What you need to know about endometriosis
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Endometriosis affects one in 10 people with a uterus who are of reproductive age. This condition occurs when tissue similar to the endometrium—the inner lining of the uterus—grows on organs outside of the uterus, causing severe pain that impacts patients’ quality of life.
Read on to learn more about endometriosis: What it is, how it’s diagnosed and treated, where patients can find support, and more.
What is endometriosis, and what areas of the body can it affect?
The endometrium is the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus and sheds during each menstrual cycle. Endometriosis occurs when endometrial-like tissue grows outside of the uterus.
This tissue can typically grow in the pelvic region and may affect the outside of the uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, vagina, bladder, intestines, and rectum. It has also been observed outside of the pelvis on the lungs, spleen, liver, and brain.
What are the symptoms?
Symptoms may include pelvic pain and cramping before or during menstrual periods, heavy menstrual bleeding, bleeding or spotting between periods, pain with bowel movements or urination, pain during or after sex or orgasm, fatigue, nausea, bloating, and infertility.
The pain associated with this condition has been linked to depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. A meta-analysis published in 2019 found that more than two-thirds of patients with endometriosis report psychological stress due to their symptoms.
Who is at risk?
Endometriosis most commonly occurs in people with a uterus between the ages of 25 and 40, but it can also affect pre-pubescent and post-menopausal people. In rare cases, it has been documented in cisgender men.
Scientists still don’t know what causes the endometrial-like tissue to grow, but research shows that people with a family history of endometriosis are at a higher risk of developing the condition. Other risk factors include early menstruation, short menstrual cycles, high estrogen, low body mass, and starting menopause at an older age.
There is no known way to prevent endometriosis.
How does endometriosis affect fertility?
Up to 50 percent of people with endometriosis may struggle to get pregnant. Adhesions and scarring on the fallopian tubes and ovaries as well as changes in hormones and egg quality can contribute to infertility.
Additionally, when patients with this condition are able to conceive, they may face an increased risk of pregnancy complications and adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Treating endometriosis, taking fertility medications, and using assistive reproductive technology like in vitro fertilization can improve fertility outcomes.
How is endometriosis diagnosed, and what challenges do patients face when seeking a diagnosis?
A doctor may perform a pelvic exam and request an ultrasound or MRI. These exams and tests help identify cysts or other unusual tissue that may indicate endometriosis.
Endometriosis can only be confirmed through a surgical laparoscopy (although less-invasive diagnostic tests are currently in development). During the procedure, a surgeon makes a small cut in the patient’s abdomen and inserts a thin scope to check for endometrial-like tissue outside of the uterus. The surgeon may take a biopsy, or a small sample, and send it to a lab.
It takes an average of 10 years for patients to be properly diagnosed with endometriosis. A 2023 U.K. study found that stigma around menstrual health, the normalization of menstrual pain, and a lack of medical training about the condition contribute to delayed diagnoses. Patients also report that health care providers dismiss their pain and attribute their symptoms to psychological factors.
Additionally, endometriosis has typically been studied among white, cisgender populations. Data on the prevalence of endometriosis among people of color and transgender people is limited, so patients in those communities face additional barriers to care.
What treatment options are available?
Treatment for endometriosis depends on its severity. Management options include:
- Over-the-counter pain medication to alleviate pelvic pain
- Hormonal birth control to facilitate lighter, less painful periods
- Hormonal medications such as gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) or danazol, which stop the production of hormones that cause menstruation
- Progestin therapy, which may stop the growth of endometriosis tissue
- Aromatase inhibitors, which reduce estrogen
In some cases, a doctor may perform a laparoscopic surgery to remove endometrial-like tissue.
Depending on the severity of the patient’s symptoms and scar tissue, some doctors may also recommend a hysterectomy, or the removal of the uterus, to alleviate symptoms. Doctors may also recommend removing the patient’s ovaries, inducing early menopause to potentially improve pain.
Where can people living with endometriosis find support?
Given the documented mental health impacts of endometriosis, patients with this condition may benefit from therapy, as well as support from others living with the same symptoms. Some peer support organizations include:
- Endometriosis Coalition Patient Support Group (virtual)
- MyEndometriosisTeam (virtual)
- Endo Black, Inc. (Washington, D.C.)
- endoQueer (virtual)
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Pomegranate’s Health Gifts Are Mostly In Its Peel
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Pomegranate Peel’s Potent Potential
Pomegranates have been enjoying a new surge in popularity in some parts, widely touted for their health benefits. What’s not so widely touted is that most of the bioactive compounds that give these benefits are concentrated in the peel, which most people in most places throw away.
They do exist in the fruit too! But if you’re discarding the peel, you’re missing out:
Food Applications and Potential Health Benefits of Pomegranate and its Derivatives
“That peel is difficult and not fun to eat though”
Indeed. Drying the peel, especially freeze-drying it, is a good first step:
❝Freeze drying peels had a positive effect on the total phenolic, tannins and flavonoid than oven drying at all temperature range. Moreover, freeze drying had a positive impact on the +catechin, -epicatechin, hesperidin and rutin concentrations of fruit peel. ❞
Once it is freeze-dried, it is easy to grind it into a powder for use as a nutritional supplement.
