Integrative Medicine Podcast

The research on chronic pelvic pain in women should be changing the way we think about menstrual cramps, and today’s episode will help you question your own cramps, think about possible diagnoses that could be contributing to your cramps (like endometriosis) and give you insight into why we need to take care of your cramps - like yesterday.  Endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain has always been this elusive conversation. People’s pain is not correlated to the size of their endo lesions (meaning you can have very small lesions but very big pain), pain is also present after surgical removal and pain can persist when we give people medications that suppress hormone production (which in theory makes endometriosis and cramps very quiet).  Why does this happen? Probably central sensitization.  The research on chronic pain has looked at the changes that happen in the brain and central nervous system (which includes the spinal cord) rather than only looking at the changes that happen at the “spot” that