Laura's Journey Beyond Misdiagnosis to Endometriosis Advocacy

Discover the untold stories of women's health as we sit down with the remarkable Laura Ibragimova, a beacon of hope and resilience in the face of endometriosis. Laura takes us through her own journey with this often misunderstood condition, shedding light on the silence and misdiagnoses that shroud it. Together, we tackle the urgent need for increased awareness and enhanced education in women's health. Hers is a tale that resonates with many, and in telling it, she urges us to challenge the status quo and fight for a future where every woman's pain is heard and validated.

Check out more information from Laura by accessing the link below
https://linktr.ee/bluecanaryhealth

Transcript

Jenny Benitez: 0:01

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Steel Rose's podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women. You have Jenny with you today. Thank you so much for joining us again for another episode. We have a guest with us today, laura. Laura, I'd love it if you introduce yourself to the listeners and just tell them a little bit about yourself.

Laura Ibragimova: 0:21

Hi, yeah, thank you for having me. My name is Laura Ibrahimova and I am a health and wellness what's the word Just coach? Coach, I guess, yeah, just somebody who's really passionate about health and wellness. And I, you know, by training, I have a background in health and nutrition and public health policy. I'm also a huge advocate for women's health and really here to talk about a very important topic. So thank you so much for having me.

Jenny Benitez: 0:52

I'm grateful that you were able to come. So, for all the listeners, laura and I had actually tried I think over the course of 2023, I tried to connect multiple times. I was always having scheduling conflicts and my kids were home and there was always like issues on my side and then after a little while, I had this light bulb moment of like I would love to have Laura come to the podcast. So we I got like really into being like let's connect, like let's make sure that we do this because what Laura is working on hits close to home for me. You've heard, if you listened to any of the episodes from season one, you would have heard me talk about my health and in relation to going through my endometriosis journey, basically in 2023, and trying to get to a point of not solve I'm almost resolution. I'm helping with the disease itself and the symptoms that I was experiencing, and Laura and I had connected on that level and had really had that shared experience of having endometriosis.

Laura Ibragimova: 2:02

So, laura, if you want to share a little bit about your story there, yeah, so I'm part of the group of patients with endometriosis who had no idea that this condition existed and didn't really suffer too much from the traditional symptoms of severe pain. I had predominantly serious digestive issues. So I, you know, for many years was going on, diagnosed and just knew something was wrong. And then in my early twenties I had felt this very dull, throbbing pain that would, just, you know, come back and go and, just, you know, every now and then would just come and go and I figured it's you know, I should probably just get it checked and made an appointment with my gynecologist and I mentioned to her what I was feeling. And so she had the hunch to do a sonogram. And we did the sonogram and in the imaging found that there was about a five to six centimeter dark complexist on my right ovary. And that's the first time I ever heard the word endometriosis and had never heard of it.

Laura Ibragimova: 3:16

Didn't really understand what the condition meant for me, but she suggested that I really meet with some surgeons to have it removed. So six months later I actually, you know, within that time, found a doctor and was had the surgery and was officially diagnosed with stage three and then was told that you know, this is really a disease that will own me. I had no real understanding of the condition. I wasn't really educated on it, even with my surgeons. It was just, you know, here's the condition that you've been diagnosed with and here's the medication that you have to take, and then come back to us when you want to get pregnant. So I was basically, you know, just told you know, go home.

Jenny Benitez: 4:03

And that's what.

Laura Ibragimova: 4:04

I did, and none of the medication really helped me along the way.

Laura Ibragimova: 4:08

I still continue to feel symptoms.

Laura Ibragimova: 4:10

I ended up having the symptoms you know kind of progress over time, and even with the medication, I ended up 10 years later having to have another procedure and then was diagnosed again at stage four.

Laura Ibragimova: 4:23

So you know, I don't know necessarily why that happened, but at the same time it just felt like I was going through a journey very much in the dark and not fully understanding how to treat this condition and following all the rules that the doctors had told me to do, and it still didn't work for me. So with that, once I started going through the symptoms and experience again and looking for the right doctor for the second procedure, I started doing a lot of research into endometriosis because I wanted to make sure that I was doing it right this time and asking the right questions and not going in as naive as I was the first time. And so that's a lot of the work that I do now is promoting awareness and advocacy and also really diving into the research of endometriosis so that we can see where the gaps are in the actual care that our patients are receiving.

