Great Foods For Fighting Fibroids

Certain foods are excellent choices for helping us to boost our immune system, burn fat and generally help our bodies operate at peak fitness.

However certain foods when combined together increase or multiply benefits many times over and help maximise our health.

Great foods to combine for better health are:

Vitamin C and Iron

Some women with fibroids who experience unusually heavy bleeding during their periods may become anemic.

Combining iron-rich foods (leafy greens, artichokes and legumes) with those packed with vitamin C (tomatoes, peppers, citrus and leafy greens) helps your body absorb iron more efficiently.

Green Tea with Lemon

Adding lemon juice to green tea increases the benefit of the powerful catechins green tea contains – making the tea five times stronger!

Further more I find green tea an ‘acquired taste’ so by adding lemon, it makes this wonderful healing tea much more palatable.

Purdue University discovered that adding lemon to green tea also slowed the breakdown of *anti-oxidants in your digestive system so your body achieved more complete absorption.

People who drink green tea daily tend to lose ten pounds more per year than those who don’t.

A study conducted at the University of Geneva found that eating a salad with a cup of green tea as your last meal stops your body from storing excess fat and boosts your metabolism by 4% while you sleep.

According to a study published in 2010 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology a substance in green tea appears to significantly shrink the size of uterine fibroids.

Salads and Fats

Salads that contain leafy greens (such as baby leaf spinach) and tomatoes are rich in carotenoid anti-oxidants. Your body will absorb these *anti-oxidants better if you add olive oil or avocado - healthy fats that are not only heart-healthy but delicious.

Avocados and Tomatoes

Researchers at Ohio State University discovered that the mono-unsaturated fat found in avocados boosts the cancer-fighting properties of lycopene found in tomatoes – making it four times more effective.

Beta-carotene is proven to boost overall immunity and is three times more effective when combined with fresh avocado.  Add avocado to a salad or make salsa and guacamole for a powerful anti-oxidant snack.

Dark Chocolate and Apples

Apples are rich in quercetin (it is also found in green tea!) – an anti-inflammatory - excellent for fighting fibroids.

Dark chocolate (try to eat 85% or higher cocoa content and preferably organic) contains powerful *anti-oxidants called flavonoids. Eaten in moderation, this pairing of foods forms a tasty snack that fights blood clots, improves circulation and reduces your chances of heart disease.

Vegetables and Water

Vegetables are naturally high in vitamins and nutrients, low in calories and provide *anti-oxidants that boost the immune system, increase energy and improve your metabolism.

Adding healthy non starchy vegetables to your diet will increase your fiber intake and improve your gut bacteria.  Making sure you’re properly hydrated will positively impact on every cell in your body and keep you out of the 75% of Americans who are chronically dehydrated!

By choosing healthy nutrient rich foods you will reduce inflammation (inflammation causes fibroids), slow aging, improve heart and brain health, control your weight and help prevent and fight disease.

*Anti-oxidants:  are substances that may protect your cells against the effects of free radicals. Free radicals are molecules produced when your body breaks down food, or by environmental exposures like tobacco smoke and radiation. Free radicals can damage cells, and may play a role in heart disease, cancer and other diseases.

Antioxidant substances include

Beta-carotene

Lutein

Lycopene

Selenium

Vitamin A

Vitamin C

Vitamin E

Antioxidants are found in many foods. These include fruits and vegetables, nuts, grains, and some meats, poultry and fish.

10 Quick Facts About Fibroids

10 quick facts about fibroids

• Fibroids are extremely common. In fact, about 75 percent of women experience them at some point in their lives

• Intramural fibroids are the most common type. They grow inside the wall of the uterus

• Fibroids can impact reproductive function and may cause infertility or miscarriage in some women

• Some women with fibroids who experience unusually heavy bleeding during their periods may become anemic

• Fibroids can range in size from a few millimeters to the size of watermelons!

