Women's Health and Endometriosis with Lexi Burt l S2E070

Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to a call for love. I have a really special guest here today. And she has a podcast that really similar theme to a call for love and her podcast is quest for wholeness. And I'm here with Lexi Burt who has her degree in psychology and she's an advocate for a woman's health and enjoying nature and everything in between. Really, she's an advocate for living your best life. And welcome, Lexi. Welcome to a call for love.

Thanks for having me, Linda. I'm so excited to be here. And I know

the listeners are really going to get a lot from this conversation because not only do you have your podcast, a quest for wholeness, but you also have a really special message to share with us about endometriosis. So let's begin here, how your quest for wholeness began, and how it has evolved in really diving deeper into this phenomenon that women, many women are suffering from.

Yeah, I mean, thanks for the intro that it's really not talked about a lot. And my journey has been really interesting, because I kind of knew something was wrong for a long time. But I didn't know what exactly it was. And there's not a lot of support or research in women's health. So I've taken a path that has taken me up down sideways, topsy turvy, to get where I am. So as you mentioned, I graduated from Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta with a Bachelors of psychology. And I had always really been interested in psychology and holistic health. It really started with my own health and just knowing something was wrong, but approaching it in a way that was just through the medical system. And when that didn't work for me, I had to find other resources to start feeling better. And this was only in my 20s. But I had dealt with painful periods from my very first one at 11 years old. So what people don't know about endometriosis? Well, a lot of people don't even know what it is in general. And it's one of the most common gynecological issues in the world. So what it is, is tissue that similar to the uterus starts to grow outside of the uterus. So on the ovaries, fallopian tubes, bowel, abdominal lining, and it has been found in the brain and on the heart. So it's a pretty severe issue that affects one in 10 women. And some of the risk factors for it are having an early period. So things weren't good for me right off the bat. And when I was 16, I went to the doctor and said, Hey, like something's not normal. At that point, I had my period for five years. It was painful. It was long, it was heavy. And I intuitively knew something was wrong in my body. And I thought, well, you know, you're a young lady. As you get older your cycle will regulate. So I just continued on like that, knowing something was still very wrong. But they told me it was fine. It should get better, right? So I listened to them. But it didn't.

Wow. You know, I don't really know much about it. But it just makes me think that, like I had two babies. And it was presumed that nursing was a natural thing that I was just going to nurse from the second it happened. While it was not so natural. And I'm thinking the same thing with our menstrual cycle each month. We just figured that everyone has it. And it's a common place. circumstance being a woman. And we should just suck it up or it's just Okay, so yours is a little heavier. Mine was a little light. It's all natural. But really, it's something that we need to pay attention to. We need to empower our women.

You know, it's so funny because I have over the last few weeks been teaching women about the various stages or phases of our menstrual cycle. And my grandma, who is going to be 72 didn't even know about some of these things. And she came to me and was like, This isn't right. Like how, how have I gone my whole life and not known about these things? Well We don't talk about them. For one, we don't that it's it's a gross topic. We don't talk about periods, Women's Health menstruation that that we don't talk about that stuff. If we look at the medical system, especially historically, well, lots of doctors are men. Right? And there has been this this expectation societally that yeah, oh, it's normal to have pure, painful periods. You just suck it up, you deal with it, and you get on with your day? Well, I would like to scream this from the rooftops. painful periods are not normal. They're not normal, like cramping, sure. But being in pain that interferes with your daily life, your ability to fulfill your responsibilities, go to work, go to school, that is not normal.

Absolutely. And I would like to bring it back to the meaning of a call for love, because a call for love is noticing and being aware. And you know, what, noticing what's going on in our body, and acting for ourselves and all women and the medical system, it's a call for love. It's a call for being more mindful, more compassionate, and more kind to everybody, because you're right. I always say that people know their cars or their phones better than they know their bodies.

