Endometriosis Research Paper

Endometriosis is a disease that affects over six million girls and women in the United States alone. For a disease that has plagued millions across our country, you’d think that more people would be aware of it. With no known cause and no cure, patients are left with severe pain that never can be fully managed. As more women are diagnosed with the disease each year, little research is being done to find ways to relieve the pain in patients suffering from endometriosis- and that is a huge problem.
As a teenager, my aunt was diagnosed with endometriosis and growing up, I saw first-hand what life was like living with endometriosis. I saw the excruciating pain she experienced on a daily basis and the heartbreak in her eyes when she learned she

could not conceive a child naturally. Although I didn’t understand endometriosis entirely as a young child, I understood my aunt was dealing with something nobody should have to experience.
Although I saw that modern medicine had little to help my aunt with her disease, I also saw modern medicine give my aunt the chance to be a mother to my best friend and cousin, Aedan. I decided that I wanted to be the one to advance modern medicine so that one day women suffering from endometriosis could be told their condition could be cured. I decided to research the disease, specifically focusing on the pain management aspect of the disease. Because there is no cure for endometriosis, I realized a pain-management related study could prove beneficial. I started the project during the summer before my senior year.
I decided to begin my research by creating an extensive survey with over one hundred questions that were about both physical and emotional symptoms of endometriosis. The last section of the survey was an opinion portion that focused on patient’s opinions on a variety of topics relating to endometriosis. For example, one of the opinion questions was, “ Do you feel that the healthcare system is oblivious to your suffering?” After creating the survey I reached out to hundreds of women suffering from endometriosis through private endometriosis support groups via Facebook.
In just a few days I had over five-hundred responses and comments from affected women thanking me for taking interest in helping every woman suffering from the disease. After going through all of the responses, I learned that most women who had some success relieving pain succeeded by changing their diet. It was unexpected to learn that most women found natural remedies and a change of diet to be more helpful in relieving pain than the strong narcotics they had been prescribed.
With this, I decided to create three specific diets aimed relieving endometriosis related pain. I contacted multiple professionals including gynecologists, nutritionists, and specialists that focus on reproductive endocrinology. These doctors have given me more insight and helped me to
create healthy meal plans for patients suffering from endometriosis. The three meal plans are completely different, but maintain the average 2,000 calorie diet and include the recommended intake for each individual as suggested by their doctor.
I came up with a short but extensive questionnaire designed to be quickly done by each subject everyday online. This would make it easy for subjects to give feedback and for me to document data to determine which meal plan helps to relieve pain the most successfully.
As of now, the project is in full swing and I couldn’t be more excited! Although the impact of this single project may not be the fix to the big issue, I am reminded of a French proverb that says, “little by little, the bird makes its nest.” I to will be like a bird, and work little by little with the hope that one day I can tell my aunt, “I did it, I found the cure.”