Tammy came to The Evolved the way many women do: with a body composition goal and a background of stress. She was in her 40s, managing two kids, working, and carrying the particular kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from any single thing but from all of them at once. She wanted to change how her body looked. She had adenomyosis, a condition causing chronic pelvic pain and severely painful periods, and had been managing it for years with a combination of medication and a certain low-level resignation that this was simply how her body worked.
She did not come in expecting strength training to change that. But it did.
What Is Adenomyosis
Adenomyosis occurs when the tissue that normally lines the uterus grows into the muscular wall of the uterus itself. The result is a uterus that’s larger than normal, and menstrual periods that are significantly more painful and heavier than typical. It affects a substantial proportion of women in their 30s and 40s and is frequently under-diagnosed.
Like its close relative endometriosis, adenomyosis is driven by hormonal fluctuations, particularly oestrogen. Conditions of elevated inflammation and hormonal imbalance tend to worsen symptoms. Conversely, interventions that reduce systemic inflammation and improve hormonal regulation tend to improve them.
This is where strength training enters the picture in a way that most women, and many clinicians, don’t anticipate.
The Inflammation Connection
Progressive resistance training has well-documented anti-inflammatory effects. Regular strength training reduces systemic levels of inflammatory markers including CRP, IL-6, and TNF-alpha: the same markers implicated in conditions like adenomyosis and endometriosis. It also improves insulin sensitivity and supports healthier oestrogen metabolism, both of which play a role in the hormonal environment that governs these conditions.
For Tammy, the mechanism may have been exactly this: consistent strength training over several months reduced her baseline inflammation and improved her hormonal environment sufficiently that her adenomyosis symptoms, the severe pain, the debilitating periods, reduced dramatically. Then disappeared entirely.
This is not anecdote. The research base linking exercise, particularly strength training, to improved outcomes in oestrogen-driven conditions is growing. Tammy’s experience is consistent with what the evidence would predict.
The Body Composition Result Was Also Real
She also dropped two dress sizes. The goal she came in with, changing how her body looked, was achieved alongside the health discovery that changed her daily life.
This is worth noting because it reframes the kind of goal women are sometimes made to feel is superficial. Tammy wanted to look different. There was nothing wrong with that goal. And the process of pursuing it, structured strength training, consistent nutrition, progressive overload over time, delivered both the aesthetic result she came for and a physiological change she hadn’t even dared to hope for.
Women with adenomyosis are often told their options are limited: hormonal medication, surgical intervention, or management. Tammy’s story adds something else to that list. It is not a replacement for medical care, and her experience may not be universally replicable. But it is a genuine data point that a body under less inflammation, with better hormonal regulation and more muscle mass, can behave very differently to the body that walked in the door.
If you have adenomyosis, endometriosis, or chronic hormonal symptoms, and you have been working with the medical system without feeling fully resolved. Tammy’s story is worth knowing about.