The difference between period pain and endometriosis

Ladies, are you tired of your man thinking that you’re just making up these cramps when it’s really endometriosis, having watched this video.

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Hi, I’m Dr. Rich and my passion is to provide all women with practical knowledge about the world of women’s health. Now all menstrual periods are awful, but how do we know if it’s regular menstrual periods or a disease process called endometriosis? So March is endometriosis awareness month. And so we’re going to highlight the differences between standard periods and endometriosis. Now, ladies, you guys understand this better than I ever could, but we’re going to go over a clinical perspective of what standard period cramping should look like. So every month you’re going to have a process where an egg is obviated, and this will result in a menstrual flow if pregnancy fertilization doesn’t occur. So during this time period, somewhere between three and seven days, there’s going to be a lot of inflammation, which will result in cramping.

Now, typically this can be managed with over-the-counter medicines like Motrin, ibuprofen, Tylenol. So if we’re experiencing pains that are much worse than these pains that require us to take time off of work, then this is something that we want to do a deeper look at to see if you could have endometriosis. So a common question is standard cramps are compared to the physical signs of endometriosis. So endometriosis involves the entire pelvis. So you’re going to have cramping that is more than it can just be controlled by Motrin Tylenol. It may actually require narcotic medication or nerve medications to manage the pain. Um, it also involves inflammation in the entire pelvis. This could result in someone having urinary urgency, running to the bathroom more often, or even leakage during the period. Uh, it could affect the bowel and this could result in diarrhea or even constipation specifically around the period.

And in severe cases, there could be blood in the urine blood in the stool during the period, um, nausea, uh, stomach upset bloating. Um, these are all symptoms that in combination, or even individuals may be assigned that there’s something more going on than regular periods and something that you really should see your doctor evaluate if you could have endometriosis. So what are the behavioral symptoms of endometriosis, so patients tend to take time off from work and school routinely. So when the pain and the symptoms are so bad that you can’t really perform at the level that you’re used to doing, and you actually take time off of work every month, this is time to get evaluated. Um, another common symptom is excessive use of a heating pad. Uh, there are actually characteristic skin changes that we see on patients that have such severe pain, that they sleep with a heating pad every day, and it actually causes some thermal damage to the skin.

And finally, another sign is panes that are so bad that you end up in urgent care or an emergency room. Um, once in a while, maybe a ruptured cyst, this could be normal for regular periods, but if this is something that’s happening routinely, a very highly suspicious friend of matrices. So hopefully this has been helpful if you’re still worried about endometriosis. Here’s my recommendation. Look for other videos that we have on the topic and other resources that are available, that we’ll include in the comment section below. And ultimately you just need to see a provider, preferably a provider whose expertise is in advanced surgical management, because those providers are going to have the most experience with diagnosing and treating endometriosis because oftentimes these other symptoms, bowel symptoms, bladder symptoms can be misdiagnosed. If you found this video helpful, please share it with others. Please also check out all the other valuable content on this topic. And many other topics that we have on our channel, please also subscribe to stay up to date on other valuable women’s health information.