• Fibroids are typically found in women in their 30’s and 40’s 

• Fibroids are responsible for more than 200,000 hysterectomies each year in the US

• The cause of fibroids can result from several factors, including imbalanced estrogen levels

• Drinking coffee may boost estrogen levels in some women

• African American women are two to three times more likely to develop fibroids than women of other races or ethnicities

Hot Flashes/Flushes What Causes Them & How To Reduce Them

One of the most common symptoms of the menopause are hot flashes or in the UK we tend to refer to them as hot flushes and they are characterised by a sudden feeling of heat which seems to come from nowhere and which spreads through your body.

Whilst not every woman will experience hot flashes it is estimated that 3 out of 4 menopausal women have hot flushes, further more some women experience them years before menstruation stops.

Hot flashes/flushes can include sweating, palpitations and a red flush (blushing) and can vary greatly in their severity.  Some women will only encounter the occasional hot flush whilst others report 20 hot flushes a day that are not only uncomfortable, disruptable but embarrassing.

What Causes Hot Flushes/Flashes

Most experts are still not in agreement about the cause of hot flashes/flushes but most attribute them to the decrease in the production of estrogen which occurs in women as they progress towards the menopause.  The theory is that when estrogen falls the hypothalamus is adversely affected and as your hypothalamus regulates your body temperature the decrease in estrogen causes the brain to falsely detect too much body heat.  In order for the brain to cool the body it releases hormones to help lower body heat by increasing the heart rate and causing blood vessels to dilate for blood to flow through the body and dissipate heat.  Increased blood flow causes the body to produce its natural cooling method ...sweat.

The key to reducing symptoms is to firstly understand what makes them worse...

Hot flushes/flashes can happen without warning day or night and some might say they can occur with regular irregularity!  Well known triggers can be woolly jumpers, especially polo necks, stress, drinking alcohol or coffee or eating spicy foods.  I have even read reports that wheat can exacerbate symptoms.

In general, leading a healthy lifestyle may be a way to keep symptoms to a minimum.  Factors such as obesity, inactivity and smoking may worsen symptoms.

Genetics are also said to play a large role.  According to one study, women who have naturally lower progesterone levels tend to suffer more severe symptoms.  Ethnicity may also play a part with doctors at the North Texas Health Science Center finding that African American women were more likely to experience more frequent and more intense hot flushes than their caucasian counterparts.  Latin women also experienced more frequent flashes in the study although the intensity of their flashes were less.

What worked for me...

I started to experience hot flushes some months ago and set about researching how to reduce their intensity and regularity.

I cut out coffee, alcohol and abstained from all wheat products for 30 days.  I also supplemented with Biovea Progesterone Cream which is a bio-identical progesterone and not a pharmaceutical derivative.

My symptoms have very much diminished and whilst this protocol might not work for everyone it is definitely worth trialing to see, if at least, it can lessen your symptoms - who knows it might even eradicate them completely.

I experienced improvements in as little as 5-7 days!

Biovea progesterone cream can be purchased on-line in the UK/USA from biovea.com - they also ship to many other countries - see top left location tab on their website.

There may also be an upside to hot flashes as some studies suggests that hot flashes bode well for post-menopausal health. Researchers have found that women who experience hot flashes, especially early in menopause, have a lower risk of developing breast cancer, stroke and heart disease.

If you have had encouraging results from naturally controlling your hot flushes/flashes please do share and help other women benefit from our experiences.

How BPA (Bisphenol-A) and BPA *Free* Plastics can Affect Uterine Fibroids

Call me sceptical or simply cynical but I’ve always had a mistrust of BPA *free* plastics and today my cynicism has been rewarded... how? well I stumbled across an article on MotherJones.com titled ‘The Scary New Evidence on BPA-Free Plastics’ ...‘And the big tobacco-style campaign to bury it’.

The article basically reviews a lot of evidence that has been published by a number of scientists around the world who are all in support of the idea that low doses of BPA (Bisphenol-A) that is doses that nearly all of us are exposed to in the industrialised world are a potential health hazard.

I’ve known for many years now how this insidious chemical has the potential to wreck havoc with our endocrine systems in that it mimics the hormone estrogen and therefore has an estrogenic effect with in our bodies - and excess estrogen is one of the major driving forces behind the growth of uterine fibroids.