Jenny Benitez: 5:18

Now, laura, I have a question for you because I want everyone to walk away from this episode with an understanding, because it is my suspicion, through also my self-research and then just the work that I do as well, that more women probably have endometriosis than they actually realize because it goes so underdiagnosed across the board. I mean, even when I was younger, I'm certain that the women in my family have endometriosis and they just don't realize it. And they never did. Because when I first got my started getting my period when I was 11 or 12 years old, I was just told like intense pain is normal, this is normal. It's actually not.

Jenny Benitez: 6:06

And we're told as girls like, oh, just deal with it, just don't make a big deal out of it here, take a heating pad. But the reality is like if you have intense pain, that's more of a, that's a sign that there's a problem in your body, not so much like, oh, that's normal, it's supposed to happen that way and we're going our whole lives through this. So the question that I had for you, because I got a little off track. I also get really passionate about this. You mentioned that you were stage three and I want the listeners to understand what that means in terms of endometriosis. Do you have a little bit more detail that you can share on that?

Laura Ibragimova: 6:43

Yeah, so endometriosis is staged one through four and I just want to caveat there that your symptoms might not necessarily tie into the staging of your disease, and so it's staged based on the severity of the adhesions and the implants found within your pelvic cavity. So for me, I had endometriomas and I had endometriosis adhesions throughout my entire pelvic region. That's why I was at stage three. Stage one is, you know and it also depends on the doctor and how what they see and what their staging process is Stage one is usually just like very mild specs or adhesions along the peritoneum or within the pelvic region and then, if you have more you know in-depth adhesions, you'll get staged with more, with a more severe disease. So stage three for me meant that I had endometriomas, which were cysts on my ovaries and then some on the bowels and within the pelvic region.

Jenny Benitez: 7:51

And for everybody listening, essentially what endometriosis is is it's when the lining of your uterus grows on the outside of your uterus. So when you have your menstrual cycle and normally it is contained within the uterus and then it comes out how naturally come out. For women with endometriosis, it starts to grow on the outside of the uterus and that's really what's triggering like a lot of pain and inflammation in the body. And Laura, correct me if I'm wrong on any of that. I want to make sure that I'm saying this correctly.

Laura Ibragimova: 8:24

Yeah, so there are some schools of thought that say that it is the endometrial lining but, I, think now they're starting to see that it is not exactly the endometri, that is the lining of the uterus, but like cells that have a poke, essentially, or have distorted in some way and create that inflammation.

Laura Ibragimova: 8:48

But essentially, what a lot of the research is saying now is that it's endometrial, like cells and they function in the same way that your period or endometrial lining will function, in that it follows the same cycle and will grow. But because it has nowhere to come out and for us you know swimming when we bleed every month we have that canal, the uterine canal and the vaginal canal from which we bleed. We have an exit, but where the adhesions are, there's no exit. It will continue to grow and then your immune system will see that and say, well, there's something wrong in a place that it's not supposed to be, and so that's where it will create scar tissue and that's how cysts can form. And meanwhile those cells will continue to grow and then they'll develop their own blood supply. They'll grow within the pelvic cavity, they'll find their own blood supply within, you know, some of your organs, and that's where the severe pain can come.

