How to Spot Endometriosis in 10 Minutes!

Learn how to identify endometriosis in patients within 10 minutes by gathering thorough menstrual history, spotting GI symptoms, and building a support team.

I'm Dr. Tara Harding and I'm a provider at Simply You Wellness. I'm also an infertility patient and an endometriosis warrior. Today I'm going to share with you how you can spot the disease of endometriosis in 10 minutes with any patient you talk to.

Let's begin. The first one might seem very obvious. Get a very thorough history of their period and their cycles.

Let's take that a step deeper. I want you to make part of your template and part of your note-taking the very first question to be, tell me about how old you were when your period started. Tell me about what that was like.

Were they heavy? Were they painful? Did you have clots? Again, that might seem obvious but I'm going to take you a step further. I want you to ask if you could have, would you have missed school for your cycles or did you miss school with your cycles? A new study came out showing that nearly 100 percent, yes nearly 100 percent of teen girls who were sent home or went home from school due to their cycles was because of endometriosis. I then want you to kind of reframe your family history intake.

I make a little light conversation about this with my patients but I talk at holiday conversations. Ask during conversations or get togethers with your family members and that includes moms, sisters, aunts, cousins, anybody, both sides of family. Were there any hysterectomies? If you know even better but why did that hysterectomy take place? Because it often will lead you to common signs and symptoms of adenomyosis or endometriosis that that mother had and we know that over 70 percent of endometriosis is a direct genetic link.

In my family, my mom has it, my sister has it and I have it so that statistic is a little off. I then want you to ask even further information about hormones. Build your hormone questions into this and really pull and see if anybody else in their family has signs of endometriosis and here's where you can even find PCOS, thyroid disorders, any other of those diseases that are leading to infertility can be captured in that conversation.

Of course we're looking at cycle length, clots, are they bigger than a quarter, smaller than a quarter, every cycle and find alternative ways that you can also rule out fibroids, polyps and things like that as well at this intake point. How heavy were they? Has that changed? The next big thing that you're going to use during this cycle intake and beyond and the rest of your intake is timelining. I always tell my patients every question the answer, I want them to look back.

Tell me as early as you can remember at start of cycle, your teen years, high school, college, 20s, 30s, 40s, however old they are, draw a timeline about symptoms. Did they change? Did that look different from here to here? Step further if they have children already and this is secondary or ongoing infertility. Did any of these symptoms that we're going to talk about with cycles or any symptoms from here on out change after a child? You will find c-sections and other common things or each pregnancy with hormone shifts can really change what those symptoms look like and how they pivot.

Let's move into GI symptoms. The experts in endometriosis world who are excision specialists will say any little girl with tummy issues was and is endometriosis until proven otherwise. I also want you to really look for that previous diagnosis of IBS because those are also endometriosis patients until proven otherwise.

Nausea, vomiting, heartburn, constipation, diarrhea sound like very common symptoms but when you are analyzing the system please stay focused and think this could be endometriosis as well. Pain, chronic pain, how we can find that is if there is an area of ongoing pain that has been ruled out for injury, they've been going to see every physical therapist, chiropractor, and they've done everything under the sun like I like to call it, think endometriosis. This can be pain, most commonly low back, pelvis, hips, knees, knees, yes knees, especially with no previous injury.

Those are some common symptoms but to you they might be uncommon. I really want you to start focusing and really shifting your mindset. Could this unexplained infertility patient be endometriosis? I also want to insert here yes they can have PCOS and endometriosis.

They can have other diagnoses along with endometriosis so even if they have that diagnosis it really is going to pivot their course going forward with their protocol for infertility so always be on the lookout. Testing. It is really hard to test for this.

As you may know excision is the gold standard treatment for endometriosis by an excision specialist and to this day that is the procedure used to make the diagnoses and treat it. There are some advanced testings coming out where we can look for markers in the uterine lining and I really want you to take advantage of anything that you may have in your office where you could be possibly finding this diagnosis sooner. What can you do next? First and foremost educate yourself on the disease.

There's many summits and webinars out there specifically designed for endometriosis that puts you the provider in the seat of learning more. Number two, create that multidisciplinary team. You don't have to be the person to do everything and I know I can't do everything.

Create that team. Grow that team for that patient. Number three, find support.

This is a very devastating disease. It goes overlooked and many of these patients have been medically gaslit. Listen to them, trust them, and set them up with the proper support and possibly even a mental health provider.

You just being more aware on this disease will put you far ahead of so many others and put you in a position to do great things for your patients.