fibroids Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Kentucky Now to Offer Incisionless Procedure for Uterine Fibroid Relief

The AHA! Team — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 08:41:48 +0000

University of Kentucky via Newswise – UK HealthCare is the first in the state to offer the innovative Sonata® Treatment for women suffering from debilitating symptoms caused by uterine fibroids, including heavy periods.. Fibroids are benign growths in or around the uterus. They are very common in women of child-bearing age and can range in size from a grape to a grapefruit. Nearly 3 out of 4 women in the United States will have uterine fibroids before the age of 50. Not all fibroids require treatment, but symptoms often include heavy menstrual bleeding and painful periods that interfere with daily activities. These symptoms may worsen over time if left untreated. Nearly 3 out of 4 women in the United States will have uterine fibroids before the age of 50 “Fibroids are the most common solid pelvic tumor in women, up to two-thirds of women will have one or more fibroids before menopause, and many are symptomatic,” said Mark R. Hoffman, M.D., chief of the Division of Minimally-Invasive Gynecologic Surgery in the UK College of Medicine and an OB-GYN at UK HealthCare. “We see hundreds of patients with fibroids every year in our Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery clinic every year.” According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 200,000 women each year are treated for uterine fibroids with the most common and surgical solution, a hysterectomy, which is a significant surgical procedure to remove the entire uterus. Traditionally, fibroids are treated with minimally invasive procedures such as hysterectomy or myomectomy, but a new, less invasive procedure may be an option for those seeking relief. Transcervical fibroid ablation (TFA) is a less invasive alternative to a hysterectomy or myomectomy. The fibroids are treated inside the uterus, so there are no incisions or scars. The Sonata® System, used in TFA, combines real-time ultrasound imaging with targeted radiofrequency ablation. One by one, the fibroids are targeted and reduced in size, preserving the healthy uterine tissue and providing quick, long-lasting relief. In a clinical trial, the Sonata Treatment was proven to reduce symptoms while getting half of the treated women back to their normal activities the next day. Average return to activity was two days. TFA can be used to treat almost all symptomatic uterine fibroids. This brief, outpatient procedure preserves the uterus and does not require an incision or anesthesia. Patients can return to work and activities in days, not weeks; much sooner than with traditional surgical procedures. More than 200,000 women each year are treated for uterine fibroids “This is a new, novel procedure that provides an alternative to hysterectomy, is outpatient with a same day discharge and has minimal recovery,” said Hoffman. “Patients can be back to full activity in a matter of a few days.” For more information about the Sonata® System and uterine fibroid relief, contact the UK HealthCare Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinic and schedule an appointment with one of the following providers: UK HealthCare is the hospitals and clinics of the University of Kentucky. But it is so much more. It is more than 10,000 dedicated health care professionals committed to providing advanced subspecialty care for the most critically injured and ill patients from the Commonwealth and beyond. It also is the home of the state’s only National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer center, a Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit that cares for the tiniest and sickest newborns, the region’s only Level 1 trauma center and Kentucky’s top hospital ranked by U.S. News & World Report. As an academic research institution, we are continuously pursuing the next generation of cures, treatments, protocols and policies. Our discoveries have the potential to change what’s medically possible within our lifetimes. Our educators and thought leaders are transforming the health care landscape as our six health professions colleges teach the next generation of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care professionals, spreading the highest standards of care. UK HealthCare is the power of advanced medicine committed to creating a healthier Kentucky, now and for generations to come. To read the original article click here.

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Is Soy Harmful, Harmless, or Helpful for Fibroids?

