Endometriosis Awareness Month: Padma Lakshmi

Padma Lakshmi is best known as host of Bravo’s reality show, “Top Chef”. She is also an international model and successful businesswoman. More recently, she co-founded the Endometriosis Foundation of America with Dr. Tamer Seckin, a NY laparoscopic surgeon who treated Lakshmi for her condition after a decade of suffering.

“I’d always had bad menstrual cramps, and they got progressively worse over the years,” Lakshmi explained. She tried everything to find relief. “I can’t tell you how many jobs I had to cancel because I was completely bedridden. Sometimes I would spend four days in bed.” Without being able to find any relief, she accepted that this was going to be her fate.

Then she met Dr. Seckin who diagnosed her endometriosis. It’s a difficult condition to diagnose and even Lakshmi will point out that she saw the best doctors, all over the world, and she was still 36 years old before someone could identify her ailment and devise a treatment plan. Four surgeries later, she is much improved and recently gave birth to a daughter.

Together with Dr. Seckin, they hope to bring awareness to the condition that afflicts perhaps 10% of American women, many of whom have no idea they suffer from the disease or that there is treatment which might help them.

“I want to educate other women so they don’t have to go through what I went through,” Lakshmi says. “If we could find this earlier, more women could have more productive lives. If you’re having bad cramps all the time, you need to go and get this checked out.”

Source: Newsweek