In my early 20s I always used to have the most horrific tummy pains around the time of my period, I noticed that depending on what I ate would impact on the severity of the pain I experienced, I remember going for a meal around the time of month and being in so much pain I thought that I was going to pass out and this happened every month, not fun, but I just put it down to classic ‘ period pains’

I went to see a gynaecologist and he told me that I had endometriosis and if I continued to be in pain then I would be able to have a little operation.

Coincidentally around this time I was hearing a lot about how you could test your blood to find out what foods were best for your body and which your body was intolerant to and so I did a test and the results came back as follows.

*HIGH intolerance

Cows dairy

Eggs

Yeast

*MEDIUM intolerance

Lentils

Coconut milk

I cut out all of the above out of my diet and surprise surprise I felt good, really good (it was hard and I had to cook more but I like cooking so I came up with recipes of meals that I could eat ) but the upside was no bloating and my digestion massively improved.  Weirdly I didn’t really pay attention to the fact that around the time of my period my cramping reduced and by the time I went back to see the gynaecologist for a yearly check up he said whatever you are doing keep doing it as the endometriosis has gone.  

I haven’t eaten cows milk, butter, cheese or synthetic yeast now for 14 years and know instantly when I have by mistake.  The signs that I have for cows diary are having a white coating on my tongue and with yeast my tummy looks like I’m 6 months pregnant.  

Yeast and citric acid are the same and they are in so many items that you wouldn’t even associate them with, everything from soy sauce, ketchup, canned food, flavouring on crisps to all the items you would think they are in like beer, wine, fizzy drinks, bread, baked goods.

When I first started with this new way of eating it was hard to find alternatives to the things I enjoyed the most, yeast being a no go meant that my new bread would be a tortilla and I ate a lot of them, this was before the days of sourdough which I can eat. Sourdough as is made with a natural yeast that is okay on my tummy.  I’ve also found through a lot of trial and error that I can have Tamari instead of soy sauce and that is due to how they ferment the soya beans, traditional Soy Sauce uses a fast fermentation process in huge industrial scale tanks where as good quality Tamari is fermented naturally in cedar wood kegs.  I substitute cows milk for oat milk and I only eat cheese from goats or sheep - this is also meant to be good for you from a hormone consumption point of view because as humans we aren’t meant to consume milk from animals that are larger than us, ie COWS and off topic but whilst reading up on dairy I realised that countries consuming small amounts of cow’s milk in all it’s forms have a much lower levels of ovarian and breast cancer, also there are SO many alternative out there these days for milk and dairy in general that there really isn’t any need to have dairy as part of your diet. Yeast is the hard one but this just means that you’ll have to look at the labels on food a bit more, but I think that’s a small price to pay if it reduces the pain or clears up your endometriosis completely. I have been back for checks since and it has never come back, and I haven’t suffered any pain or symptoms since BUT this is just my experience and I’m not saying that it’s a cure for everyone as I know symptoms can vary in there severity but I hope if you are reading this and it’s sounding like something you are experiencing then you’ll give my tips a try or if you have a friend who is complaining of something similar you can share this story.

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