Cervical dysplasia is the development of abnormal cells within the narrow neck of a woman’s uterus, which is known as the cervix. Cervical dysplasia is found by a Pap test and is most commonly caused by the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). It is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the USA with an estimated 24 million active cases and 5.5 million new cases diagnosed each year.
Many of the mild cases of cervical dysplasia will go away on their own without treatment. But if your immunity in the cervix is low the cells can turn precancerous or even into cancer, which will prompt your doctor to recommend treatment such as surgery or other procedures to remove the abnormal cells.
If you have either mild or severe dysplasia, you must address all of the underlying causes which are creating it. Doctors just keep an eye on it by recommending Pap tests and HPV tests every year or so to make sure it doesn’t worsen. However, this approach of watching and waiting isn’t enough.
What we need to do is to ask why the immune system allowed the Human Papilloma Virus to proliferate to the point where it is creating all these changes in the cells of the cervix.
So again, as with any disease we need to work our way backwards until we find the culprits so we can treat it at the deepest level.
We need to begin our search by evaluating the friendly bacteria cultures which are located in the vaginal tract and cervix. We all know about the gut micro biome and its various strains of probiotic cultures which prevent infection from growing in there, but we are less familiar with the strains growing in the vaginal tract and cervix.
The most common strains which are located in the cervix and vaginal tract are the various lactobacillus species. They keep the vagina and cervix healthy by producing lactic acid, hydrogen peroxide and other substances which prevent the growth of yeast and other unwanted organisms and infections, such as the Human Papilloma Virus.
So the first thing we need to do is to supplement with the various probiotics made specifically for the vaginal tract so that they can grow and over time kill unwanted infection in the area, such as the HPV, which in turn will prevent the cells from becoming abnormal.
The next thing we need to do is to identify the reason WHY the friendly bacteria got destroyed. It is usually from antibiotics, birth control pills, the morning after pill, steroids, acid reflux medicines and vaccines. So if you have ever taken any of these medications please keep in mind that they destroy the friendly bacteria in the vaginal tract which can allow the HPV and other pathogenic organisms to proliferate as they are now left unchecked without a surveillance team to keep them at bay.
And if you’ve taken a lot of these medications, such as several months on an antibiotic for acne or Lyme Disease or TB for example, or several months or years on birth control pills, then they not only destroy the friendly bacteria which reside in the gut, vaginal tract, cervix and bladder, but the mucus membranes which line the walls of all these areas. And it is the mucus layer where the friendly bacteria grow.
So next you need to use specific herbs to build up the mucus layer again. You would also need some other herbs to get the residues of those toxic pharmacological agents out of the body and teas to flush them out of the bladder.
You also need to feed the friendly bacteria food, known as prebiotics, which is why we give our patients special teas with specific herbs which feed the friendly bacteria so they can grow robustly. There are also many foods which act as prebiotics, such as Jerusalem artichokes, taro root, okra, seaweed and oats, to name a few.
You can think of regrowing these friendly bacteria in much the same way as we would plant seeds in a garden. The probiotic cultures are the seeds which you are trying to plant. The mucilaginous herbs are like bringing new topsoil into the garden and the prebiotics are like fertilizers that help them to grow.
We also use the amlaberry which is loaded with Vitamin C and helps to prevent the human papilloma virus from turning into cancer. The amlaberry is much better to use than Vitamin C since it turns alkaline immediately upon entering the body. Vitamin C can create acidity in the body and especially in the urine which can deplete the friendly bacteria even more. This is why it’s best to avoid foods and beverages which are acidic, such as coffee, alcohol, too much citrus, kambucha and other sour foods.
We also teach the patients the correct use of turmeric, which means we teach them how to cook it into their food or simmer it in their milk. When you have these various types of infections growing in the mucus membranes in both the gut, bladder, cervix and/or vagina they create inflammation and turmeric is great for inflammation in these delicate membranes.