Jenny Benitez: 9:47

And this disease, unfortunately and Laura like hit, another note that I wanted to just comment on and elaborate on a little bit more is, you know, the undereducation of women on their own health and their own bodies, and unfortunately, it's not just like, oh, you know, women aren't being told this information. There is, unfortunately, in a lot of these situations, the information doesn't exist that there isn't research behind diseases that only or that predominantly affect women, and that's, you know, the hard truth of this and it's something that I remember many, many years ago and, laura, I think I might have told you the story when we were doing our little intro calls together was that I remember I was really shocked when I was about seven or eight years ago, One of my relatives had, she had had her first child and it was, you know, she went through jumps, through so many hoops to get pregnant and it was just a really long journey for her and she had her daughter and after she had her, she had preeclampsia so badly that she lost her vision and they told her at the hospital, like you know, you, you might not get this vision back. We don't know when it's coming back. We don't really know what to tell you, you have to just deal with it. And I was so angry because and I actually started doing research I was like, oh, that doctor must not know what they're talking about. Let me look into this. And there, legitimately, was no research. And I went to one of the MDs that I was working with and I was like I don't understand, like can you tell me anything about this? What happened to my cousin? And she just said like yeah, that's, that's healthcare, that's women's healthcare. There isn't.

Jenny Benitez: 11:35

And so, circling full circle back to the endometriosis. It it's unfortunate, but like majority of women I mean women older than me, like my mother or my aunts they would have not had the information even available to you know, like it just wouldn't have been there. And I know, when I had found out that I had endometriosis, the doctor told me and just sort of like, kind of was like, oh, hey, yeah, we saw some endometrium when we went in they're for your cyst, cause I had a cyst and they were going in to take that out. And he was like, oh, we, we, we were shocked at how much endometrium you had in your, in your system. But we got it all. Okay, take care. And that was it Like there was no. By the way, this is a disease you will live with through your whole life. There was no information about this causing infertility. There was no information about the extent of the damage that could be caused by this disease, and it's it's shocking, it's like appalling at the lack of information there.

Laura Ibragimova: 12:40

Yeah, I think you know throughout all my research and conversations that I've had with patients and in the medical community there's really no dedicated course in medical school to endometriosis and women's health. You know research that only started in the 1990s where you know, there were some mandates to require that more research be applied to women. Prior to that, all research had mainly been done on men and then just theoretically been applied to women.

Laura Ibragimova: 13:15

But, the reality is our bodies are very different. How we interact with the environment is also different. The medications that we absorb is very different, and so most of the research that we see is doesn't apply to women. I mean, you should take it with a grain of salt. Women's bodies are bigger. They metabolize differently.

Jenny Benitez: 13:34

They're hormone-saccharine.

Laura Ibragimova: 13:36

So that's one of the things is that, of course, there's not a lot of research, and there's also not a lot of research dollars moving towards women's health either, and so, without the funding, how are we supposed to conduct these studies? So that's a huge challenge. Medical schools don't prioritize it either. I think with some of the you know med students that I've spoken to or learned about their coursework, they get maybe one page out of their medical books that they study from to talk about endometriosis and maybe one question on an exam and that's it.

Laura Ibragimova: 14:11

It's a very complex disease. There's a lot of intricacies. It doesn't just it's primarily found in the pelvic region, but it can grow elsewhere throughout the body, and it's not because of, you know, just endometrium finding its way out of the system, out of the uterus. It's actually due to more of a dysregulated immune system. So it's a systemic issue according to the research, but that's not what doctors are treating it as or even speaking about it as. So there's a huge disconnect between endometriosis the reality of the disease and the pathophysiology of the disease and how it is perceived and treated in the medical world, and that's unfortunate.

Jenny Benitez: 14:54

Yeah, and that was what you just said was so important to the story of this and even the story of women's healthcare in general. And one thing I do wanna highlight too, especially like for the listeners who probably don't know this, cause I only know what I'm about to say because of the work I do and I know Laura's in the work too. So clinical studies, when you hear those where they say like, oh, clinical trials were done or clinical studies were done and drugs were being tested, there's a process to products and medicine coming out to market and the process, essentially, you have to go through research and clinical studies and there's different phases and through each phase there's reviews that happen and there's a lot of years and manpower and just stuff that gets put behind bringing products to market. But what Laura said and I wanna highlight this is that clinical studies don't include women. And now I don't know if there's a shift in a better direction here, but I know that historically to date that clinical studies shied away from having women and some of them didn't even barred women from being part of them.