Due to the level of awareness of BPA and its adverse effects many packaging companies, food suppliers etc are now switching their products to BPA-Free plastics.

But what is really disturbing is that a lot of recent research, including a paper that appeared in Environmental Health Perspectives, found that almost all commercially available plastics, including the ones marked BPA-Free leach synthetic estrogens, even when these chemicals weren’t exposed to conditions that are known to unlock these potentially harmful chemicals such as heat exposure: like heating food in plastic containers in your microwave or simply leaving a plastic water bottle on the dashboard of your car in the sun! 

Just contact with food or water was enough for these chemicals to leach out.  More importantly some of the chemicals used in the BPA-free plastics actually have a greater estrogenic activity than BPA itself!

There are currently a number of legal battles waging between scientists and manufacturers of these so called BPA-free plastics who are naturally disputing the scientists' claims.

My mantra on any controversial issues such as this is...’if in doubt, leave out’ and thankfully I have always given BPA-free plastics a wide birth believing that if the harmful chemicals have been removed what have they been replaced by?


So how can you reduce your exposure to BPA and BPA-free plastics

• Drink and store liquids in glass bottles or invest in good quality steel lined thermos flask
• Store foods especially foods with a high fat content in glass containers and if you have to buy products in plastic transfer them to glass or ceramic containers as soon as you get home
• Wrap foods in baking paper not cling film or plastic wrap - can also be used with foods for freezing
• Avoid plastic lined tinned foods especially tinned tomatoes due the acidic nature of the fruit which helps leach out the estrogenic chemicals
• Avoid plastic lined tetra packs as used for milk, fruit juices etc
• Use Mason or Kilner jars which come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes
• Never heat foods or liquids in plastic containers in microwaves

Low Vitamin D Linked to Uterine Fibroids

Inadequate levels of vitamin D may increase the risk for uterine fibroids, a new study reports.

Vitamin D has been associated with reduced risk for various diseases (cancer included) but this is the first to examine the connection to fibroids.

Researchers randomly selected 620 black and 410 white women, ages 35 to 49, and determined their vitamin D levels with blood tests and their health status with questionnaires. Their analysis appears in the May issue of Epidemiology.

About two-thirds of the women had fibroid tumours. In the entire group, only 10 percent of the black women and 50 percent of white women had vitamin D levels above 20 nanograms per milliliter, generally considered an adequate level.

After adjusting for age, physical activity, sun exposure and other variables, they found that having a vitamin D level above 20 decreased the risk for fibroids by 32 percent, and that each increase of 10 nanograms per milliliter in vitamin D was associated with a 20 percent lower risk of having a fibroid tumour.

The lead author, Donna Day Baird, an epidemiologist with the National Institutes of Health, cautioned that this was only one epidemiological study and needed to be replicated. Still, she said ...'sufficient levels of vitamin D are probably good for several health outcomes and fibroids may be one of them'.

Whilst technically not a vitamin but rather a sun hormone vitamin D is an essential requirement by the body for the proper absorption of calcium, bone development, control of cell growth, neuromuscular functioning, proper immune functioning, and alleviation of inflammation.

Inflammation is one of the driving forces behind fibroid growth

Vitamin D is oil soluble, which means you need to eat fat to absorb it. It is naturally found mainly in fish oils, fatty fish (sardines, mackerel, wild salmon etc) and to a lesser extent in beef liver, cheese, egg yolks and certain mushrooms.

Vitamin D is also naturally made by your body when you expose your skin to the sun - hence it is often referred to as the sun-shine vitamin.

If you are interested in finding out to how to expose your skin safely in the sun then read this article (see link below), it contains a wealth of technical as well as interesting information - did you know that D3 that is formed on the surface of your skin does not immediately penetrate into your bloodstream? and that if you wash your skin with soap within that 48 hour window you you will simply wash away much of the vitamin D3 your skin has generated!

Little Sunshine Mistakes that Can Give You Cancer Instead of Vitamin D

Smoking/Nicotine and Uterine Fibroids

I wonder how many of you are aware of the health benefits of smoking?  Well surprisingly there are several types of 'smoker's paradoxes' or cases where smoking appears to have a beneficial effect.