You know. And as I was saying, to, I knew, really from the first time that that wasn't normal. And I was told otherwise. So I just, I dismissed myself. When I was getting help. I'm like, maybe I'm wrong. So when I was 20, I have lost my period for about 12 months, and I wasn't pregnant. And that was really scary. I had gained a lot of weight to earlier, you know, before then I think I was struggling with a lot of mental health issues, physical health issues. So I was really suppressing those with alcohol and partying. And once I started to kind of, you know, remove that and change my lifestyle, I really knew something was wrong with my body. So I went to the doctor. And the first thing they put me on was birth control, which is, you know, has its place. But there was something else that was wrong. And my body reacted horribly, like I ended up in the hospital, because I was puking for five days and had a migraine. So I was like, I'm not going on that. So I go back to my doctor, and she's like, well, you know, I told you, you have two options here. You can either continue birth control, or I will give you this prescription of OxyContin to deal with your period pain. So I'm 21 at this point, and I asked her, I said, Okay, so I take this opioid medication every single month for the rest of my reproductive life. So let's say another 25 years, is that what you're telling me to do? And she said, Yes, birth control, or the opioid? Like, no wonder we have an opioid crisis in North America, because that that's disgusting. medical advice.

So they did not do a test on you. Oh,

so yeah, I forgot to say she did send me for blood tests, everything came back normal. And that's what I kept getting told your tests are normal, your tests are normal. I did go get a pelvic ultrasound, and they didn't find anything. So they concluded that I just should go on birth control deal with the pain, or her other suggestion which so many women here, maybe you should lose some weight. And that will help your symptoms.

Well, that's kind of disturbing,

quite disturbing. And, you know, as a 21 year old, I just kind of took it. I didn't take the prescription. But I took the situation because I felt really hopeless and I didn't know what to do. So I left crying. I left every doctor's appointment just crying because I was like, This isn't right. But what else do I do? I felt really hopeless. And it wasn't until I found a holistic fertility specialist who helped regulate my cycle, and teach me about my body that I actually started feeling better and feeling more empowered with my health.

Yeah, and this really brings up a point because even for the listeners, maybe they you know aren't just in the cycle of life, but we No other young woman who are? And can we offer them the advice that we really need because when you're young, you really look to the experts to know. And you're really trusting because you don't know any better. And so can we really use this knowledge not only for ourselves, but for for other woman that we know because it must have been very scary. And I'm really pleased to hear, although you did suffer, and you did go through many stages, but you knew it wasn't right for your body, you knew something was wrong, we need to honor that we need to say, we need to listen to our inner voice and trust it and honor it and believe it and not push it away.

And I love that you brought that up, even if you know your listeners aren't at this phase in their life, or also aren't a female. Females are 50% of our population. It's estimated that one in 10 Women have endometriosis. But the testing the diagnosing tool right now to know for certain is through laparoscopy. So a surgery to confirm. So that estimate is probably pretty low, but still one in 10. That's like 200 million women worldwide. So even if this doesn't apply to you, there's likely a woman in your world that is struggling with female health issues. And

even bosses because you know, you could say, I can't come into the office for a couple of days because it's, you know, it's my cycle or it's that time a month. And then then maybe that's an awareness, oh, maybe maybe having that discussion. Because, of course, it may be uncomfortable, and you could get somebody else to have it. But really, we want to move through these cycles, as they say the moon cycle with greater ease. So can you walk us through? Okay, you have been diagnosed with endometriosis now. And so what does that mean?