Jenny Benitez: 16:16

Because our bodies are different than then. As Laura said, we break things down differently we. Our hormones are different, like everything that about us, we process things differently than then. So when you hear information that was based off of a clinical study, it might not have been, it might not be applicable and it wouldn't be applicable to us. And there's also I recently was in touch with another doctor who had said that, like there is no research on how products are affecting our menstrual cycles and like you know, like that's not something that they look into, it's just not part of the discussion, they don't even think about it. And it's crazy because then this stuff is marketed to us and all of our physicians, you know, as Laura said, like they're not trained particularly, like to know and understand, like okay, well, how is this affecting a woman? Or you know, like that, that sort of thing, it will. You know, not to say, and I don't wanna take anything away from our doctors and medical personnel, because they're great and there's a lot of really fantastic people out there, but if the training isn't there, then they really can't work to the best of their ability.

Jenny Benitez: 17:30

Laura, there was something else I wanted you to go into a little bit because you touched on it, and I touched on it regarding, like you know, there's no clear education when you got the diagnosis for endometriosis and you had to do, you went through like the first set of like treatment where it really didn't work and everything. And then you said, you know what, I wasn't gonna let that happen again and I was gonna self-educate. Now I'm really big on that too, because I'm like, if I'm gonna make a mistake once, let me make sure that I understand what's going on. If, for somebody who is listening to this and says, like you know, I think I might have a problem here, like in terms of bringing their voice to their doctor, what would you say? How could they prepare? How can they prepare for a discussion with their doctors?

Laura Ibragimova: 18:18

Yeah, I think that you know one of the biggest challenges is there's no real follow-up education when it comes to being diagnosed with endometriosis or any other disease.

Laura Ibragimova: 18:29

And so what happened with me was that, you know, I have a background in healthcare, both in education and professionally, and I had been working as a consultant for many years doing, you know, qualitative research, for, you know, many different companies, pharmaceutical companies and foundations on chronic illness, and so when I started to feel symptoms again, I decided that I needed to do the same thing, so studying the clinical research on endometriosis, because this is a condition that affects me personally, and so I have, you know, the training for that.

Laura Ibragimova: 19:04

I think what is difficult for a lot of other patients is that they don't necessarily have the training or the understanding or the instinct even to go into the clinical research, because a lot of that could be difficult to digest it's very dry. So I think one of the best things to do really is I would love to see a change in the way that we deliver healthcare but really just kind of educating yourself on the disease as much as possible, so getting to some reputable websites, reading up on the disease and learning more about the condition as much as possible. Another thing that I did was I joined support groups online, and I reached out to a lot of other patients and I wanted to hear about their experiences, not just with the disease, but also with the doctors that they saw and their journey with their doctors and how did they know that they had found the right one?

Laura Ibragimova: 20:02

And so the more you understand the condition and your symptoms and potential risks of working with a doctor that might not necessarily have the skills that you're looking for or that are necessary, the more you'll understand how best to go about your own treatment.

Laura Ibragimova: 20:20

So I think going also equipped with enough questions, making sure that your doctor is staying on top of the research we know now that excision is the gold standard is the appropriate way of minimizing recurrence and ensuring better, higher relief for a longer time. So if your doctor says ablation, then that's not the right doctor, because they're not seeking up with the actual training that they're supposed to have and really treating you properly and also just kind of working on your emotional health. Because it's a very difficult journey. You're gonna have a lot of doctors who are gonna want it their way. That's what happened to me. I actually went through maybe five to 10 doctors who were telling me all sorts of things and I had already done my research and I knew that that was not gonna be the right doctor for me because they were not telling me what I needed to hear, which was that they were going to do the proper excision, preserve my fertility and make sure that I had the best follow-up care.

Jenny Benitez: 21:28

And you know they're. You keep giving me so many good things. You're Laura, you're sharing so much great information for everybody, so I do wanna highlight, you know, the how wonderful it would be to reach out to support groups, advocacy groups. There are, for majority of disease states like there are support groups in place that you can reach out to. Now, while the internet sometimes is a problem and social media sometimes is a problem, it's also, in these instances, something that could be incredibly helpful to you. I mean, you can pretty much go onto any platform and type in keywords and see what kind of posts come up and see what you can, who you can reach out to and connect with, and don't be shy about doing that. Majority of people are open and will talk with you and be there for you and to help you through it.