“How useful is it?”
Studies with 500mg and 1000mg per day in people with cases of obesity and/or type 2 diabetes saw significant improvements in assorted biomarkers of cardiometabolic health, including blood pressure, blood sugar levels, cholesterol, and hemoglobin A1C:
- Effects of pomegranate extract supplementation on inflammation in overweight and obese individuals: A randomized controlled clinical trial
- Beneficial effects of pomegranate peel extract on plasma lipid profile, fatty acids levels and blood pressure in patients with diabetes mellitus type-2: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study
It also has anticancer properties:
- Punicalagin, a polyphenol from pomegranate fruit, induces growth inhibition and apoptosis in human PC-3 and LNCaP cells
- Punica granatum (Pomegranate) activity in health promotion and cancer prevention
- The extract from Punica granatum (pomegranate) peel induces apoptosis and impairs metastasis in prostate cancer cells
…and neuroprotective benefits:
- Long-term (15 mo) dietary supplementation with pomegranates attenuates cognitive and behavioral deficits
- Neuroprotective Effects of Pomegranate Peel Extract
- An Evaluation of the Effects of a Non-caffeinated Energy Dietary Supplement on Cognitive and Physical Performance
…and it may protect against osteopenia and osteoporosis, but we only have animal or in vitro studies so far, for example:
- Pomegranate Peel Extract Prevents Bone Loss in a Preclinical Model of Osteoporosis and Stimulates Osteoblastic Differentiation in Vitro
- Pomegranate and its derivatives can improve bone health through decreased inflammation and oxidative stress in an animal model of postmenopausal osteoporosis
Want to try it?
We don’t sell it, but you can buy pomegranates at your local supermarket, or buy the peel extract ready-made from online sources; here’s an example on Amazon for your convenience
(the marketing there is for use of the 100% pomegranate peel powder as a face mask; it also has health benefits for the skin when applied topically, but we didn’t have time to cover that today)
Enjoy!
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The Best 4 Pool Exercises to Strengthen Your Core & Tone Up
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A lot of people don’t love working on their core strength, but exercising in the pool can make it a lot more enjoyable, as well as minimizing risk of injury.
Dr Alyssa Kuhn, arthritis specialist, also advises “being in the water also helps to control for balance and can offload the joints so they aren’t as painful”:
The gentlest exercise
The specific exercises she recommends are:
Wood Chops
Stagger your feet, clasp your hands, and submerge them in the water. Now, move your hands diagonally from one side to the other. This engages your core and balance using water resistance. Perform 10–20 reps per side, exhaling on the hardest part.
Front Kick with Opposite Arm Press
Kick one leg forward while pushing the opposite arm out or overhead—higher kicks increase difficulty by requiring more balance. If balance isn’t sufficient for you yet, hold onto the pool wall if needed. Either way, engage the core to lift the leg. Do 20–30 reps alternating sides.
Wall Push-Ups
Place your hands on the pool wall, shoulder-width apart. Keep feet together and hips slightly tucked for core engagement. Next, move your chest toward the wall and push back while maintaining a straight body—avoid arching your back. Do 10–20 reps.
Arm Circles
Stand with your feet wider than shoulder-width. Clasp your hands, extend your arms, and submerge them in the water. Make large circular motions for resistance training. This can be done with straight or bent arms for different difficulty levels. Do 10–20 circles in each direction.
For more on each of these plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Osteoporosis & Exercises: Which To Do (And Which To Avoid)
Take care!
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How Much Do Financial Decline & Cognitive Decline Go Hand In Hand?
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That financial health and physical health are intertwined is a sad fact of our society, but how does it go for cognitive health?
Well, first of all, the brain is also an organ, and so is the heart that feeds it, and so are the lungs that supply the blood with oxygen, and so is the gut that… You get the idea. There is no cognitive health without physical health.
But we can also look at cognitive health somewhat in isolation, if we use clever statistical modelling to control for physical health factors that might be adversely affecting cognitive health.
So, what’s the answer?
When your bank balance is something you’d rather not remember…
Researchers (Dr. Katrina Kezios et al.) did exactly that kind of modelling, analyzing data from 7,676 participants in the Health and Retirement Study between 2010–2020, tracking financial well-being and memory over time.
- How financial well-being was measured: an eight-item index measured both psychosocial strain (stress, dissatisfaction) and material hardship (difficulty paying bills, low income, limited access to necessities)
- How cognitive decline was measured: direct memory assessments (immediate and delayed 10-word recall tasks) and, for those too cognitively impaired to complete direct assessments, proxy assessments of memory function (proxy’s assessment of participants’ memory performance on a 5-point Likert scale and the 16-item Jorm Informant Questionnaire for Cognitive Decline) were used to generate a composite memory score.
What Dr. Kezios and her team found is that worsening financial well-being is linked to poorer memory and faster cognitive decline in adults aged 50+.
How bad is it? In few words, people with significant financial deterioration experienced memory decline comparable to about 5 extra months of aging per year.
