For Juliet Oliver, endometriosis changed everything. After coming off the pill, she went from functioning normally to dealing with daily pain, fatigue and bloating, eventually receiving a stage-four diagnosis. Her experience led her to create Endo45, helping people with endometriosis understand their bodies and take back control of their health.
Describe what you do in one sentence.
I’m the founder of Endo45, a way to help people with endometriosis take back control of their health, trust their bodies again, and regain their confidence.
How did your own experience with endometriosis lead you to create Endo45?
I didn’t set out to build a women’s health company. I was an engineer when I came off the birth control I’d been taking throughout my twenties, and my health unravelled very quickly. What had effectively been keeping a lid on my symptoms was removed, and I was suddenly dealing with stage-four endometriosis without even knowing what endometriosis was. My scans were clear, I was struggling to function, and I came very close to walking away from my career.
Eventually, after pushing for specialists and being fortunate enough to have health insurance, I found someone who recognised what was happening. I had a very good surgery, but I also approached my health like an engineer. I looked at the body as a series of connected systems and asked: what’s struggling, what supports it, and what can I consistently change? I completely overhauled the way I ate, moved, slept, recovered and managed stress. Within a year of surgery, I had my health back. I’ve now been pain- and symptom-free for nine years.
It was only later, when women began coming to me for help, that I realised how unusual my outcome was and how much information was missing from standard care. Endo45 grew from that gap. I couldn’t sit on what I had learned while millions of women were still being told that painkillers, hormones and repeated surgery were their only options.
What were the early signs your body was trying to tell you?
As a teenager I had what I thought were just “IBS-type” symptoms: loads of bloating, stomach pain, that puffy uncomfortable feeling. But nobody ever connected any of it to my cycle or endometriosis. The pill masked a lot through my twenties, so I just got on with life. I also experienced pain with sex, which I genuinely didn’t understand wasn’t something I should just put up with.
Then I came off the pill, and it was like everything my body had been quietly managing suddenly became very loud. I went from functioning pretty normally to having pain almost every day, this deep, zombie-like fatigue, and bloating that looked and felt like I was three months pregnant basically every day.
At the time, I didn’t see all of those things as one story. Looking back now, my body had been giving me clues for years. I just didn’t have the language or information to understand what it was trying to tell me.
How long did it take to get a diagnosis?
It was roughly one year from obvious symptom onset to receiving my diagnosis, which is wild when compared with the seven to ten years so many women go through.
I was consistently told it was PCOS and that the answer was basically to go back on the pill and everything would settle down. But coming off the pill was the only real thing I had changed before my health fell apart, so I was really reluctant to just cover everything back up without understanding what was actually going on.
I became pretty relentless about getting answers. I pushed to see specialists, kept asking questions and refused to accept “this is just PCOS” when it didn’t feel like the full story. Looking back, I know there was privilege in being able to do that. I had the confidence, the resources and the ability to keep pushing until I found the right person.
What do you wish more people understood about endometriosis?
For many, it becomes a whole-body experience that can affect energy, digestion, mood, sleep, fertility, work, relationships and the nervous system. There’s also the unpredictability of it. You can look completely fine while calculating whether you can sit through a meeting, make it home without a flare or keep a commitment you genuinely wanted to keep.
The pain is one part of it. The loss of trust in your body, and sometimes in yourself, can be just as damaging. You start organising your life around what your body might do rather than what you actually want to do.
Why isn't surgery necessarily the end of the story?
A well-done surgery can be life-changing. Mine absolutely was. But surgery addresses the disease that can be surgically treated; it doesn’t automatically rebuild your health or teach you how to live well with a chronic inflammatory condition.
Your body may still be dealing with pain sensitisation, nervous-system dysregulation, depleted energy, gut issues, pelvic-floor dysfunction or years of stress and poor recovery.
I see surgery as an important window of opportunity, not the end of the conversation. My outcome came from combining a very good surgery with consistent support for the rest of my body. We need a whole-body prescription that people are so rarely given.
What are the biggest mistakes people make around endo surgery?
The biggest is believing that all surgery is equal, or that surgery alone guarantees a particular outcome. Understanding who is operating, what they’re planning to do, and what follow-up care will look like really matters.
The second is to wait until after surgery to consider what else your body needs. If you can start building the right foundations beforehand - nourishing food, good sleep, appropriate movement, nervous-system support, reducing inflammation and generally taking some load off your system - you’re giving your body more capacity to heal afterwards.
The third is trying to prove you’re fine too quickly. Women are exceptionally good at minimising what their bodies have been through. Recovery is not a race, and pushing through pain or fatigue is not the same as healing.
What does recovery actually look like beyond surgery?
They’re foundational, but they need to be appropriate for the stage of recovery and guided by the person’s experience. Nutrition provides the energy and nutrients needed for healing and can support overall health, digestion and energy levels. Gentle, progressive movement supports circulation, mobility, confidence, and, eventually, strength. Nervous-system support matters because pain, surgery and years of feeling unsafe in your body can keep the system on high alert. None of these replaces medical care. But they’re essential to creating the conditions for longer-term health.