Jenny Benitez: 22:29

You're not alone in going through this. Like that's really the biggest thing here. I know a lot of women will go through this and feel ashamed or they'll be embarrassed and, you know, feel like, oh, I really shouldn't be talking about this, I shouldn't be talking about my period, or you know the pain that I feel. There's like anal pain, abdominal pain, like there's all kinds of it's there, though, and if you don't talk about it and you're not seeking support, you're never gonna address it, and this could really truly impact you and not just you, but you're. If you have children, this is your daughter, you know, like this is your daughter's life on the line, because if you don't educate yourself, you potentially are gonna have a child who's gonna go through the same thing, and you're really not breaking the cycle there.

Jenny Benitez: 23:14

It is, I think, hard for Folks who are not working in the health care system to feel empowered when they speak to healthcare professionals. What I would say I've always had if you feel intimidated by talking to your doctor, or you feel uncomfortable talking to your doctor, well one, if you feel uncomfortable or intimidated, it's probably they're probably not a great fit as your doctor. I mean to be perfectly frank, like I'll just say that if you're uncomfortable telling your doctor that you have a problem, you have to get a different doctor, because your doctor is there to help you. Now there's, I know, now more Stress being put not stress more support being put into place for physicians to be better at talking to their patients, because there's a lot of instances where We've all experienced it.

Jenny Benitez: 24:04

I spoke with somebody of once, that highly educated person they're a doctor themselves and their own doctor like, guess, let them. And like, brush them to the side. I'm like, but you, you are a doctor. And she was like I know, I don't know what to tell you, like you know. So we all go through that when you know your doctor is maybe not gonna listen or gonna brush you to the side again, like, I know, not everyone will feel comfortable with it. You have to do this, like you have to advocate for yourself, because if you don't do it, no one's gonna do it, and then where are you going to end up? And that goes across for any, any health-related condition.

Jenny Benitez: 24:42

And Laura brought up an excellent point in terms of you know, preparing for your doctor visit. Bring a notepad with you, bring a pen, write your questions down in advance and take notes. I used to do that quite a bit. I'm definitely a pain in the butt patient Because I typically will go in with research and be like I read this this is what I want to do, this is the plan I want to. You know course of action I want to take. But it's hard, I think, in a lot of instances For people to just go in and go to their doctors and say, like this is the course that I want to take.

Laura Ibragimova: 25:23

Yeah, I agree with you and I think the more our patients I spoke with, friends that I spoke with in the support groups, and the more More educated myself on the condition, I Started to feel more confidence Speaking with doctors and there were some doctors that I would meet with and have consults with that Were well, you know, are very well renowned in the space in endometriosis and I've known other patients that have had surgery with them and they had really great things to say and those weren't the right doctors for me Right there.

Laura Ibragimova: 25:59

So I chose to, you know, really listen to my heart in the process. There's a lot that you can do logically and intellectually building your understanding of the disease, but you also really have to, you know, understand that mind-body connection. If you feel comfortable with this doctor, then pursue it further and ask more questions until you know for sure that's the right doctor. But I I can't emphasize enough the the mind-body connection. In Feeling comfortable with who is going to perform such a serious surgery on you, you know that's that that person can take you down the right path or the wrong path as it relates to your medical treatment. So don't underestimate the power of your own intuition and your instincts when you're going through this journey as well.

Jenny Benitez: 26:44

Yes, I had an experience once. Where I am, I was I hate having to switch OBGYNs. It's like the worst thing to me to have to do that. Because, as you just said, like when you get comfortable with somebody like it's just you know you like that person and it's the vibe too, and you know that's another thing, like I think I'm gonna say back in the day, because that's how I think of my parents generation. But, like back in the day, there was like what one one town doctor that's always what I'm being told but there's like one doctor that everybody saw and that was it. Like didn't matter if you like them or not, that was your doctor.