AHA Publisher — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 07:00:07 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – When it comes to uterine fibroids, is soy harmful, harmless, or helpful? About one in four women will eventually suffer from fibroids, most commonly manifesting as excessively heavy periods, pain, or pressure. Why might you feel pressure? Because, as you can see at 0:17 in my video Should Women with Fibroids Avoid Soy?, you may be carrying around 26 pounds of tumors in your uterus. Fibroids are the most common reason women get hysterectomies, the complete removal of the uterus, a major surgery “associated with disability and death.” All surgery carries risk, though, and the chances of dying within a month of hysterectomy surgery may only be about 1 in 1,200, which makes it among our safest surgeries. As you can see at 0:40 in my video, getting your uterus removed is safer than getting your gallbladder removed, for example. But, of course, you lose the ability to bear children with a hysterectomy, and in total these surgeries cost billions of dollars a year. Yet, despite the high prevalence of fibroids, significant pain and suffering, and huge economic impact, relatively little is understood about the cause and disease process that lead to fibroid tumors. In terms of decreasing fibroids risk, it’s probably a good idea to avoid atomic bomb blasts whenever you can, but what about more easily modifiable risk factors? Consumption of alcohol, particularly beer, is associated with increased risk. Whenever beer is implicated, you may think about the hormonal effects specific to beer, particularly the powerful phytoestrogen found in hops, an essential ingredient in beer. If that phytoestrogen is increasing fibroids risk, what about the phytoestrogens in soy? The Black Women’s Health Study looked into this. Fibroids are two to three times more prevalent among Black women, so it was thought that dairy intake might be contributing to the disparity, given Black women’s higher levels of lactose intolerance. Indeed, dairy consumption was associated with reduced risk, perhaps, thought researchers, because of the calcium or vitamin D content. Was it possible the women were drinking soy milk instead, and that was increasing their fibroid risk? No. Soy intake was found to be unrelated. The same was found in a group of predominantly white women, though researchers did note a protective association with the amount of lignans flowing through their bodies. Lignans are another class of phytoestrogens found predominantly in flaxseeds but also throughout the plant kingdom. It was hard for the researchers to make any generalizations about the soy phytoestrogens, though, because soy consumption by the subjects was rather low across the board. That research was done in Washington state. Japan, however, has the highest per capita soy consumption in the world, which could allow for a bigger spread of intakes. Researchers had “previously found that soya intake was inversely associated with the risk of hysterectomy,” meaning women who consumed more soy had lower hysterectomy rates, “suggesting a potentially protective effect of soya against uterine fibroids,” the main reason women have their uterus removed. This is consistent with in vitro studies that found that the main soy phytoestrogen seemed to inhibit fibroid tissue proliferation in a petri dish. But when the researchers in Japan specifically looked at that connection, they found there was no evidence of a link to soy at all, protective or otherwise. The same was found in a study from China. As you can see at 3:18 in my video, fruit and vegetable intake was associated with a significantly lower risk of fibroids, but soy food consumption was not. A second study out of China published the same year, however, did find a significant association between soy milk intake and fibroids, which was consistent with three alarming case reports of women with symptomatic fibroids reporting an “unusually high intake of soy milk,” “regularly consuming excessive amounts of soy, or having “an extremely high intake of soy” every day for decades. It’s hard to take these cases seriously when nowhere does it specify how much they were consuming. The only quantitative mention was 40 grams of isoflavones, roughly equivalent to 400 gallons of soy milk every day, which would be excessive, but also impossible. The only way to know for sure is to put it to the test—and not just in a population study or anecdotal reports, but to randomize women to two years of soy phytoestrogens in the amount found in three to five cups of soy milk a day. When researchers did just that, no significant effect on the frequency or growth of fibroids was found. KEY TAKEAWAYS About 25 percent of women will suffer from fibroids, which commonly manifest as excessively heavy periods, pain, or pressure and are the most common reason for hysterectomies. Alcohol consumption, especially beer, is associated with greater risk of fibroids. Fibroids are two to three times more prevalent among Black women, who have higher levels of lactose intolerance. Per capita soy consumption is highest in Japan. Researchers had thought soy may have a potentially protective effect against uterine fibroids, but no evidence of a link to soy was found, whether protective or otherwise. Intake of fruits and vegetables was associated with significantly lower risk, but not soy foods. Researchers randomized women to two years of soy phytoestrogens in the amount found in three to five cups of soymilk a day, and did not find any significant effect on the growth or frequency of fibroids. This article has been modified. To read the original article click here.

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The Dangers of Talcum Powder

