Healthy Food Choices for Endometriosis

Video Transcript

MARY HONDROS: I'm going to talk to you a little bit about endometriosis. This is a condition where the tissue that's supposed to grow inside of your uterus starts growing outside of your uterus on other organs. It's not usually dangerous and doesn't have any side effects, but it can be very painful and also can give you trouble conceiving, if you're trying to have a baby. Doctors think that this is caused by having too much estrogen and other female hormones in the body during childbearing years. So, of course, you want to try to limit foods that might increase the hormones in your body, like estrogen. So 4 tips on managing endometriosis, number 1, maintain your body weight, because the more weight you gain, the more hormones your body's going to produce. 2, try to kind of limit or avoid some animal meat and animal products, because those tend to increase the hormones in your body as well. Thirdly, limit your intake of soy foods like soy protein and soy milk because they tend to act as estrogen in the body, also increasing your hormones. And lastly, limit the amount of sodium you eat. And those are 4 tips on controlling endometriosis.