Jenny Benitez: 27:21

And there's a whole generation of people right now In their 60s and 70s and 80s that are just like oh well, this has been my dog, this person's been my doctor for 30 years, I'm just gonna stick with them. I'm like, oh my gosh, but they're like really outdated and you could be getting better care somewhere else. So don't get hung up on like well, this person was my mom's doctor and my aunt's doctor and you know, in treated my whole family like I'm just gonna stick here or I've been with them forever. I don't feel like changing now, like you don't have to go that route, like you need to be comfortable for yourself. Um, I had an experience where I I was switching my doctor and I would just look for somebody who was in like close proximity to my job. So the god, I'm gonna go, you know, during the day to the appointment, it'll be easier. And so I just picked that way and I remember I went for my annual exam and I walked out of there and I was like I Literally got like the worst vibe. I'm never gonna go back to that office, and I never did. And you have to really, as Laura said, like just know yourself and and really like if you feel like that that's your intuition, saying like this is not, this is not a right fit, like don't go back to this person.

Jenny Benitez: 28:39

It's incredibly important to be an active participant in your health care. Don't be passive. Don't just take what someone's telling you as like well, this is it. I have told other stories of health related incidents with my kids, where, with my daughter, when she was five weeks old, I was basically told by about four or five doctors in one day that I was just overreacting and that I should just wait it out, and I just knew that that was not right and I knew something was wrong. And, lo and behold, I took her to the emergency room and if I had waited she would have been incredibly ill and we could have lost her.

Jenny Benitez: 29:18

So you, you have to, you really have to listen to your instinct and we're we're told a lot as women to kind of like, you know, not to listen to it and to just be, you know, submissive, do what you're told, and in relation to your health I mean relation to everything you shouldn't be doing that.

Jenny Benitez: 29:36

But For your health, it's especially important for you to really Put your foot down and say, like, I know this is how I feel and I will find a doctor that's gonna fill that need. Laura, you talked about you know the mind-body connection a little bit and emotional health, and I wanted to get your Just a little bit more from you on that, because I know that you do have this great background in health and wellness overall. Any advice to the listeners on, you know, caring for their mental health as they're going through you know, if they think they have anemitriosis or trying to deal with diagnosis and yeah, I think mental health is a huge effect of, or Treating your you know, taking care of yourself, and a huge component of making sure that your endometriosis doesn't progress.

Laura Ibragimova: 30:28

Women with endometriosis or are more likely to experience depression and anxiety. I'm sure a lot of that stems from the pain that they're feeling on a constant basis, but also a lot of the gas lighting that they experience from the medical community and even other people in their environment. What worked really well for me was really just kind of Taking inventory of my lifestyle and seeing the areas of my life that I felt were really stressful, that I could Kind of stop doing that. So for me, I was working a really really stressful job and I realized that I was burning out and that was actually exacerbating my symptoms. So that's when I actually realized that this wasn't the right job for me.

Laura Ibragimova: 31:13

I know that's not necessarily Easy for everyone to do, but it's. It's really important that you manage your stress well in any way that you can. I do yoga and meditation as well, so I think that's really important and an easy enough way for anyone to really start to apply. Wait the strategies to relieve stress calm the body down, calm the central nervous system down. Getting better sleep is also important, surrounding yourself with positive people or uplifting and then finding things that really bring you joy. So, for me, spending time in nature, absolutely love spending time in nature and being in more positive Environments that are just so serene and calming. So whatever that is for you that brings you joy, whether that's knitting or running or, you know, low-impact exercises or whatever just spending time with the right people, I think, is really important. But taking care of yourself is one of the best methods of treatment for endometriosis.

Jenny Benitez: 32:16

I think it's, um, it's interesting because there's so much research out there about this, but the the impact that stress has on your body is is insane. Like I mean it truly is like the craziest thing and it could literally kill you. Like I mean, stress could actually kill you, and I'm not just talking like, oh, you get so stressed out that you're like, oh, you have a heart attack. No, I mean like, literally in your body it quit like the cordial. Your cortisol levels go up, your inflammation is gonna go up immediately. My sister-in-law talks about that all the time. She has she's immunocompromised and she always tells she said she can feel her body reacting almost like a rash when she gets stressed out because the inflammation goes up and then her hormones start to react to it and she's like it's just like a slow slide down the bad side of the hill.

