For your inflammation

COOKERY AUTHOR AND WOMEN'S HEALTH ADVOCATE SOPHIE RICHARDS TELLS LAUREN TAYLOR ABOUT WHOLE FOODS, COOKING AND CRAVINGS

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SOPHIE Richards says she felt ignored by doctors for years, despite being “bed-bound” for two weeks of every month - until she was diagnosed with endometriosis and changed her diet.

The women's health practitioner and host of The Finally Found Podcast says she felt like she was “screaming at doctors” that something was seriously wrong, but was continuously told it was “just IBS or painful periods - it’s part of being a woman.”

She'd experience “agonising pain”, brain fog, nausea, fatigue and extremely heavy, 10-day long periods, until she was diagnosed at 21.

Now 29, Sophie says it wasn’t that doctors didn’t want to help, they just didn’t have the answers.

The charity Endometriosis UK estimates that 10% of women suffer from the chronic condition - where tissues similar to the uterine lining grow outside the uterus - but it takes approximately eight years on average from the first GP visit to get a diagnosis.

There is currently no cure, and Cardiff-based Sophie was told there was nothing more they could do to alleviate her symptoms, except a hysterectomy.

“I just thought, ‘there is no way I can carry on in this agonising pain.”

One thing Sophie noticed was that her symptoms often got worse after certain meals.

“I started to do a little bit more digging and some research, and saw this link between inflammation and endometriosis,” she says.