What did you actually change in your own life?
There were five foundations that made the biggest difference. The first was food. I became much more intentional about eating in a way that supported proper digestion, inflammation, blood sugar balance, gut repair and microbiome diversity - more plant-centric, less refined and processed food, no alcohol, and I stopped coffee too.
The second was movement. I stopped pushing my body through really intense exercise. I moved towards more walking and yin yoga. Over time, as my health improved, strength training became part of my baseline too.
The third was my nervous system. I had to learn how to actually switch off from work, use breathing techniques, slow down and check in with my body instead of constantly overriding it. Sleep became completely non-negotiable too. And then there was recovery more broadly: pelvic-floor physio support, time outside, and learning that doing less at the right time could actually help me do more long term. None of it was particularly glamorous; it was just consistent.
What “healthy” habits do you see women doing that can work against them?
Overtraining is a huge one. I see women continuing to train at really high intensity even when they’re exhausted, in pain during the session, or clearly not recovering well.
I also see women taking enormous stacks of supplements before they’ve really looked at the basics - sleep, digestion, nourishment, stress, recovery and gut health.
And probably one of the biggest ones is cutting gluten and dairy and thinking that’s a complete gut-health strategy. A “healthy” habit should leave your body more supported, not more depleted.
What do you think the medical system is still getting wrong?
I think there’s still this really sad belief in parts of the medical system that, once someone has endometriosis, there isn’t actually that much we can do for them beyond hormones, painkillers and putting them on a surgical waiting list. That breaks my heart, because there is so much we can be doing in that window. I also think we still get surgery wrong. There’s an assumption that surgery is right for everyone, and that endometriosis surgery performed by any gynaecologist is essentially all the same. It isn’t.
And one of the things that probably haunts me most is how often adenomyosis can sit alongside endometriosis and still be missed or not properly explained to the patient. For me, that’s the bigger issue: women are still leaving appointments without the full picture and without a plan for what they can actually do next.
How do you advocate for yourself without becoming exhausted?
Take a clear symptom timeline. Explain how symptoms affect your function, not only your pain score. Write down your questions. Bring someone with you when possible and ask what the next step will be if the proposed approach doesn’t help.
Most importantly, remember that you don’t have to win an argument with every person who dismisses you. Your goal is the next right step. Sometimes advocacy means asking again. Sometimes it means requesting a referral. Sometimes it means finding another clinician.
How did chronic pain change you?
Endo hit during the height of my career, when I was used to giving everything 150%. I nearly walked away from work because I couldn’t reconcile the capable, driven person I knew myself to be with the person who was suddenly struggling just to function.
My relationship also ended during that time, and my symptoms were a huge part of that. When you’re in pain, exhausted, bloated, not sleeping properly and barely keeping yourself together, it affects every part of your life.
I think the hardest part was the shame of feeling like I had lost myself. I felt unreliable. I felt like I was failing at work, failing in my relationship, failing socially, failing at being the version of me I had always been.
What’s one thing you’ve learnt about your body you wish you’d known earlier?
That my cycle is one of the clearest vital signs my body gives me.
Your period, your hormones, your energy, your mood, your pain - they’re all information. They’re little signals every month about how your body is coping. I know what’s normal for me; I notice when something shifts, and I can actually respond to those signs rather than waiting until my body is screaming at me.
I think women are taught to see their periods and hormones as an inconvenience to manage. I see mine completely differently now - they’re data. They’re my body talking to me. And I want to keep listening.
What does feeling well actually mean to you now?
It means freedom. It means having energy, trusting my body, being present with my family and making plans without first calculating where I might be in my cycle. It means being able to work, move, travel and live without health taking up all the space in my head.
If you could change women's healthcare, what would it be?
I would make believing women the clinical starting point. From there, everything changes: symptoms are investigated earlier, patterns are taken seriously, referrals happen sooner and women receive support before they reach crisis point.
I would also love to see foundational health guidance offered alongside medical treatment as standard care, rather than women having to piece it together themselves online at two in the morning.
If you had the attention of every woman for one minute, what would you want her to understand about her body?
Your body is not an inconvenience, and you are not required to disconnect from it to be successful, strong or easy to deal with.
Know your baseline. Notice what changes. Learn your patterns. You don’t need a medical degree to recognise that something is different, and you don’t need permission to ask questions when your body keeps telling you something isn’t right.
Your body is constantly giving you information about what depletes it, what supports it, what it tolerates and what helps it recover. The more you understand those signals, the better equipped you are to make decisions, advocate for yourself and build a life that works with your body rather than constantly pushing against it.
MY CYCLE
My period in 3 words: Monthly Health Report
Period self-care toolkit: Period Undies, carb-rich foods, yin yoga, magnesium, heat (bath, sauna, scarlet!)
Most underrated period self-care ritual or hack? For my adeno gals – Evening Primrose every day.
Contraception of choice: Natural Cycles app with BBT tracking
On day 1, you'll find me: Walking in the bush with a good podcast and my dog.
Scarlet pick: Period Boyshort!