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According to Epidemiologist Dr. Holly Harris of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, endometriosis is linked to childhood physical and sexual abuse. It is a common condition that affects women in their 20s and 30s. The condition starts when tissue from the endometrium, which normally lines a woman’s uterus, starts growing outside of the uterus, attaching itself to the ovaries, fallopian tubes, bowel, bladder or other parts of the body.
The endometrium outside the uterus bleed with every menstrual cycle, the extra tissue within the pelvic region creates cysts, scar tissue and adhesions that can lead to chronic pain, excessive bleeding, pain with sexual intercourse, pain with urination or elimination, and in some cases infertility.
Childhood abuse has previously been linked with chronic pelvic pain and uterine fibroids. Research has also found links between adverse childhood abuse and autoimmune disease, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, frequent headaches, heart disease and many other physical and mental health issues.
The researchers evaluated data from the study’s original cohort of 116,429 women and found 60,595 premenopausal participants who’d answered questions regarding childhood abuse. Of those, 12,699 (around 21 percent) reported having experienced some level of both child/adolescent physical and sexual abuse.
The team then began looking for an overlap between those who’d reported childhood physical and/or sexual abuse and the 3,394 women (from the same pool of 60,595) who’d received a diagnosis of endometriosis via a laparoscopically-confirmed examination or surgery, which provides the most definitive diagnosis. They discovered a 79 percent higher risk of endometriosis for women reporting severe-chronic abuse of multiple types compared to those reporting no physical or sexual abuse.
About one-third of women with endometriosis are diagnosed when they are unable to have child, some women have painful endometriosis and some women don’t. The pain is a physiologic response that’s driven by the stress and trauma of abuse either sexual or physical, the stress response activates other systems and causes sensitivity to pain.