Love is Blind star thought agonising condition was 'all in her head'

Love Is Blind UK's Demi Brown has bravely shared her health struggles on This Morning, revealing a cruel diagnosis that she initially thought was all in her head. Speaking to hosts Cat Deeley and Dermot O'Leary, the reality star revealed that before being diagnosed with endometriosis, she was told she had IBS.

Opening up about her battle with the condition, which sees cells similar to those in the womb lining grow elsewhere in the body, she admitted she struggled to even say the word 'endometriosis'.

She confessed: "To see the word endometriosis, which I can say now, I would just get really tearful and really upset about it because it was something that really did take a hold of how I was in relationships and it was something that I was worried about disclosing."

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Reflecting on her early experiences with menstruation, she said she "didn't know what normal period was", explaining: "I was quite heavy and I thought that was normal, and then as you get older you start to get into relationships. I started to play football and I noticed that it was a lot more painful than all of my friends were saying. I used to get really numb legs and severe back pain, but that was associated with playing football so I was just going back and forth thinking 'what is this? ' until it started to actually affect my relationships."

Speaking about the precautions she took while playing football, she revealed: "I wore five knickers just because I was worried [about bleeding through]. Can you imagine being a 15-year-old and leaking in a white kit?"She confessed that she didn't blame anyone around her for not informing her that it was abnormal to have painful and very heavy periods, reports the Mirror.

Instead, she masked it all and only began to consider it as an issue when she started dating. "I think it was when I got into more serious relationships, and became more sexually active and so on, that the impact of that and how it made me feel afterwards led me to think 'this can't be normal' so I sought medical advice. There was a lot of back-and-forth, and misdiagnosis, I was told I had IBS which is a common thing I believe. So I was put on laxatives and I was thinking 'why is it still so bad? What is going on? ' to the point where I don't think I really got taken seriously until I hit 25 because that's when you have your smear test. So they detected it when I hit 26 and that's when I had the keyhole surgery."

Laparoscopy, a type of keyhole surgery used to diagnose and treat conditions, allows a surgeon to use only small cuts and a camera for procedures inside the tummy or pelvis. This is currently the gold standard for diagnosing endometriosis.

Dr Nitu Bajeka, a consultant gynaecologist with 40 years of experience in dealing with endometriosis, sat next to her on the sofa. She expressed that it was "painful to hear that women are having these symptoms" and emphasised that many people fail to understand that endometriosis is a "whole body condition".

Cat highlighted the mental exhaustion of knowing something is wrong but not being able to identify what it is. Demi confessed that at one point she began to question if she was fabricating or exaggerating her pain.

However, she admitted: "The diagnosis for me helped validate my feelings. It was a relief to be honest thinking 'okay I feel heard, what's the next steps? ", she said.

In conversation with Dr Nitu Bajeka, she stated that "woman, society schools, public policy and health professionals - everybody needs to take ownership. It's not just a woman" when discussing the importance of ensuring individuals feel heard and receive the correct diagnosis instead of being dismissed.

She explained: "Periods should not be painful. Any periods that sacrifice the quality of your life, whether it's going to school, whether it's going to work, whether you end up spending a day - or days - in bed, painful periods should not be put up with. It could be because of fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, PCOS - all these conditions affect women. So painful periods, heavy periods, any period that lasts for more than seven days, periods that you end up having to use double the protection, if you're passing clots larger than the size of your thumbnail - those things are not normal, we should not normalise periods by saying 'that's fine my grandmother had it, my mother had it so I have to suck it up."

Emphasising an earlier point, she added: "We do have to realise that endometriosis is a whole body condition. It's a chronic condition that causes endometriosis belly, bloating, chronic fatigue, bladder symptoms, bowel symptoms that people think is IBS when actually it's not. So it's really important that not just women, but all of us raise awareness because even as doctors, we don't always listen to our patients, so we have to take ownership and little bit." Catch the full episode on ITV or STV here.