AHA Publisher — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 07:00:12 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – What role does diet and baby powder play in the development of fibroids and ovarian cancer? If you randomly select a group of women and ultrasound their uterus, most of them have fibroid tumors by age 50—and by most, I mean more than 80 percent of black women and nearly 70 percent of white women. As you can see at 0:23 in my video Talcum Powder and Fibroids, half of the white women in study already had fibroids by their early 40s, while half of the African-American women had them even early, by their mid-30s. After getting over the shock of how widespread fibroids are, the next question becomes, Why the racial disparity? Is it “diet, stress, [or] environmental exposures”? Perhaps the reason could offer a clue as to what causes fibroids. For example, African Americans tend to have lower intakes of fruits and vegetables, and fruits and vegetables appear protective against fibroids. (Citrus are particularly protective, though apparently not just citrus juice, as found in the Black Women’s Health Study.) It’s interesting that if you measure the levels of beta-carotene in fresh surgical tissue samples of uterine fibroids and adjacent normal uterine tissue obtained during hysterectomies, you find significantly lower concentrations in the fibroids. In fact, as you can see at 1:23 in my video, beta-carotene was not even detectable in half the fibroid specimens, and the same was found in cancer: Most cancerous tissues tested had undetectable levels of beta carotene, compared to the normal tissue right next to the tumor. Could it be that decreased levels of beta-carotene somehow play a role in causing these conditions? Sounds like a bit of a stretch, but you don’t know until…you put it to the test. There had never been a randomized controlled clinical trial of fruits and vegetables for fibroids, until… never. Researchers did do a randomized controlled trial of kind-of-a-fruit-and–vegetable-at-the-same-time studying tomatoes for the prevention of fibroids, but they studied fibroids in Japanese quail—as in the birds. That doesn’t really help me help my human, non-quail patients. The action of lycopene, the red pigment in tomatoes, “in an animal model may not accurately represent lycopene action in humans.” And, indeed, the Harvard Nurse’s study found no apparent link between lycopene consumption and fibroids, as you can see at 2:27 in my video. So, yes, fruits and green vegetables at least may have a protective effect, but we won’t know for sure until they’re properly put to the test. Vitamin D level is another possible factor as to why African Americans disproportionately suffer from fibroids, since women with darker skin are more likely to be deficient in the vitamin. As many as 80 percent of black women may have inadequate levels of vitamin D, compared to only one in five white women. Vitamin D does inhibit fibroid cell proliferation, at least in a petri dish, and it may be able to shrink tumors in your pet rat, but what about in people? A population study did find that women with “sufficient vitamin D” levels in their blood had about one-third lower odds of fibroids, consistent with the finding that women who report lots of sun exposure also appear to be protected, but until there’s an interventional trial where women are randomized to vitamin D or a placebo, we won’t know for sure if vitamin D plays a role in fibroid prevention or treatment. African-American women are also more likely to sprinkle baby powder on their genitals, which may not only double the odds of fibroids, but may also increase the risk of ovarian cancer, the deadliest gynecological cancer. Internal memos show Johnson & Johnson knew about the cancer risk, but still decided to target African Americans. In an advertisement depicting an African-American family that you can see at 4:04 in my video, Johnson & Johnson said, “Think of us as a lifetime friend of the family”—perhaps a lifetime cut short by its baby powder. At least that’s what a jury found in 2017 when it awarded a woman $110 million in damages, and that was on top of the $200 million in verdicts from 2016, with thousands of lawsuits pending after internal memos revealed that, decades ago, Johnson & Johnson’s own contracted toxicologists were warning the company there are multiple studies showing a cancer link. “Anyone who denies this risks that the talc industry will be perceived by the public like it perceives the cigarette industry: denying the obvious in the face of all evidence to the contrary.” KEY TAKEAWAYS Fruits and vegetables appear to be protective against fibroids, and African Americans tend to have lower intakes of these plant foods. Fibroids are widespread amongst women, with more than 80 percent of Black women and nearly 70 percent of White women having fibroid tumors by age 50, as determined by uterine ultrasound, and African-American women seeming to get them at an earlier age. When measuring levels of beta-carotene, significantly lower concentrations are typically found in fibroids and cancerous tissues. A randomized controlled clinical trial of fruits and vegetables for fibroids has never been conducted, so, although we know fruits and green vegetables appear to be protective, we cannot know for certain until put to the test in an interventional trial. African Americans may suffer disproportionately from fibroids due to inadequate levels of vitamin D. Sprinkling baby powder on genitals may not only double the odds of fibroids, but also increase ovarian cancer risk, and African American women are more likely to do this than White women. Johnson & Johnson was aware of the cancer risk but, according to internal memos, still chose to target African Americans in its baby powder ad campaigns. Juries have awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in verdicts from lawsuits filed against the company, with thousands more suits pending. This article has been modified. To read the original article click here.

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Natural Dietary Treatments for Fibroids