But here is a cautionary note: too many people are taking the curcumin version of turmeric. We don’t recommend this as it is poorly absorbed and quickly excreted from the body. In fact the whole turmeric compound, the actual spice, has compounds in it that increase the absorption of the curcuminoids (the fancy name for the 3 curcumin compounds found in turmeric). And since they identified these 3 curcuminoids they have now identified 15-20 additional compounds which are bioactive within the turmeric. In fact, the latest research shows that curcumin-free products had the same effects as the whole turmeric, which now proves that the curcumin isn’t what we really want to be taking as it is actually not active once isolated out of the turmeric.
Which is why Ayurveda isn’t fond of isolating the active ingredients out of these precious herbs, foods and spices which are used for healing. We tend to forget that all the active compounds found in these remedies each play their own unique role in helping in the healing process. So they work in unison together, as a synergy, which is why isolating the active compound out of the remedy usually backfires on you later on down the road.
We also don’t recommend taking capsules of turmeric or using the raw turmeric. Both of these versions will heat up the liver too much and make the urine very hot, which could kill the strains of the probiotic cultures, which are sensitive to both heat and acids.
Of course we use our Ayurvedically prepared zinc bhasmas, where the zinc has been repeatedly burnt into an ash to make the molecule more bioavailable, which means it can enter the cells much better to have a stronger effect than the larger molecule can. Zinc is a great antiviral, which can kill the virus without destroying the friendly bacteria in the process.
Which brings us to the next point: Whenever anyone hears they have a virus or any infection in the gut, vagina, bladder or cervix, they reflexively think of what they can take to kill the infection. But if you start killing in these areas, whether with pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals or even herbs, you run the risk of killing the good guys, the friendly bacteria, which will set you back to square one, since it is these strains of probiotics which prevent any infection from overgrowing in the area. Remember, it was depletion of these strains which caused the infection in the first place. So trying to kill the infection may work initially, then the organism grows back with a vengeance, and you have to start all over again, spinning your wheels as you keep trying unsuccessfully to kill these unwanted bugs.
What we do instead is to teach the patient how to make home-made buttermilk, yogurt, lassi and takra so they can regrow their friendly bacteria in a more natural way. This approach is especially good for those who can’t tolerate probiotics. Plus, it’s best to make your own yogurt since the active strains of probiotic cultures in the yogurt found in the supermarkets, even the good biodynamic and organic brands, are too low to produce any therapeutic effects.
We also recommend boiled goat’s milk with a pinch of turmeric cooked into it to be taken on an empty stomach. Goat’s milk has the wonderful quality of being able to kill infection in these delicate areas without killing the friendly bacteria due to the caprylic acid it contains. And again, we don’t recommend you go out and purchase caprylic acid from a health food store as it won’t have the same healing capacity as the real thing found in the goat’s milk.
The water from a fresh coconut is also good for infection due to the monolaurin it contains, but it’s best to take the coconut water directly from the coconut as the monolaurin will die off quickly once it’s removed from the coconut. And here again, we don’t recommend you take monolaurin as a supplement but instead go to the more bioactive version of taking the whole fresh coconut water with all the other co-factors and synergists intact.
We even teach our patients how to make cultured coconut water in much the same way as they make yogurt, using our excellent yogurt starter cultures.
If you smoke you must try your best to quit, since smoking greatly increases the risk of cervical cancer. You must also eat as healthy as you can and work with your Ayurvedic doctor to see if there are any hormonal imbalances lurking in your physiology, which could also be perpetuating the virus.
Also learn Ayurvedic cleanses to thoroughly rid your fat cells of these dangerous pharmaceutical residues, even if it has been years since you have taken these medications. Since they are fat-soluble they are still stuck in many of the fat cells in your body, disrupting the normal immune system and other systems of the body.
These are just some of the many ways we teach our patients to overcome the Human Papilloma Virus to prevent further cervical dysplasia. Just getting yearly Pap smears, while extremely important, by itself is not an adequate treatment protocol for aggressively tackling this virus.
I hope this information helps you in your search to successfully treat your cervical dysplasia/HPV.
Thank you.