Jenny Benitez: 33:16

When you're in that scenario, disconnecting yourself from stress, I think for a lot of people is it's almost like they're so used to it that to not be stressed out would feel strange, which is part of the problem. I had heard in some courses that I took and some of the research that was presented, it said that cortisol is addictive. It's an addictive substance really in your body and the more stressed out that you get, the more cortisol is released into your body and then your body gets used to this state of just intensity and intense stress. And when you are detoxing from that and let's say like you're trying to step away and ease back and, as you said, like implement meditation and yoga and do things for yourself, that'll help relieve that, it feels wrong almost to some people and it feels like, oh, this isn't right, I'm doing something wrong here. Over the past year I started it in the summer of 2023.

Jenny Benitez: 34:26

And by the time this airs, it'll probably be about a year or so that I have been implementing meditation into my almost daily not every day, but I'm trying and the impact that it's had, like mentally and physically, and just like what it does to myself and my family when I meditate everybody's happier because I've had that time to really realign myself and I think it does help your health and I think it has a big impact.

Jenny Benitez: 34:56

Because I will also share this and, laura, after you started talking about it, I started thinking more about it. My endometriosis symptoms have subsided quite a bit, like quite significantly over the past two months or so and there's probably a direct relationship there to how I've scaled back on stress and how I'm approaching my day-to-day life. I do make it a point it's a priority for me to be present and to be in the moment and to be paying attention to what I'm doing. I habitually was like a multitasker before and I consistently was like well, I have to do this, but I'm gonna also do this at the same time and I would basically be like half-assing everything and it wasn't good for anybody. And over the course of the past like a year or so, stepping away from that, I've noticed a huge difference in my whole overall wellness just because of that.

Laura Ibragimova: 35:58

Yeah, I mean there's definitely a strong connection between stress and inflammatory conditions. Another thing to note when it comes to cortisol is that so endometriosis is an estrogen-dominant condition. Estrogen essentially feeds the disease, and so one of the treatment options is to suppress your estrogen. Well, in order to balance out your estrogen in your body, you need to have progesterone. Cortisol and progesterone are actually they stem from the same mother hormone, and so if you're under stress, your body thinks you need to survive. There's something chasing you and you need to survive, and so your body's gonna prioritize survival over sex or procreation, because progesterone is a sex hormone, and so you're gonna produce less progesterone, which is gonna create more estrogen in your body and allow for the inflammation and for the disease to progress. So when you are balancing out your cortisol, you are allowing for your body to balance out its hormones as well. So, yes, I would say there's definitely a strong connection.

Laura Ibragimova: 37:09

And that's not a lot of people know or understand. And you are being fed the hormone synthetically, so progesterone synthetically, but it doesn't always help, Like in my case. It did not help. What helped was really the stress, naturally.

Jenny Benitez: 37:28

That's so. It's mind blowing because it's almost like and I'm not, I don't wanna simplify it too much, but I was gonna say it's almost like this simple solution is right there and it's so hard for a lot of people to really wrap their heads around it. And I think pharmaceuticals are wonderful, but there's also a time and a place. And if you can treat and I'm not saying wholly treat, but if there is a way to really holistically take measures to increase your overall wellness, go that route. I always go that route. I love medicines. I'm an advocate for medicines. I think they're really important. I think surgery is important. I think all these medical advances we have as humans is phenomenal. But there's like a time and a place and it doesn't all have to be that way.

Jenny Benitez: 38:19

I'm a huge advocate for healthy eating. I'm vegetarian myself and the effects that I've seen on my personal wellness when I made that switch and went that route and I've been eating a lot cleaner and just really being mindful of everything. It makes such a huge impact. And people really don't realize the things that we're putting in our bodies and the stuff that's being put in our foods and then we're eating it and ingesting it, the hormones that are injected into foods, or even like, if you ever see, like an organic apple versus like a not organic apple, and you see this massive difference. Like you're eating all that, you're putting all that into your body. So whatever's being sprayed on the foods, whatever's being fed to the animals, like you are ingesting all of that and it does have long-term effects and there is research that will show you. Like there is all this is there. It's just people don't wanna see that, you know, and it's just it's mind-boggling.