It transpires that smoking is known to reduce the incidence of uterine fibroids and endometriosis!  It's believed that the benefits are derived from the the nicotine in the tobacco smoke acting as an anti-inflammatory agent interfering with the disease process.

Having discovered how complicated a disease process uterine fibroids are, I dare say that this is a rather over simplistic rationale of the mechanisms at work.

Even so implementing an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle will greatly help fight the symptoms and growth of uterine fibroids.

Good anti-inflammatory foods/supplements to incorporate into your diet include:

• Omega-3 fish oil (either as a supplement or from oily fish such as mackerel, sardines and wild salmon)
• Turmeric or you could go straight for the powerful stuff and simply take curcumin
• Garlic and onions
• Cruciferous vegetables - pretty much every list of 10 anti-inflammatory foods contains broccoli, cauliflower, kale or cabbage
• Berries; strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, cranberries (great in smoothies and lower in sugar than other fruits)
• Green tea
• Shiitake mushrooms (great smoky tasting mushrooms)

Avoid vegetable oils (pro-inflammatory as high in omega-6 oils) use olive oil for salad dressing and coconut oil or coconut butter for cooking.  Coconut butter doesn't taste of coconuts so wont taint the taste of your cooking.

Exercise also has a great anti-inflammatory effect on our bodies so get moving!

Oh and if you haven't done so already - quit smoking - the health benefits far out weigh any smoker's paradoxes!

Iodine, Thyroid and Fibroids

I recently came across an article that claimed one of the first conventional medical treatments for severe fibroids was to paint the uterus with iodine, yes that brown smelly ointment the school matron or nurse used to smear all over your cut and grazed knees as a child.  

Quite how and with what quantities of iodine they painted the uterus with I have not been able to discover - interesting nevertheless!

Iodine in our diets is an essential trace mineral and the vast majority of iodine (about three-quarters in the body) is needed by the thyroid gland.   

Iodine is vital in the production of two hormones, these are the thyroid hormones; T3 (triiodothyronine) and T4 (thyroxine).  Three iodine molecules are added to make T3 and four are added to make T4. 

So what is the thyroid?  

It is a small bow tie or butterfly shaped gland that is situated in the lower part of the neck, in front of the windpipe.

The thyroid’s most important purpose is to produce, store and release 2 key thyroid hormones T3, T4.  The thyroid is able to produce this hormone by absorbing iodine from food, iodised salt and supplements.

The role of thyroid hormone is to control metabolism and has a wide reaching affect on our health from controlling the processes by which cells convert oxygen and calories into energy, the proper functioning of the nervous system, the digestion and elimination of food, brain function, heart health, functioning of muscles, immune system, respiration, bone growth etc...

When our thyroid is diseased or damaged problems can occur such as hypothyroidism or under active thyroid.  This lack of hormone can be due to a thyroid that isn’t producing enough hormone due to drugs, nutritional deficiences or impairment due to nodules, inflammation, infection, or atrophy.  

Symptoms of hypothyroidism can include fatigue, weight gain, constipation, foggy thinking or poor brain function, memory impairment, low energy and an intolerance to cold (cold fingers and toes), brittle hair and nails, hair loss, constipation, slow reflexes, decreased libido, immune system sluggishness and weakness, dry skin and even vision impairment in advanced stages. 

Conventional medical treatment for hypothyroidism typically involves replacing the missing thyroid hormone using prescription thyroid replacement drugs.  Natural or holistic treatments tend to focus on nutritional support with thyroid precursors like tyrosine and iodine and adrenal support.

Thyroid problems are widespread and the European Thyroid Association estimates that more than 200 million people around the world have thyroid problems.  In the united States the vast majority of thyroid conditions are the result of an autoimmune disease.  

About 20% of the American public is iodine deficient but the primary cause of thyroid problems is an autoimmune disease and is not thought to be iodine related.

Hashimoto’s disease is the most common form of thyroiditis, an inflammation of the thyroid - it is the most common thyroid problem and is the cause of most hypothyroidism in the US today.

