Sometimes, in fact, many times, dedicated, caring, persistent people can advance the frontiers of medicine more than physicians and other "experts." Mary Lou Ballweg, who co-founded the Endometriosis Association (EA) with Carolyn Keith in 1980, is one of those people. Herself a victim of what she calls "this painful, chronic and stubborn disease," Ballweg has devoted her tireless efforts to informing women and health care professionals about endometriosis and offering support to the millions of women who are suffering from the disease.
"Endometriosis is a disease affecting an estimated 5 million women in the U.S. and millions more worldwide. It is a nightmare of misinformation, myths, taboos, lack of diagnosis and problematic hit-and-miss treatments overlaid on a painful, chronic, stubborn disease," says Ballweg, who serves as the Association's president.
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"Women with this disease have been much maligned - supposedly they were white, stressed out, perfectionistic, upper-socioeconomic-level women who brought the disease on themselves by postponing childbearing. Only when the Endometriosis Association began in 1980 and systematically gathered data, were we able to disprove all of the myths ... Endometriosis is, in fact, an equal opportunity disease affecting all races, personalities, socioeconomic groups, as well as all ages of females, from as young as 9 to as old as women in their 60s and 70s."
Ballweg has a long-held interest in the connection between candida and endometriosis. "I'm not sure it's always vaginal yeast infections. Instead, it may be yeast overgrowth in the intestinal tract," she says.
Ballweg thinks the entire anti-yeast treatment program, including antifungal medications and the sugar-free diet, have helped many EA members overcome their symptoms. "The diet is very important. If a woman just takes the anti-yeast drugs, that doesn't do it," she says.
Some previously closed minds are beginning to open-just a bit. Ballweg told me the story of the EA's 20th anniversary conference in 2000:
We had some of the best people in the world there ... It was very exhilarating for me because it is clear that the leaders in our field think that endometriosis is a systemic disease. They agreed on that. Even five years ago that would have been impossible.
Ballweg had another piece of big news in 2002 in a collaborative study between the EA and the National Institutes of Health:
And with all their resources, we were able to run thousands of cross tabulations in our data, and all of the statistics clearly show that women with endometriosis have a greater risk for autoimmune diseases.
TREATMENT
Sometimes the best a woman with endometriosis can expect from mainstream medicine is over-the-counter pain medication - aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, naproxen and, in some cases, prescription pain medications.
Sometimes hormone therapy is prescribed, including birth control pills, progesterone (natural progesterone, not progestin), a testosterone derivative and other types of hormones. Side effects from these drugs can be problematic for some people. In her practice, Dr. Dean found that endometriosis and PMS respond particularly well to natural progesterone. She recommends being sure your doctor understands that synthetic progestin will not work the same way and may have harmful effects.
Eventually, as the lesions enlarge, surgery often becomes the treatment of choice. It can be laparoscopic (belly button) surgery, where misplaced tissue can be removed, or radical surgery with a full incision that often includes a hysterectomy, the removal of all growths and sometimes the ovaries.
Many physicians now discourage surgery, which removes the Iesions and growths, but leaves the underlying cause intact. Knowing what we now know about candida yeast overgrowth, if this is the cause of your endometriosis, none of these treatment options is likely to resolve the problem. Dr. Konetzld says endometriosis is an extremely complex disease:
One of the most important concepts to grasp initially is that endometriosis is a systemic disease and not a local problem. Careful history-taking reveals that patients very often have not only pain but also symptoms of nervousness, tension, anxiety, headaches, depression, fatigue, insomnia, food cravings, muscle and joint pains, indigestion, gas, bloating, diarrhea and/or constipation, recurrent vaginitis, recurrent cystitis, interstitial cystitis and loss of libido.
In his continuing discussion, Dr. Konetzki says that menstrual cramps, PMS and endometriosis are closely related and caused by a woman's hypersensitivity to her own hormones. Dr. Konetzki says that candida plays an important role in causing symptoms in almost all of his endometriosis patients and that treatment of these patients has three components:
- Allergy desensitization, often through a process called oral tolerization. Patients are given daily sublingual drops that contain a small amount of the antigen thought to contribute to the disease by producing an allergic reaction in the immune system. The goal of toleraization is to eliminate the allergic reaction by building up the patient's resistance.
- A 100% sugar-free diet that also restricts yeast-related products. And he said, "After 3-6 months of treatment, most patients are able to add yeast foods slowly back into the diet. Others need to avoid yeast for a longer period of time. The intake of refined sugars and alcoholic beverages should be completely avoided for at least a year and then restricted."
- Systemic prescription antifungal drugs (Nizoral, Diflucan or Sporanox) during the first 21 days followed by nystatin for at least 9 months, sometimes longer. As an alternative to nystatin, he suggests two nonprescription products available from health food stores - caprylic acid and/or grapefruit seed extract.
Dr. Mathias cited the dramatic increase in our per capita consumption of refined sugar in the past 130 years as an explanation for the health problems we are experiencing:
The hormone that regulates glucose transport is insulin, and insulin is the most diverse hormone in our body. Insulin has short-term functions that last from seconds to minutes, such as glucose transport; intermediate functions that last from minutes to hours; and long-term functions that last from hours to days. We have allowed insulin to become the most powerful hormone in our body because of the striking increase in the consumption of carbohydrates that have a high glycemic index such as foods made from the flour of wheat, corn and rice.
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We have suggested that endometriosis is a disease of insulin resistance. However, in our most recent studies, we show that all subjects with endometriosis were insulin-sensitive and developed reactive hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) to glucose challenge (when given a large dose of sugar).
I felt that Dr. Mathias' observations explain why people with candida-related disorders "crave" sweets and why restricting intake of sugar and other simple carbohydrates is an essential part of the treatment program for all candida-related disorders and diseases. To find out more, you can check out Treatment For Candida Overgrowth.