{"id":15192,"date":"2018-01-10T13:33:49","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T21:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vitalhealth.com\/?p=15192"},"modified":"2019-04-26T13:30:51","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T20:30:51","slug":"thoughts-birth-control-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vitalhealth.com\/endo-blog\/thoughts-birth-control-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on \u201cBirth Control Your Own Adventure\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css_animation=”fadeIn”]Yesterday in the\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0endometriosis patient\u00a0Sindha Agha<\/a>\u00a0(not my patient) wrote a thought-provoking op-ed about her adventures in pharmaceutical hormone treatment for her endometriosis. What struck me the most about her accounts was the repetitive nature of hormones the care providers she saw offered. Over and over they offered her palliative treatments to her disease, with no thought to side effects or to an effective patient outcome. While Agha rightly was careful not to demonize birth control, what we are really talking about here is not birth control but treatment options for a disease than strike as many women as diabetes in their prime years, often rendering them with chronic, debilitating pain and organ dysfunction.<\/p>\n

As a physician who treats endometriosis patients with wide excision surgical therapy, this makes me so sad. The fact that here we are more than twenty-five years after wide excision was pioneered, numerous clinical, peer-reviewed publications demonstrate it\u2019s effectiveness, and the successes I\u2019ve seen in my own practice of wide excision restoring women to their original vitality – yet ob-gyns are still just offering palliative care in the form of hormones, is dismaying to say the least. If hormones get the patient to the outcome she desires \u2013 functionality and return of quality of life, then they\u00a0are<\/i>\u00a0an effective treatment. However, if they do not, we now know that delaying effective treatment to endometriosis patients in the form of palliative care can allow the disease to get more invasive and symptomatic. While there is currently no cure for endometriosis, wide excision surgery done by someone who can effectively identify the disease can be a highly effective therapy, and even curative. In addition, many women successfully manage their symptoms with alternative modalities from dietary changes to acupuncture. In short, health and wellness is not a pharmaceutical deficiency.[\/vc_column_text]