AHA Publisher — Thu, 13 May 2021 07:00:09 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – The same diet that helps regulate hormones in women may also reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting pollutants. Fibroids are the most common benign tumors in women. They can grow to a foot in diameter and affect the majority of women before they hit menopause. Although fibroids tend to be asymptomatic, when symptoms do occur, they tend to manifest as heavy menstrual bleeding—so much so that women may get anemic and experience a lot of pain. So, what can women do? I discuss this in my video The Best Diet for Fibroids. Up to half go into surgery and get their entire uterus removed. “Although hysterectomy is generally considered a safe operation, complications occur in a significant proportion of patients” and, obviously, you can’t have kids any more. The alternative is a variety of hormone-modulating drugs, which can shrink the fibroids and provide relief, but many of these drugs have significant side effects, like bone loss, so you really don’t want to be taking them for more than a few months. What’s the bottom line? “There is currently no evidence to support the routine use of medical treatment in women with uterine fibroids.” No wonder many women turn to “complementary and alternative treatments…including exercise, diet, herbs, and acupuncture.” Women who exercise seven or more hours a week do seem to have lower risk of having fibroids than women who exercise less than around 20 minutes a day, but exercise has never been put to the test for treating fibroids. Likewise, to date, there isn’t a single randomized controlled trial of acupuncture for the treatment of fibroids to help guide us. In terms of herbs, there are two Asian herbal preparations that show promise—a five-herb combo called Guizhi Fuling and a Malaysian ten-herb formula that contains “secret ingredients” that must not be that secret since they’re just listed in the study, as you can see at 1:50 in my video—and they seemed to work as well as a leading drug. The problem is that traditional Asian herbal remedies may contain a few extra ingredients, like arsenic, mercury, and lead, which have been detected in most of the samples tested from Asian market and health food store shelves, and not just a little. Some, apparently, had really toxic amounts. So, these two Asian herbal preparations “may reduce fibroid size, but there is insufficient evidence to support the efficacy or safety of these treatments.” And, certainly, don’t try to apply caustic herbs internally, as this can lead to scarring, stenosis, and ulceration. Well, what about diet? In one of the largest studies of diet and fibroids, fibroid tumors were “associated with beef and ham consumption, whereas high intake of green vegetables seems to have a protective effect.” The researchers figured that the “association between levels of estrogen, diet, and breast and endometrial [uterine lining] cancers also may help us understand” why. Indeed, “[f]or breast and endometrial cancers, a direct association with the frequency of consumption of meat and ham was observed…whereas protection was conferred by high intake of vegetables and fruits.” Thus, there may be these shared risk factors between estrogen-responsive malignant tumors, like breast cancer, and estrogen-responsive benign tumors, like fibroids. We know the presence of fibroids seems to correlate with an increase in the amount of estrogens flowing through your body, for example, and that women eating vegetarian diets have significantly lower levels of excess estrogen. Researchers are using this knowledge to try to explain why there are lower rates of endometrial cancer—that is, lining-of-the-uterus cancer—and possibly breast cancer among vegetarian women, but it could also help explain the fibroid findings. “The incidence of breast cancer among vegetarian American women (Seventh Day Adventists) is 60 to 80 per cent of the incidence among American women in general, and the incidence among women in Africa and Asia is even lower.” Why might vegetarian women have lower estrogen levels? A famous study in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that it was their “increased fecal output, which leads to increased fecal excretion of estrogen,” resulting in lower blood levels. Double the fecal output, in fact, as you can see at 4:07 in my video. And, you can put it to the test. Maybe the same reason African-American women have more fibroids is the same reason they have worse breast cancer survival: too much estrogen in their bloodstream due to a less than optimal diet. So, researchers designed a study to see what would happen if they were switched to a more plant-based, higher fiber diet. Compared with the Caucasian women, the African-American women started out with much higher estrogen levels, again helping to explain their increased mortality from breast cancer. But, after they were put on a healthier diet, all of their levels came down, “suggest[ing] that a substantial reduction in breast cancer risk can be achieved” by adopting a diet centered around more whole plant foods. The same also appears to be true for fibroids, especially eating lots of cruciferous vegetables—broccoli, cabbage, and Chinese cabbage—as well as tomatoes and apples. Women who underwent premature puberty, starting their periods before age 11, may also be at increased risk of fibroids later in life, and we know that higher childhood red meat intake is associated with earlier age of starting one’s period, though total protein and animal protein in general may contribute. For example, girls who eat meat tend to start their periods about six months earlier than vegetarian girls. Those who eat meat analogues like veggie burgers and veggie dogs start their periods nine months later on average, and a similar puberty normalizing influence was found with consumption of whole plants foods, such as beans. It could also be the endocrine-disrupting pollutants that build up the food chain. Researchers tooksamples of internal abdominal fat from women and found there appeared to be a correlation between the presence of fibroids with the levels of a number of PCBs in their fat. So, does that mean fish-eaters have higher risk of fibroids? Researchers did find a small increase in