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What are the best supplements for endometriosis?
Supplement sales has become a monster industry these days. You walk into the health food store and there are aisles and aisles of different supplements to choose from.
But you are a unique human and you have unique symptoms coming up in your body, so how do you actually know what supplements are best for you?
At the end of the day, exactly what supplements to take is bio-individual, but there are certain supplements that have a wide range of benefits that can benefit many endo warriors.
That is what we are here to talk about today!
In today’s episode we will talk about:
- The 3 best supplements for endometriosis I see the most benefit from across the board.
- The benefits and individual considerations for each of those supplements.
- How to create a supplement plan for yourself rather than guessing and stabbing in the dark.
- How supplements can be beneficial in supporting symptoms like pain, inflammation, cramping, digestive distress, bloating, nausea, and so much more.
Enjoy!
References:
Study on ginger
Article on nutrient status of modern food
Ep. 1: The 5 most important things you need to know about nutrition for endometriosis
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Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. This may not be the best fit for you and your personal situation. It shall not be construed as medical advice. The information and education provided here is not intended or implied to supplement or replace professional medical treatment, advice, and/or diagnosis. Always check with your own physician or medical professional before trying or implementing any information read here.
Full transcription:
Introduction to the best supplements for endometriosis
All right, all right, welcome back. I am super excited for today’s episode. I feel like I say that every time, but I am excited about every episode. I really love sharing this information with you. It makes my day. I love that you all are listening to it and hopefully gaining some wonderful benefits from it.
So if I say that a lot, that’s why. I just am genuinely really excited.
Okay, so today’s episode is all about supplements. We’ve talked a lot lately about food and nutrition for endometriosis, and today we’re going to dig in a little bit into supplements. Now, when it comes to supplements for endometriosis, there’s a lot to know, there’s a lot to consider.
Considerations for the best supplements for endometriosis
Just like with everything, it’s very bio individual, so I can’t tell you on this podcast episode exactly what supplements every single person should take.
There are some supplements that will benefit one person with endometriosis and may be not as beneficial for somebody else or even harmful for somebody else. It really depends on what’s going on. And I will also say that you always, always, always want to start with the foundations first. Supplements are not going to be the first place that you want to look.
They are, as the name tells us, supplements. Right? So they’re meant to be taken alongside a wonderful nutrient dense diet. Alongside optimizing your digestive health and rebalancing your gut microbiome and balancing your blood sugar and managing your stress levels and all the things that can be done on a foundational level and then we add in supplements as they are needed.
Supplements aren’t a magic pill
So, supplements are not a magic pill. You can’t out supplement a poor diet. That’s a phrase that you’ll hear me say over and over because it’s so true. And oftentimes, one of the mistakes that I see a lot of people make is that they are using supplements to chase certain symptoms in their body. And that’s something that we want to avoid in general.
You want to work on addressing your body as a whole, looking at the root cause of what’s going on with everything in your body, not just chasing one little symptom at a time, because that can end up being so frustrating and being this long term journey that just won’t feel very fulfilling to you.
So, what I’m going to share with you all today are my three favorite supplements that I use personally for myself. I use for many of my clients and I feel like these three particular supplements can be beneficial for the vast majority of people. I try to pick supplements that are not going to be super bio individual but have some really widespread benefits that can benefit a lot of people.
Do your homework
That being said, of course, these recommendations aren’t just go out there and buy these supplements tomorrow and just blindly jump into them. I still recommend working with a credentialed practitioner who can help you to determine what supplements are best for your unique situation, but hopefully this will be a great place to start as far as just educating yourself around supplements.
Knowing the benefits behind them, if somebody does recommend a supplement to you, then at least you can have an understanding of why and what benefits it might have and if that’s something that may be helpful for your unique body. So, let’s just dive right in here. These are in no particular order, by the way.
This is just the order that they popped out of my head and I decided to write them down. It doesn’t mean one, two, and three is the order of how important they are or how helpful they are. That’s just the order that I threw them out there today.
Why ginger is one of the best supplements for endometriosis
So number one is ginger. Ginger is one of my personal favorites and it’s something that I use all the time.
Now, ginger can be taken as a supplement, absolutely. There are capsule forms and chewable forms and things like that that you can take as a supplement. You can also take ginger in its whole food form. Just use fresh ginger or dried ginger and use that in your cooking. You can also have ginger as a tea.
There are many tea bags you can buy or you can use fresh ginger to make a tea. So there’s lots of options to use ginger. I really love ginger first and foremost because it’s a very powerful anti inflammatory.
There have even been some recent studies, recent research, that shows that it may even be more powerful than a lot of the over the counter pain medications, which is really incredible.