Yes. So I guess the first thing to say is that it took a while the average diagnosis is actually 8.6 years till women get a diagnosis because it's through this theory. So I ended up getting linked up with a fantastic doctor who took a really holistic approach. And he helped balance my hormones, we got my vitamin deficiencies up, regulated my blood sugar and the pain was still there. So then he referred me to an endometriosis specialist in Calgary, Alberta. And it was just the best, most validating experience I could have had because, you know, years I had been fighting, knowing something was wrong. And then to get that diagnosis. I mean, I just started crying right there. He This was actually before the surgery, he did a physical exam and said, Whoa, yeah, I think like, I think I can feel this. And I just I just I started crying because it had been years of fighting, fighting for myself and advocating and feeling so awful that to hear that was just it Yeah, validating. So after I got the diagnosis, this was 2021 had a surgery. And surgery isn't always the case. Some women don't need it. Sometimes there's lifestyle factors that can really help women. diet changes, exercise changes. So surgery is kind of the last last ditch effort for some women. And they go in and they cut it out. So it was on my appendix it was on my bowel is on my ovaries and my abdominal lining. So when it goes down undiagnosed for so long, it has these adhesions that can actually pull the organs together and have all of these other symptoms that get misdiagnosed because there's GI issues, anxiety and depression can be related to endometriosis. There's other pelvic pain issues. So, you know, it could get misdiagnosed as other things. So after I had the surgery, and they removed it, it was a six month sorry, six week recovery and my life one add, I was ended up taking the opioids. The month before my surgery because I was in such pain. I was missing out on university like I missed out on so many days of school. Even though it was online, I couldn't pay attention. I couldn't I couldn't do the things that I needed to do. So after I had this surgery, I truly felt like I was able to live my life again. And I went through a number of lifestyle changes before then because I was reading the research. I was in school, I had access to these databases. I'm naturally a curious person. So it was like, what is in my control without getting the surgery? So for me, removing any processed foods, any fried foods, sugar, and gluten is really significant to keeping my pain down.

And I'll say that again. So people can really hear that because I think, actually, it's across the board. So good idea to give these up.

Absolutely. You know, and I was really, when he had suggested surgery, I was torn up about that, because I felt like I should be able to have control over my health. And I didn't want my my body, my spiritual body like cut into right surgery is a joke. That is serious stuff, even for simple surgeries. There's risk to that. So I grappled with that for a couple of months and talk to a counselor about it too, because I was really, really beat up about it. So before then, things that had helped and do help. My pain now is removing sugar, processed foods, and gluten specifically.

Yeah, interesting. And you include alcohol in that. So

that's, that's been an interesting journey, all the research. So endometriosis is an inflammatory disorder, it creates inflammation in the body. And what we know about alcohol is that it also creates inflammation. So if you have an inflammatory condition, you're just adding fuel to the fire. So alcohol makes me bloat really significantly, and it's painful. And I get hung over after like one glass of wine. So it's really funny you were I was using alcohol as a coping mechanism in my younger years. And now that I've been able to sit with myself, see how other things affect me. I'm alcohol free ish. It's tricky, because it's so integrated into our society. Like, what do you want to hang out? Go for drinks? Well, I actually I'm gonna I'm choosing not to drink. And some people aren't so compassionate about that decision.

Yeah, I did have an episode with back a couple episodes ago with Laura, and she has the program still me alcohol free. And people are choosing to reduce or eliminate alcohol in their lives purposely. Because of that reason. And of course, it doesn't serve us always. But that's a journey. And that's a whole other discussion. But okay, so now you've had the surgery. And what's life look like? Now? Like, how's your cycle now?

Yeah, so for three up until like, last June. So for three years, I didn't even think about it. Like, if my period when my period came, it was pain free. And I just went along with my life. So if you think about somebody who has struggled for 10 years, your life with endometriosis revolves around managing symptoms, and your period. So you're like, Okay, I'm going on vacation. But my period is expected to be there, I need to block off these days where I'm going to be in the hotel room, because I'm not going to be able to walk. That's how painful it is. You can't feel your legs, you're in extreme pain, like you have to resign from your life for those, you know, four to seven days. So really, for three years, my life I didn't think about it, which was just like, I was like, This is what people experience is this, this is it. So things started getting a little bit wonky again, so I'm on a bio identical hormone. So it's not a synthetic hormone like birth control. And I use that to reduce essentially, the build up of my uterine lining, so my periods aren't as severe. And this is what birth control can do. But synthetic hormones are really hard on the body. And they also can produce a lot of other symptoms like mental health challenges or other physical issues too. So for me, when I went on the synthetic hormones, I had very, very bad depression, and actually on one of them some really scary like suicidal ideation, which I never had before. And then I stopped taking this medication, two days gone. So again, it's such a journey unique to everybody, because the same medication changes a different woman's life. So I'm not going to say, hey, you shouldn't take that, because it really is what's works best for you. And now, I feel so empowered to share that with others. Because I've gone through the research, I've tried all these different things, I've compiled these resources. And I truly feel like a responsibility to give that back to other women. So at least this journey for them can be a little bit easier.