Jenny Benitez: 39:25

I've had a lot of discussions around that. It's like a mind-boggling to me, but it's just, it's there. There's a lot of information there for it. For somebody who is hearing this and, let's say, thinking to themselves, this sounds familiar to me, like the symptoms that Laura and Jenny have described sounds kind of familiar to me. I have pain every month, right, you know, and they wanna seek support. What do you think the first step should be for them?

Laura Ibragimova: 39:58

I think a great place to go would be. You know there's several online support groups on Facebook is where I actually started my journey. I also started to attend some conferences that were held by foundations that primarily focus on endometriosis, and that's where I met a lot of other patients when we developed our own support group, and we've learned from each other as well, not just about each other's experiences and getting advice on doctors, but also what are some additional symptoms to look out for, and also allowing for more emotional support. I think the best place to start really would be just to kind of do some research on different support groups and read through the comments that people are posting about their experiences, and you'll know whether you are starting to experience that as well. So you can ask yourself those questions Am I also feeling this type of pain?

Laura Ibragimova: 40:55

Do I have these types of symptoms? Am I noticing this every you know that time of the month, and so I would also recommend reaching out to people, like you mentioned earlier, and just seeing if you can have a conversation with them. I think I reached out to dozens of people, and they were also welcome and happy to talk about their stories, not just to talk to me from a patient perspective, but also, can I do anything to help you? And that was beautiful too. And then also doing your research on your doctors as well, just to make sure that you are working with a very skilled doctor and also a compassionate doctor.

Jenny Benitez: 41:31

Yeah, that's wonderful and I agree. I think Laura is giving a lot of really great information here and you do really. I mean I've said it a bunch of times on this episode, you'll hear me say it forever on this podcast is that you really do need to do research. You have to educate yourself, because it's incredibly important that you have that knowledge going into your appointments and that you can feel like I know what I'm going to say here or you're going to ask the questions that you think you need to ask. It's just incredibly important. I cannot stress enough advocating for your own health care. You have to do it. It's just something that needs to be done, Laura. Thank you, Go ahead.

Laura Ibragimova: 42:14

Sorry, I just also wanted to add it's also really important to talk to other members of your family and get your medical history. Like you mentioned, you had so many other members of your family who had similar symptoms as you and ended up having some bad clinical outcomes, and I think that if you were to go to or anyone were to go to a family barbecue and talk about endometriosis, or at least the symptoms, you would notice that minimum five to 10 people also have that experience. So learning more about your own family history is also really important in this process.

Jenny Benitez: 42:49

Yeah, that's actually that was a really key thing to remind everybody of because it's true, it is hereditary, it is going to happen, so it's important to take note and talk to the other members of your family and if you do see that, then it's almost like okay, now I see this pattern here and that's like one of the first things that they ask you to in your appointments. Like, oh, there are other women in your family that has this, or is there anyone who's had history of X, y and Z? Like that's a huge part of understanding what your own body is about. That was, yeah, that was a fantastic note to add.

Jenny Benitez: 43:28

Laura, I greatly appreciate you coming on and doing the podcast. I am incredibly excited to be connected with you. I'm very excited for your next steps and everything that you're working on and listeners, if you have any questions, I'm going to be linking Laura's information in the description of the podcast. You can always reach out to her for endometriosis and you know I'm always here for all of you and you can find me and you guys have my information readily available at all times. I bombard all of you with it. So I greatly appreciate you listening to this episode. I hope you found it impactful and if you you yourself are experiencing symptoms or you know somebody that is experiencing symptoms, do your research, seek out the help of an advocacy group, support group or a healthcare professional to really start looking into this and addressing it as soon as you can. Laura, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me All right. Thank you everybody.