Day 9: Have you ever tried any alternative therapies? If so, what? Did they work?

There are therapies out there for celiac disease that are touted as “enzymes” that are supposed to break down gluten if you eat it. I have never tried any of these because I don’t want to get sick by eating gluten and then trying to see if these therapies work. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, there are new medical therapies in the pipeline to help alter the celiac patient’s response to gluten.

For endometriosis, there is a veritable mine field of “alternative therapies” out there that claim to help fight the disease, from crazy diets to weird beverages to castor oil wraps. I have been on a gluten free diet for almost four years and I don’t know that it’s helped at all with my symptoms. Although, with an inflammatory condition such as endometriosis, a low inflammatory diet should theoretically be helpful. The platelet rich plasma therapy I had done as part of both of my endo surgeries definitely helped my recovery be less painful and I know for a fact prevented adhesion formation from my excision surgery. As far as pain control, when my endo was at its worst I would take hot showers (sometimes twice a day) with aromatherapy. It would be effective in reducing my pain for about an hour after my shower, but any measure of relief was a big help, no matter how short or long it lasted. The thing to remember with any of these therapies is that they can only help relieve the symptoms of the disease; endometriosis has no cure and can best be managed by having excision surgery done by a well-qualified specialist.

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