risk associated with the intake of long-chain omega-3 fats, mostly from “dark-meat fish consumption,” by which they meant fish like sardines and salmon. This could be because of “the endocrine-disrupting chemicals commonly shown in fish,” or it could just be a statistical fluke. It would be consistent with the increased risk seen among “sport-fish consumers.” Recognizing that diet and endocrine-disrupting persistent organic pollutants have been associated with a variety of gynecologic conditions, including fibroids, researchers looked at consumers of fish fished out of the Great Lakes and found a 20 percent increased risk for every ten years they had been eating the fish. In the most comprehensive study to date, researchers compared pollutant levels in fat samples from women with fibroids to fat liposuctioned out of women without fibroids. They didn’t just find higher levels of PCBs in fibroid sufferers, but also long-banned pesticides, like DDT and hexachlorocyclohexane, PAHs, which are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons formed when coal is burned, tobacco is smoked, and meat is grilled, as well as heavy metals, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. These levels correlated not only to fibroids, but also to seafood consumption or excess body fat. So, the researchers determined that “shedding excess weight and limiting seafood consumption would confer a protective effect” on fibroid tumor development by minimizing exposure to environmental pollutants as much as possible. Okay, so a plant-based diet may be best, but is there a plant in particular that has been shown to be particularly powerful? Plant-based compounds with disease-preventive properties, dietary phytochemicals are found in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils, herbs, spices, nuts, and certain beverages. As I discuss in my video The Best Food for Fibroids, we know they can help regulate the initiation, promotion, and spread of cancerous tumors, so what about benign tumors like fibroids? Most anti-cancer drugs on the market now were originally derived from plants or plant products, so why not try to use plants to target the inflammation or blood supply of fibroids? Might fibroids be a consequence of chronic inflammation within the body? We know that women with fibroids are more likely to eat more beef and ham, and fewer fruits and green vegetables, but whole plant foods don’t just have anti-inflammatory effects but antioxidant effects as well. “If the generation of free radicals exceeds the protective effects of antioxidants, oxidative damage will occur,” which has been implicated in a variety of disease states, including gynecological conditions such as fibroids. If you collect fresh fibroids, as well as normal uterine tissue from hysterectomy surgeries, the fibroid cells have significantly fewer antioxidant enzymes, as you can see at 1:20 in my video, so might antioxidant-rich foods help? Well, if you drip some strawberries onto cells in a petri dish, you can apparently kill of some fibroid tumor cells, while leaving normal uterus cells alone. But, what good does that do us? That’s only relevant if we can show those strawberry compounds get absorbed through our gut and achieve high enough concentrations in uterine tissue. The same with curcumin, the component of the spice turmeric. One of its so-called “miraculous” properties is suppressing the growth of uterine fibroid cells, but, again, that was just in vitro. Yes, an inhibitory effect was found and at concentrations that don’t compromise the growth of normal, regular uterine tissue, but my patients are people, not petri dishes. It’s pretty neat to find out what happens to human fibroid cells as you drip higher and higher concentrations of green tea compounds on them in a test tube, as you can see for yourself at 2:19 in my video, but I care less about what happens in vitro or in mice, whether or not they have any clothes on—one study looked at “a nude mice model”—but there were no randomized, controlled clinical studies until 2013. Subjects were randomized to green tea extract or placebo for four months. In the placebo group, fibroid volume increased by 24 percent. That’s what fibroids do; they continue to grow. However, those randomized to the green tea group showed a reduction in total fibroid volume—and not just by a little. There was a dramatic decrease, shrinking by almost a third, which is a highly significant difference, as you can see at 3:02 in my video. Okay, but did the women feel any better? Yes, they experienced a dramatic decrease in symptom severity, as well. Month after month, nothing much happened in the placebo group, but those taking the pills that looked the same but happened to contain green tea compounds had consistent improvement and felt lessening symptoms, each month better than the last, as well as an improved health-related quality of life, month after month, that was significantly better than control. What’s more, their blood counts got better too. With all that continued excess blood loss every month, the blood levels kept decreasing in the placebo group, but they reversed in the green tea group. So, anemia also significantly improved, because average blood flow significantly diminished. And, all this—the fibroid shrinkage, less pain, better periods—was achieved with “no adverse effects.” So, not only were the results comparable to those for the drugs that are commonly used—again, without the side effects—but the results were also comparable to uterine artery embolization, where they try to cut the blood supply to the fibroid, which is great—unless they accidentally cut the blood supply to the rest of the uterus and cause uterine necrosis, one of many reported major complications. Others include death, not only of the fibroid, but also of the patient, along with other potential complications that may arise from accidentally clogging off non-target arteries. In my book, a side-effect-free solution as good as a more invasive procedure is potentially better than. The researchers conclude that green tea compounds show “promise as a safe and effective therapeutic agent for women with symptomatic UFs [uterine fibroids]. Such a simple, inexpensive, and orally administered therapy...

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