Endometriosis
Does this sound like you?
You’ve been told that period pain is “normal” - but you know yours isn’t.
It’s the kind of pain that has you curled up on the bathroom floor. The kind that makes you call in sick to work, cancel plans with friends, plan your life around your cycle, or wonder how you’re supposed to keep going when the painkillers barely touch it.
Or perhaps pain isn’t even your biggest struggle.
You’re exhausted. Your digestion seems to change from one week to the next. Your bowels can be painful or unpredictable. Your mood, energy and sleep can feel all over the place. You’ve started noticing patterns, but no one seems to have the time - or the joined-up perspective - to help you make sense of them.
Maybe you’ve been told that your scans and tests look “normal”. Maybe you’ve been told to go on the pill, take painkillers, or that “getting pregnant will help”. Maybe you’ve had years of appointments, investigations and different opinions, and you’re still left wondering what is actually happening in your body.
And perhaps the hardest part is that you’ve had to become your own expert along the way - searching for answers, reading research, trying different approaches and piecing together advice from people who don’t always agree.
If you’re exhausted from trying to figure it all out alone, you’re not alone.
Endometriosis is still associated with significant delays between symptoms beginning and receiving a diagnosis. The exact length of that delay varies between studies and healthcare systems, but for many women, getting answers can take years.
You deserve more than simply being told to put up with it. You deserve someone who will listen to the whole picture, help you make sense of what you're experiencing, and work with you to understand what might help.
Signs of Endometriosis
The signs of endometriosis vary widely from woman to woman, which is part of why diagnosis takes so long. The most commonly recognised include:
Severe or worsening period pain
Pain during or after sex
Pain with bowel movements or urination around your cycle
Chronic pelvic pain
Fatigue
Digestive symptoms that flare with your cycle, including bloating often described as "endo belly"
Difficulty conceiving
Signs that often go unrecognised
Endometriosis isn't confined to the pelvis, and its less typical presentations are a well-documented reason so many women get misdiagnosed with IBS, a UTI, or "just anxiety" first. Clinically reported signs include:
Shoulder tip, chest pain, or shortness of breath around your period, a sign of diaphragmatic or thoracic endometriosis; rare, but documented
Painful, urgent, or frequent urination without infection, or blood in urine during your period, possible bladder involvement
Nerve-type pain, including burning, tingling, or shooting pain, and sciatica-like leg pain that follows your cycle
Severe bloating, rectal bleeding or pain with bowel movements, particularly around menstruation
FAQ
Can you get pregnant with endometriosis?
Many women with endometriosis conceive naturally, though it can affect fertility for some, particularly with more advanced disease. It's a nuanced picture rather than a yes-or-no answer, and it's one reason "just get pregnant, it'll help" is such unhelpful advice. Pregnancy isn't a treatment, and for some women with endometriosis, conceiving is exactly the part that's hardest. If fertility is a concern for you, this is worth discussing directly with a specialist alongside any whole-body support you're doing.
How is Endometriosis diagnosed?
If you're wondering how to test for endometriosis, the honest answer is that there's no single test available currently that can diagnose every case of endometriosis. Diagnosis usually begins with your symptoms and medical history, followed by further assessment where appropriate. Your doctor or specialist may recommend a pelvic or internal examination, a transvaginal ultrasound or an MRI scan. A laparoscopy, keyhole surgery to look inside the pelvis, can also be used to identify endometriosis and, where appropriate, treat it during the same procedure.
However, a normal ultrasound or MRI does not necessarily rule out endometriosis, particularly when the disease is not visible on imaging. This is one reason diagnosis can take time, and why understanding your symptoms, their patterns, and your history is so important.
Is there a saliva test for endometriosis?
In 2026, the diagnostic landscape began to change with the introduction of new non-invasive approaches to endometriosis diagnosis. One of these is Endotest, a saliva-based test that analyses tiny biological markers called microRNAs that may indicate whether endometriosis is likely to be present.
NICE has recommended the early use of Endotest in the NHS while further evidence is gathered on how well it performs in routine clinical practice. It is being evaluated alongside standard clinical assessment, rather than as a replacement for it.
The hope is that newer, non-invasive approaches like this could help reduce some of the long delays many people experience before receiving an endometriosis diagnosis.
For now, there is still no routine blood test that can confirm endometriosis. Your symptoms and their patterns over time remain an important part of the diagnostic picture.
The Conventional Path
Once endometriosis is suspected or diagnosed, treatment is usually focused on managing symptoms, reducing the impact of the condition and, where appropriate, treating visible signs of the disease. Depending on your symptoms, goals and circumstances, this may include hormonal treatments, pain management and surgery.