I hope that they continue to do more research on this and really understand how and why and what the exact dosage Should be to help with that, but so many people I know become very reliant on over the counter Medications just pop an Advil right and left because they have no other choice or feel like they have no other choice Because you’re just in pain all the time But if you’re able to use something natural like ginger that can be a very powerful anti inflammatory and can be an alternative that can be very life changing just to have something like that, because unfortunately, those over the counter pain medications do also have some side effects.
They have impacts on your gut health, on your microbiome, and that can be something that can have some long term consequences. So, that’s why ginger is something that I love to offer as an alternative.
Ginger for digestion, nausea, antioxidant, and more
In addition to being an anti inflammatory, ginger also is really wonderful for your digestive health.
Ginger is something that is used frequently to help with nausea and digestive upset. So it can be great even for when you’re experiencing symptoms of what we call the period flu, which can be either that That time leading up to your period, or sometimes even during your period, when you start to experience some kind of flu like symptoms, like nausea, maybe vomiting, upset stomach, all those symptoms that we typically associate with the flu, we call that the period flu.
Ginger is also a powerful antioxidant, which is great for reducing oxidative stress and free radicals in your body. And that’s actually something that’s huge for endometriosis. It can also be really helpful for balancing your blood sugar, which, balancing your blood sugar reduces overall stress in your body.
It helps us to be able to produce hormones. effectively the way that we really want to be able to, so that’s a great benefit as well. And it also has antimicrobial properties, so it can help to support microbial balance in your body. So many wonderful things. Love ginger.
Using ginger in your food
At the very least, I recommend incorporating some ginger into your diet when you’re cooking.
Like, for example, when I make a stir fry, I like to grate some fresh ginger and throw that in there. Or sometimes just even on top of a salad, I’ll just grate some fresh ginger and toss it right on top of a salad. You can throw it into so many different meals. It adds wonderful flavor, has a wonderful aroma.
So that can be a great Place to start. I know that we’re doing an episode here today about supplements, but so many of these things that we supplement can also be taken in their whole food form. That’s really what the supplement is anyway. It’s just ginger that has been put into a capsule form. So there’s many different ways to take ginger.
Any of those forms can be really beneficial.
Why magnesium is one of the best supplements for endometriosis
Okay, number two is magnesium on our list of the best supplements for endometriosis. I can’t tell you how much I love magnesium. Really, truly, it’s my favorite mineral. I feel like I could talk about it all day long, but I’ll keep this relatively succinct today so you can understand the benefits of magnesium and why that may be something that you want to consider supplementing with yourself.
Now, magnesium comes in many different forms. If you go to the health food store or you’re looking online trying to find a magnesium supplement, just know that there are many different forms of magnesium. Some supplements will come with a little bit of a variety of types of magnesium. It might have a blend.
Some of them are single forms of magnesium. It’s important to know here that some of the forms of magnesium can affect your bowels. It helps with motility, meaning it helps your bowels to move faster, which can be helpful if you struggle with constipation. But if you already struggle with diarrhea or lose stools, then taking So, um, I’m going to stop here.
A supplement that helps with motility will actually be to your detriment. So definitely something to consider.
My favorite form of magnesium: magnesium glycinate
The form of magnesium that we’re really talking about today, as I’m talking about these benefits, is magnesium glycinate. Now, magnesium glycinate is magnesium combined with glycinate, which is an amino acid.
And it has certain benefits that are maybe different than other forms of magnesium. Now, it’s important to know that most people are deficient in magnesium. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. Of course, most people don’t get enough. Vegetables in their body in the first place.
That’s definitely a huge problem in this day and age, but even some of the people who are really vegetable crazy and eat all kinds of vegetables all day long still might be a little bit deficient in magnesium because our soil this these days is so depleted from minerals.
There’s been studies out there comparing the food from, say, the 1950s compared to the food of today and just the nutrient status of certain vegetables and things like that. And it’s what it shows is that The food today is significantly lower in nutrients and particularly minerals than the food used to be.
And that’s really because the soil that the food is grown in is heavily depleted now. So, even if you eat really, really well, you may still need some supplemental magnesium to really bring yourself up to the full benefits of magnesium that you need.
Magnesium-rich foods
When you’re looking at food sources of magnesium, there are quite a few foods that you can focus on and incorporate into your diet, which includes things like dark leafy greens, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, sesame seeds, seaweed, beans and lentils, bananas, dried figs, blackberries, and even fish like halibut.