The conventional medical treatment for hypothyroidism involves a lifelong thyroid hormone replacement therapy.  Natural or holistic treatments tend to focus on healing the underlying autoimmune imbalance and may include nutritional support for the thyroid (selenium, tyrosine, B vitamins etc)  elimination of toxins and overall support for the the immune system.

Both an excess and a deficiency of iodine are risk factors for thyroid disease.

But what has the thyroid got to do with fibroids?

Firstly it’s important to understand that the thyroid and the reproductive system are all part of same system ...the endocrine system

Having too much estrogen in one's system relative to progesterone, a state often referred to as estrogen dominance will cause uterine fibroids to develop and grow.  One theory for their development is that persistent estrogen dominance causes a woman’s uterine lining to thicken far more than is healthy during her monthly cycles.  

This repeated, excessive thickenings can result in localised growths in the muscle and connective tissue that line the uterus resulting in uterine fibroids.  

Anovulatory cycles (cycles where you don’t ovulate) are one of a number of different causes of estrogen dominance.  During an anovulatory cycle no progesterone is made leading to an imbalance of estrogen over progresterone.  

Estrogen dominance can further prevent the thryroid hormone molecules from properly binding with receptors making thyroid hormone unavailable to your cells leaving you functionally hypothyroid at a cellular level.

As the thyroid hormone has some chemical similarities to estrogen the various receptor sites for thyroid, found through out the body, can therefore be ‘blocked’ by the presence of estrogen.

Thyroid hormone is essential in the process of converting cholesterol into pregnenolone, which is then converted into progesterone, DHEA, estrogen and testosterone.  So any deficiency of the thyroid hormone can disrupt the entire hormone production process in particular exacerbating the imbalance of estrogen over progesterone and drive the growth of fibroids.

Interestingly anovulatory cycles are far more common in thyroid patients!

One of the many side effects of an under active thyroid is weight gain, fat tissue can itself become like an endocrine gland, releasing leptin and estrogen!

Certain foods can also impact on your thyroid’s function in particular there is a certain class of foods known as goitrogens.  These foods can promote thyroid enlargement (goiter) and cause hypothyroidism by blocking the body’s ability to use iodine in the production of thyroid hormone.  

Such goitrogens are considered most potent when eaten raw and in larger quantities and studies show that cooking reduces or eliminates much of the goitrogenic potential.

Here is a list of some more common goitrogenic foods:

Brussel sprouts, rutabaga, turnips, radishes, cauliflower, millet, cabbage, kale, soy products, mustard, corn, broccoli, turnips, carrots, peaches, strawberries, peanuts, spinach, watercress...

...as you can see many of these foods are especially beneficial to our health so please remember that they are far more goitrogenic when eaten in larger quantities and or raw.

Flouride added to drinking water and present in toothpaste is a chemical with strong anti thyroid properities that increase the risk of hypothyroidism.

Tips to optimising your thyroid health

Many cases of hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis are caused by weak adrenals, so take better care of your adrenal glands 

• Avoid eating processed/refined foods and sugars

• Get good restorative sleep

• Manage stress

• Consider supplementing your diet with vitamin D, selenium, magnesium, vitamin E, vitamin C, tyrosine, vitamin A, B2, B3, B6, B12 or better still seek out and eat foods that can enrich your body in these vitamins/minerals

• Minimize your exposure to environmental toxins

• Get more active!

• You only need 150 micrograms of iodine (or 20,000th of a teaspoon) to meet your daily requirement - good sources are some seafoods and seaweeds such as kelp

• Avoid un-fermented soy including soy milk (and all GMO soy products).  Soy isoflavones can wreak havoc on your thyroid.  Kaayla Daniel's groundbreaking book, The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food is a powerful exposé that reveals the truth about the soy myths that have infiltrated our culture.

Dr. Daniel states thousands of studies link soy to malnutrition; digestive distress, immune-system breakdown, thyroid- and hormonal dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders and infertility-even cancer and heart disease.

The diagnosis of any thyroid dysfunction requires a thorough clinical examination by a licensed medical practitioner as well as blood tests.