo is a complex condition that deserves more than quick fixes and oversimplified narratives.
The holistic space does offer some useful tools, but it also blurs into fantasy when it starts promising cures that don’t exist. Women deserve a grounded, honest map of what helps, what might help, and what simply won’t.
Let’s build that map.
Endometriosis isn’t a lifestyle disease
Despite what influencers say, endo doesn’t show up because you ate the wrong foods, didn’t detox hard enough, or failed to “balance your hormones naturally.”
It forms long before symptoms ever show up. Your genetics, immune function, hormonal signaling, and early-life exposures shape the terrain.
By the time pain hits at 15 or 25 or 35, the origin story is already written. What you eat at that point can absolutely influence inflammation and pain, but it’s not rewriting the condition from scratch.
This is why so many women, myself included, can look back and see symptoms long before anyone acknowledged endometriosis. Diet wasn’t the cause. Lifestyle wasn’t the cause. The biology was already in motion.
Where holistic advice helps… and where it overreaches
I believe in a hybrid approach. I live it. And I see every day how it serves athletes and everyday women better than either extreme alone.
But the holistic world has a habit of taking a good idea and pushing it well past the evidence.
The helpful side
• Eating enough, consistently
• Emphasizing fiber, plants, omega-3s
• Strength training
• Prioritizing sleep and recovery
• Managing stress
• Strategic supplementation based on labs
• Reducing unnecessary endocrine-disruptor exposure
These support the body. They reduce systemic load. They make the day-to-day more manageable.
The overreach
• “Heal your gut to cure endo”
• “Endo is caused by gluten/sugar/dairy”
• “You can reverse lesions with a detox or protocol”
• “Pain means you didn’t commit hard enough”
• Selling supplements as a substitute for medical care
That’s where hope gets twisted into pressure. It turns support into self-blame.
You never needed more guilt. You needed better information.
Diet adjusts the volume. It doesn’t rewrite the blueprint.
You can influence inflammation with nutrition. You can stabilize energy, support recovery, and give your system a better baseline. And all of that helps.
But the idea that diet alone could erase endometriosis is a misunderstanding of the condition.
If food caused it, fixing your food would’ve cured it.
If supplements could reverse it, every woman would be pain-free by now.
Food is a tool. A dial. A lever. Not the root cause and not the cure.
Let’s talk about hysterectomy: relief, limitations, and reality
Another place where women get mixed messages is hysterectomy.
For some, including me, hysterectomy can be life-changing. Removing the uterus can reduce chronic bleeding, pain, and inflammation. It can give back energy, mobility, and quality of life that had been chipped away for years. That matters.
But a hysterectomy does not cure endometriosis.
Here’s why:
• Endometriosis is tissue growing outside the uterus.
• Removing the uterus doesn’t automatically remove the lesions.
• If endo isn’t excised by a skilled surgeon, symptoms can continue or return.
• Hormone dynamics may shift after hysterectomy, but endo responds differently to estrogen depending on lesion type and location.
Women deserve the nuance here. Hysterectomy can help the right person for the right reasons, especially when adenomyosis is involved. But it’s not a magic switch. It’s one tool in a much larger toolbox.
This is where Adenomyosis enters the conversation
Adenomyosis often gets left out of the discussion, even though it can feel eerily similar to endometriosis. It also loves to masquerade as “mystery pelvic pain” or “just bad periods,” especially in younger women.
Here’s the quick breakdown:
What it is
Adenomyosis happens when endometrial-like tissue grows into the muscle wall of the uterus. Think of it like the uterus being tender, thickened, and inflamed from the inside out.
Symptoms often include
• Heavy bleeding
• Intense cramps
• Pelvic pressure
• Pain during movement or intercourse
• A feeling of “fullness”
• Fatigue and systemic inflammation
It overlaps a lot with endo, which is why so many women go years without clarity.
Diagnosis is tricky
• Ultrasound can hint at it but isn’t definitive.
• MRI is better, but not widely ordered.
• Often it’s fully confirmed only after hysterectomy because the tissue can finally be evaluated.
Here’s the important part:
Adenomyosis can be dramatically improved or essentially cured by hysterectomy because the diseased tissue is in the uterus itself. That’s why some women who were told they had “endometriosis” find out later that adenomyosis was the bigger issue all along.
This distinction matters because it explains why some women feel total relief after hysterectomy…and why others don’t.
It’s not inconsistency.
It’s physiology.
The hybrid model still wins
When you put all these pieces together—endo, adeno, hysterectomy, gut health, inflammation—the picture becomes clearer.
There is no single cure.
But there is a realistic way forward.
Medical care handles the drivers.
Surgery, hormonal therapy, pain management, proper diagnosis, monitoring bone density and heart health when menopause enters the chat.
Lifestyle support handles the modulators.
Sleep, stress, strength, nutrition, environmental load, consistent fueling, recovery rhythms.
Together, they lift the floor on your quality of life.
You’re not meant to choose between conventional and holistic. You’re meant to use the best of both.
For the women who feel like they’ve tried everything
If you’ve been doing all the “right things” and you’re still struggling, I want you to know it isn’t because you didn’t believe hard enough or heal hard enough.
Endo is complicated. Adenomyosis is misunderstood. Hysterectomy is helpful but not universal.
Diet supports the system, but it doesn’t erase disease.
You haven’t failed.
You’ve been navigating a landscape that no one bothered to map clearly for you.
A hybrid approach takes the pressure off and replaces it with strategy, support, and sanity.
And you deserve nothing less.