So there’s a lot of foods that you can work on incorporating into your diet to help you get more magnesium on a day to day basis. I will say that when you’re consuming produce, and especially when you’re working on eating produce in order to up your nutrient status, focusing on foods that are grown organically is always going to be your best bet.
Organic foods are going to have more nutrients. They’re going to be grown in soils that are less depleted, especially if it’s regeneratively grown. agriculture even better. I even recommend trying to find small local farms. Like, I love going to my weekly farmer’s market. You can find me there pretty much every Saturday morning.
I love going and getting my vegetables from local farmers. I even have gotten to know some of the farmers, built a relationship with them. I know that this stuff is grown locally, which is so much more sustainable. And many communities have similar either farmers markets or maybe even a CSA, which is Community Supported Agriculture, where you can get a box of produce from a local farm each week.
Or sometimes every other week, depending on how they have it set up, and that can be a wonderful option as well.
Why is magnesium one of the best supplements for endometriosis?
Now, why in the world do you want this magnesium in your body and want this, these magnesium rich foods? Well, let’s dive into that. First and foremost, magnesium helps to promote muscle relaxation.
This, of course, can be really great for when you’re experiencing any sort of cramping, like menstrual cramps. Cramping is your muscle basically engaging and not relaxing, so taking a supplement like magnesium or eating a magnesium rich diet can help promote that muscle relaxation. It also helps to reduce pain, reduces PMS symptoms.
It’s wonderful also for your mental health. Magnesium is really great for helping with your body’s stress response. It can have huge benefits if you struggle with anxiety. It helps promote calm and relaxation, which we can all use some of that. It’s really helpful for quality sleep. If you struggle with sleep, magnesium can be a wonderful thing to look at.
And it also helps to support healthy blood sugar regulation. So, so many benefits of magnesium. Honestly, that’s not even the full list, but I want to keep it focused on the benefits that are going to help you the most. With what you may be struggling with right now. So again, I really highly recommend Doing some work on getting those magnesium rich foods in your diet.
That can be of huge benefit You can also look for a high quality magnesium glycinate supplement.
Can’t take magnesium? Try a topical form of one of the best supplements for endometriosis
And in addition to that, there’s even topical forms of magnesium that you can use. I have a magnesium gel that I have at home. Uh, I’ll even use that sometimes if I’m experiencing pain in some fashion or another and I need some relatively quick relief.
I’ll rub that on topically right on my skin. There’s also lotions out there that have magnesium. Or even take a nice hot Epsom salt bath. If you pour about a cup of Epsom salt in a nice hot bath, The Epsom salt contains high levels of magnesium that can be absorbed right through your skin. And of course, the hot water just helps with that absorption and can be very relaxing and soothing in and of itself.
So again, lots of ways to get magnesium in your body, especially if you know, some people just don’t tolerate Magnesium supplements well orally, although oftentimes that is related to the form of magnesium that you’re taking. But if that’s the case for you, and even with forms like magnesium glycinate, you still find yourself struggling with taking magnesium orally.
Doing those topical forms can be a wonderful alternative.
Omega-3s are one of the best supplements for endometriosis
Okay, and our third supplement for today, one of my very favorites, omega threes, omega threes. are another one of those things that most people are deficient in. So there’s different types of omega fats. Omega 3s are a fat, by the way. One of the big things that can really heavily benefit people with endometriosis is balancing out your omega 3 to omega 6 ratio in your body.
There are foods and, of course, supplements that contain omega 3 fats, and there are foods that contain omega 6 fats. Well… It just so happens that way more of the food that we consume, especially within a standard American diet, is very heavy in omega 6s. So when you’re looking at things like vegetable oils, which are so very prevalent in everything, especially processed foods and even if you’re eating out at restaurants and getting takeout food and things like that, um, It’s very easy to get way too much of the omega 6s.
Now omega 6s are not necessarily bad. There’s a lot of whole food sources of omega 6s that can be really beneficial. It’s more about the ratio of omega 3s to omega 6s. So, in your body, these types of fats, the omega 3s and 6s, break down in certain ways. They go down what’s called the prostaglandin pathways.
How Omega-3s support inflammation
I’m not going to go into all the science behind it today. If you are really interested, you can do some googling on that. Prostaglandin pathways. But basically, they break down to go either towards a more inflammatory pathway in your body or a more anti inflammatory pathway. The omega 3s gear more towards that anti inflammatory pathway.
So if we can get more omega 3s in our body, we can help to reduce inflammation. So omega 3s are a very powerful anti inflammatory. I really recommend actually getting as many omega 3s in your diet as you can. So food sources of omega 3s, because again, food first! There’s all kinds of fish that are very high in omega 3s.