Laparoscopic surgery can be an important part of endometriosis treatment. It allows a surgeon to look inside the pelvis and, where appropriate, remove endometriosis lesions or treat other findings such as adhesions. For some women, surgery can bring significant relief. For others, symptoms may persist or return, and ongoing management is needed.
Medical treatment is an important part of managing endometriosis. But there can still be a lot left to navigate between appointments:
The exhaustion from pain-filled, sleepless nights. The moods, debilitating fatigue, and changes in bowel symptoms that seem connected, but no one seems to know what to do with. And the impact they have on your work, relationships, confidence, and everyday life.
Where do you go for help when you don't know where to start looking?
A Whole-Body Approach
You may be at the beginning of this journey - discovering that you have endometriosis and trying to understand what to do next. Or you may have been on this path for years and be tired of having to figure it all out by yourself.
You’ve sought out experts and opinions, bought the books and tried to make sense of endless conflicting information. You considered an anti-inflammatory endometriosis diet, but life got in the way - and you put it on the back burner. Because honestly, you’re exhausted from trying to work out what to do, who to trust, and which advice to follow.
Living with endometriosis is rarely just about managing physical symptoms. It can affect your confidence, your sense of self, your hope and resilience, and the way you experience life, work, and relationships.
You shouldn’t have to be your own researcher, detective, case manager and advocate.
That’s where I come in. I help you make sense of the noise, work out what matters most, and trust what to do next.
How I Work
My job is to help you understand what’s happening in your body, make sense of the symptoms and patterns you’re experiencing, and work out what next steps might genuinely help you - without turning your life into another set of rules to follow.
While nutrition is foundational to what I do, my work extends well beyond food. With more than ten years in practice, I don’t believe there is one right way to reach your goals, or that health is simply a matter of knowing the right thing to eat. It’s far more evolved.
To help you achieve your goals, I may use functional testing and other tools when they can give us useful information, help us ask better questions, or make our time together more effective.
And when something sits outside my expertise, I’ll help you find the right person in my referral network to support you.
But above all, I will:
Share your goals - so we’re working towards what matters to you, not what you think you should want.
Listen without judgement - leaving you space to be heard and helping hold what can sometimes be difficult to put into words.
Look at the whole picture - bringing together holistic thinking with evidence-based insight into your symptoms, health and circumstances.
Offer reassurance, accountability and encouragement - helping you to keep going without judgement when things don’t go to plan.
Help you feel more at home in your body again - building understanding, trust and confidence rather than fear or more rules.
A Programme built for Endometriosis
Endometriosis is complex, and there is rarely one thing that explains why you feel the way you do. Your symptoms, hormones, digestion, inflammation, energy, stress and everyday life can all form part of the picture.
That’s why I offer two levels of support. Both are designed to give you more than a list of recommendations - they give you a structured, personalised journey, with the right level of guidance, testing and support for where you are now.
Starter support: The Happier Hormones Programme
A focused 16-week programme for women who want to understand their hormonal picture and make meaningful changes with expert support and guidance.
We use the DUTCH test to give us additional insight into your cortisol pattern, nutrient status, sex hormones and oestrogen metabolism, alongside your symptoms, history and day-to-day experience. From there, we build a personalised nutrition and lifestyle strategy around what your results and your individual picture suggest may be most useful.
With regular follow-up sessions, you’ll have someone to help you make sense of the information, turn it into practical changes, troubleshoot when things feel difficult, and keep moving towards the goals that matter to you.
All-in support: The Hormone Harmony Programme
For women who need a deeper level of investigation and more sustained support.
Endometriosis can be layered, and sometimes understanding what is going on requires us to look beyond hormones alone. The Hormone Harmony Programme gives us more time and scope to explore the wider picture - including nutrition, digestion, inflammation, immune and stress-related factors - using a combination of targeted testing, clinical insight and ongoing coaching support.
Over six months, we build your plan progressively rather than trying to change everything at once. We use testing where it can add useful information, review how you respond, adapt the approach as we learn more, and support you through the real-life process of making changes that are sustainable.
It’s for women who want a more comprehensive, closely supported journey - not just a protocol to follow, but someone alongside them to help make sense of the whole picture and work out what their body needs.
Don’t Know Where to Start?
You don’t have to be ready to commit to a programme to start paying closer attention to your cycle and how you’re feeling.
Download my free Cycle Syncing Guide
Practical, evidence-informed ideas around nutrition, movement and lifestyle that you can explore at your own pace.
Or Start Tracking your Cycle with Mira
When you're living with endometriosis, you may already know that your body doesn't feel the same every day. Mira gives you another way to understand those changes. Using at-home urine tests, you can track your hormone patterns throughout your cycle and see how they change over time - alongside the symptoms you're experiencing which helps you build a clearer picture of your cycle over time.
You can get 20% off your Mira purchase with code 2HOLISTICHORMONES20. Using this code supports my practice at no additional cost to you.