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Padma Lakshmi is best known as the taste-tester-in-chief on Bravo's reality cooking show "Top Chef." But these days, the model and TV host is lending her voice to raise awareness about the challenges of living with endometriosis.

Endometriosis is a chronic and often debilitating disease that frequently causes painful menstrual flow because of the growth of tissue in areas other than the uterus, and Lakshmi has experienced its effects for years.

"I had always been someone who suffered every month," says Lakshmi. "All through my modeling career, I had to miss work now and again for this."

While endometriosis can be treated with medication, hormone therapy, or surgery, women can experience severe symptoms for years without a proper diagnosis. In addition to painful periods, left untreated it is a common cause of infertility.

Lakshmi and the surgeon who treated her, Dr. Tamer Seckin, have teamed up to form the Endometriosis Foundation of America to raise public awareness.

"The disease on the average is diagnosed 10 years later from the initial symptoms," says Seckin. "It is the most prevalent, most misdiagnosed, mismanaged, and mishandled disease."

"I probably had it from when I first went through puberty and I just never had it diagnosed, and you just live with it because you don't think that there's anything to complain about," says Lakshmi. "A lot of the symptoms that women report are cramps, lower back pains, gastrointestinal problems."

Lisa Morgan, another one of Seckin's patients, says she lived with excruciating symptoms for more than 20 years.

"Given that endometriosis seems like it is something that's been around for a long time that lots of people know about, 20 doctors never [brought it] up once," says Morgan. "And I had two children, two normal births. But for some reason this condition that's been around for so long, it still seems to be kind of a secret that no one talks about or discusses."

While symptoms may indicate endometriosis, the only way to get a true diagnosis is through a biopsy of lesions the disease may form.

Through their organization, Lakshmi and Seckin say it's a women's health issue they'd like to see both doctors and patients pay more attention to in terms of being a serious health challenge. To find out more, visit www.endofound.org.