Fish and seafood is one of the best sources out there. So fish that are high in omega 3s include salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, oysters. I know oysters aren’t actually a fish, but it goes in the seafood category there. You can also consume foods like walnuts, chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, pasture raised eggs, meat and dairy from pasture raised animals, and yes, the pasture raised part is important.
We’ve talked about this on a previous episode a little more in depth, but the way that your food is raised really matters for the nutrient status. If you’re consuming conventionally raised meat, it may be actually very low in nutrients and may be much higher in omega 6s. And honestly, I believe that that’s where a lot of the dispute about red meat and meat in general comes from, is that studies are often done on poor quality meats.
The high quality meats, the grass fed and pasture raised, tends to actually be much higher in omega 3s, which can be very beneficial. It’s official for your health, so the sourcing matters. Now, why does the anti inflammatory properties really matter? Why do we need omega 3s in our bodies? Well, the anti inflammatory property is really supportive in pain reduction, especially if you’re consuming omega 3s either in food or supplement form on a regular day to day basis.
Over time, it’s a cumulative effect. As your body starts to up its omega 3 to 6 ratio, it can be really… Supportive in pain reduction.
Omega-3s for mental health, fertility, and more
It can also be really supportive in your mental health. Anxiety and depression have been shown to get support from omega 3s. It’s also really important when it comes to fertility and pregnancy.
Omega 3s can have an impact on egg quality. on fertility in general, especially because it’s helping to reduce the inflammation, and it’s even important during pregnancy because it helps with the development of a healthy baby. Omega 3s also support healthy blood sugar regulation, which we talked about a little bit already, that supporting healthy blood sugar levels can really help to reduce the overall stress load in your body.
So there’s so many benefits, and honestly, the list goes on. Omega 3s are also really beneficial for your brain health, your heart health, your sleep, the health of your skin. There are so many areas in your body that can receive support from the omega 3s, something that really every one of us should be focusing on, at the very least, getting more omega 3s in our diet.
Finding a high-quality Omega-3 as one of the best supplements for endometriosis
You can absolutely support Omega 3 status in your body with supplements as well. A high quality Omega 3 supplement is something that I recommend to pretty much every single one of my clients because it does have so very many benefits in our bodies and because so many of us are deficient. So the quality does matter.
Looking for a high quality Omega 3 supplement. Companies that I use and this is why I haven’t really been recommending specific supplements for the most part is because a lot of the supplements that I use, you can only get through practitioner accounts, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to order them just going online.
And even if you can, honestly, sometimes ordering through Amazon and other uh, retailers like that, it may not be necessarily regulated, so it’s hard to know what you’re really getting. That’s why I’m not giving a lot of specific recommendations. However, there is one option for the omega 3s that I recommend for people who are just looking to go and pick something up at their local health food store, and that’s Nordic Naturals.
That’s one of the brands that I have used before that I know is a high quality. They source their products really well and I feel comfortable recommending that particular brand. Alright, so that are those are the three best supplements for endometriosis that I am recommending for you today. That was ginger, magnesium glycinate, and omega threes.
Do your own research on the best supplements for endometriosis
So I definitely recommend doing your own research on these supplements a little bit and or working with a practitioner to help to figure out what supplements will really be best for you and your unique body and your unique situation. But I hope that this helps to bring you some education around these supplements so you can go into your decisions again a little bit more informed with it, which I think is really important.
Now one thing that I want to note here is that It can be very easy to start to go supplement crazy. And I see this all the time. I’ll have new clients come into my practice who send me the list of the supplements that they’re currently taking. And I swear, sometimes they’re like three pages long. More supplements is not always better.
For one, it can start to become a little overwhelming when you’re taking like 25 different supplements every single day. Secondly, if you don’t have a true strategy behind your supplements that you’re taking, you know, maybe you just read something on Google or a Facebook group on why you should take this certain supplement, so you added it into the mix without really knowing the benefits or how it might impact your unique body, you can end up Doing more harm than good in the long run.
So that’s why I recommend working with somebody who can recommend supplements that are going to be best for you. But also keep it simple, start small, focus more on the food than anything else, and use supplements the way that they are intended, which is to be supplemental. To a wonderful nutrient-dense whole food diet.
as I will remind you again because I love to say this, you’re gonna hear me say it all the time. You can’t out supplement a poor diet food first, always a thousand percent. Okay, my friend. I hope that you learn something beneficial for you today if you did. Please hop on and leave me a quick review. I absolutely love reading the reviews.
It means the world to me to hear that people are getting benefit from this podcast. And it also helps other people to find this podcast, who may also need support and help along their own journeys. All right, my friend take care and we will talk soon.