And importantly, this was dynamic in nature and a one-way slope: declines in financial well-being were consistently linked to worse memory, but improvements in finances didn’t reliably lead to cognitive gains (in essence, you can’t buy more cognitive function, but you can lose it if your finances are poor).
Why does this happen? There are several possibilities, for example study co-author Dr. Adina Zeki Al Hazzouri hypothesized that prolonged financial strain may overload your mental bandwidth, contributing to cognitive decline. Additionally, the paper notes that chronic stress, reduced access to healthcare and nutrition, and less social engagement may all mediate* the relationship between finances and brain health.
*mediate, in this context, = provide the mechanism of action for, actively facilitate such that it happens, without necessary nailing their colors to the mast of outright declaring it causal (because the scientists acknowledge there could be unknown additional factors at hand, much like how yeast will in technical terms “mediate” bread rising, but it won’t “cause” a thing without the temperature being right)
You can read the paper in full, here: Katrina L Kezios et al, Changes in financial well-being and memory function and decline in middle-aged and older adults ← if you want to read more than just the abstract, you just need to click on the PDF icon!
This is consistent, by the way, with the impact of systemic stress on heart health, which we wrote about here: Heart Health vs Systemic Stress
…and you’ll recall that “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain“, so, do note that the inverse is also true (what’s bad for your heart is bad for your brain)!
See also: What’s Your Vascular Dementia Risk? ← includes actual numbers and a risk calculator tool and things like that 😎
Want to learn more?
You might like this book that we reviewed a while ago:
Growing Young – by Marta Zaraska ← discusses the social factors involved in healthy aging
Take care!
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How Exercise Rewires Your Brain for Better Mental Wellbeing
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Dr. Tracey Marks, psychiatrist, explains what happens immediately, and what happens over the long term:
For now and for later
First of all, a single workout can already alter brain chemistry and protect against stress. In the longer term, exercise promotes neurogenesis, primarily in the hippocampus, improving memory and reversing brain aging. It also strengthens the prefrontal cortex, which is critical for decision-making, focus, and emotional regulation.
In more general terms, exercise boosts brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels, which in turn boost neuron growth and connectivity.
Exercise also promotes angiogenesis (blood vessel construction), improving oxygen and nutrient delivery to the brain.
Timeline of benefits:
- Immediate: increased blood flow and temporary BDNF spike.
- Weeks: new neurons, connections, and blood vessel growth.
- Months: visible brain volume changes and better brain connectivity.
Dr. Marks’ Timing Tips
- Morning: boosts energy and helps regulate the circadian rhythm.
- Midday: resets stress levels (specifically: to low)
- Evening: helps process emotions (but it’s still recommended to avoid high-intensity exercise close to bedtime)
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Wondering what kind of exercise is best?
You might also like to read:
The Neuroscientist In The Gym: Dr. Wendy Suzuki Explains The Exercise That Protects Your Brain
Take care!
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Mung Beans vs Peas – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing mung beans to peas, we picked the mung beans.
Why?
The peas are good, but the mung beans are better:
In terms of macros, the mung beans have more protein, carbs, and fiber, making them the clear winner in this category.
In the category of vitamins, mung beans have more of vitamins B5, B9, E, and choline, while peas have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, C, and K, making a marginal win for peas here.
When it comes to minerals, mung beans have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while peas are not higher in any mineral. An overwhelming win for mung beans in this round.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for mung beans, but by all means enjoy either or both; peas are good too!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Plant vs Animal Protein: Head to Head
Enjoy!
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Can Saunas Make You Live Longer?
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Dr. Max Levy explains:
When the heat is on…
In a traditional sauna with temperatures up to 90°C (194°F), heat sensors in the skin trigger the dilation of blood vessels and, simultaneously, faster heart rate. Skin temperature rises to around 41°C (106°F), and sweating helps release excess heat.
How it works: sauna heat stress resembles a moderate workout. Though not a substitute for exercise, regular use can strengthen the cardiovascular system and support recovery too. This is because like during exercise, muscle repair causes inflammation and waste buildup. Sauna-induced blood flow can also help deliver nutrients, remove waste, and balance inflammation for faster recovery.
About anti-aging properties more specifically: saunas increase levels of heat shock proteins, which repair DNA and maintain enzyme function. Normally with age, cells accumulate inflammatory damage. Evidence suggests sauna use can help regulate this process, but it’s surprisingly early days science-wise and there’s still a lot more experimenting to be done.
Spotlight study: in a study cited in the video, Finnish men who used saunas 4–7 times per week had lower risks of high blood pressure, improved cholesterol profiles, and reduced all-cause mortality. However, other lifestyle differences weren’t fully controlled for, and results may not be equally applicable to other demographics for a multitude of reasons (genetic adaptations, climate considerations, etc).
Caveat: obvious anything in the extreme can be dangerous, and saunas are by their very nature extreme (insofar as they deliver extreme heat). There are definitely some contraindications, including if you are pregnant, or on any number of medications that increase heat sensitivity. Talk with your doctor (and/or as applicable, pharmacist) first if unsure.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Saunas: Health Benefits (& Caveats)
Take care!
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Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
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