It's four. So it's, it allows you to be of service to other people, because you isn't that beautiful that we take our pain point. And we use that to uplevel our life in order to serve others. That's really a beautiful thing. I really love that. Yeah. And before we wrap up, I just want to hear so as you are maintaining it, does endometriosis continue to build throughout your life? Will this be something that you continuously have to monitor? Yes,

so a lot. It's becoming more common now. But in the last few decades, the solution or cure to endometriosis has been a full hysterectomy. So removing the uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, which has very significant effects on a woman, right, that puts them into menopause. And so for example, my mother and my grandmother, my grandmother had diagnosed endometriosis. They both had hysterectomy is at 27. So I'm 28. And that severely affected their quality of life. So we know now that a hysterectomy doesn't cure endometriosis, it can still grow back without a uterus. So what is the approach? Well, there's these medications, pain management. But a lot of the research is pointing to lifestyle changes, as you mentioned, alcohol, removing anything that can inflame your body further. So following an anti inflammatory diet, the Mediterranean diet is a great example, having healthy fats like Omega oils, and, you know, good quality olive oil, you know, seeking mental health help. There's also this really interesting relationship between trauma and endometriosis. Women who have experienced significant childhood trauma or trauma early in their life are more likely or at greater risk of having endometriosis. Which is a whole other a whole other conversation we could go down, but addressing your emotional issues will positively affect your body. We're not mental health and physical health. We're one person, we're one whole person. So it would make sense that addressing these things that are looming over us will positively affect our physiology.

That's so interesting, because I was thinking, okay, so this is biological, like it's hereditary. And then you're saying, Well, no, we can also create it in our body. I wonder what Louise Hay would say about endometriosis? Because where it resides, you know, she always says that we're dis ease lives in the body.

Absolutely. Absolutely shows.

I'll have to look that up after but that's super fascinating. And last question, what does it mean for because your mother and your grandmother 27 People aren't having babies that early anymore? So does this mean that childbirth for you? What would that look like? Yeah,

that's a good question. That's a big question. Actually. I don't know. I don't know if I'm able to have kids. I also don't know if I want to have kids. Biologically. I've suffered so much with my body, that I do have fear over what might happen with a significant change like that. Now, here's the caveat. Women are also at a greater risk of endometriosis if they never give birth. However, they can also have very traumatic Can painful births. So it's a catch 22. And this is where it gets challenging for a lot of women who want to conceive, because infertility is related to endometriosis. So I know some beautiful practitioners who are just doing the most wonderful work of helping women with these gynecological issues. get pregnant without IVF, but a natural approach to fertility. And it's just it's just beautiful. It's possible. If listeners out there are dealing with these things and want to conceive, you just need to find the right support. And I'm happy to be that integrator of connecting people with the right people

you had shared because I listeners I was on a quest for wholeness. I'm going to be on Lexi Burt's podcast. And so you had shared with me there that you are becoming a coach in this area. So I feel that the listeners maybe they're not going through it but maybe they know somebody who else who is so how can they get in touch with you because your path has become your purpose.

Thank you for saying that, Linda. Yeah, so the best place that they can reach me is on Instagram at holistic underscore, endo underscore coach. And I'll be sharing a lot of resources for people to learn about endometriosis and and connect. And I also will be potentially working at a clinic for endometriosis. I can't say too much about it yet. But I am partnering with some wonderful practitioners who are really moving this forward and are going to help so many women. So you can stay tuned for an update on that which in due time will be shared over on my Instagram.

Oh, see, I love that you have taken this and you are now creating it your passion project because through your experience, you're going to offer others that compassion and empathy they need and guide them so that their journey can be less daunting and more supportive. That's a really beautiful thing.

I think when we all can get together and deal with these things together, it's a lot less scary. And we can teach each other how to cultivate that compassion that we really, really need, especially when dealing with these painful conditions so that we can all find that call to love as well.

That's really beautiful. And may we live in our minds and our bodies more fully, more perfectly more completely with kindness and love.

Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better.

Thank you, Lexi. Thanks for being on a call for love and listeners. I will place all those links in the show notes. So until next time, wishing everyone love joy and good health. Namaste.