From excruciating pain to co-founding a non-profit during Covid-19, Olivia Culpo puts her health first.
In her first pandemic photoshoot for December’s Shape magazine, model Olivia Culpo shines while revealing her difficult struggle with endometriosis. Affecting an estimated one in ten women during childbearing years, endometriosis is a painful disorder in which tissues that normally line the uterus begin to grow outside the uterus.
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Olivia Culpo shares details about “the most excruciatingly painful cramps/periods” she’s experienced as a result of endometriosis.
In August, the former Miss Universe, 28, revealed the diagnosis in an Instagram story. “I’ve never publicly said this before, but I have endometriosis,” she wrote to her followers. “The most excruciatingly painful cramps/periods. Anyone else reading this have endo? No fun.”
Prior to her diagnosis over a year and a half ago, Culpo sensed something was terribly wrong. She tells Shape, “I had gone to a number of doctors in agony — crying, shaking. When you’re living with chronic pain, you don’t know if you want to throw up or just curl into a ball and cry.”
Resolved to conquer the pain and heal, Culpo embarked on a holistic journey toward healing.
“Right now, I’m trying to figure out new ways to heal holistically through what I’m eating and the rest that I’m giving myself,” she said. “I’m also exploring acupuncture, massages, Chinese herbal medicine, and maybe cutting out caffeine. I’m going to actively try to help people who live with this and not just talk about my experience.”
“A lot of women may have painful periods, they may not be properly diagnosed. They may never be diagnosed. They may not be getting proper treatment, or surgery in some cases,” she says. “And then, they’re 50, 40 years old, and they had never been able to have children, and then you realize, ‘Oh, maybe I had had endometriosis that I was never properly diagnosed.’ That’s a common problem that I want to be able to use my platform to help.”
Culpo is using her struggles, experience, and notoriety to shed light on this often-painful disorder. She also recently co-founded the nonprofit More Than a Mask which benefits Feeding America.
Other celebrity women with endometriosis include Halsey, Whoopi Goldberg, and Padma Lakshmi.
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