vikdad1

Hormonal Balance

To find out about how to achieve hormonal balance before, during, and after Cervical Cancer, FoundHealth interviewed an esteemed advisor, Dr. Metzger.

Dr. Metzger

Deborah A. Metzger, PhD, MD, FACOG is a gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist whose major interest is the integrated treatment of women with complex medical problems. She has lectured extensively throughout the world, published widely in peer-reviewed journals and textbooks, and is one of the editors of Chronic Pelvic Pain: An Integrated Approach, the first book on the subject. She is also the Medical Advisor for Stay Fertile Longer.d chemo.

Does hormonal birth control affect your risk of cervical cancer or pre-cancerous cells? Breast cancer? Fertility?

It turns out that birth control pills deplete B vitamins. Folic acid deficiency is one of the causes of contributors to cervical cancer. If a woman takes a multivitamin, she’s going to be less likely to have cervical cancer cc as a result of birth control pills, because she’s getting enough folic acid.

Birth control pills appear to be relatively neutral in their relationship to breast cancer, with perhaps a slight increase in risk. We’re only now learning about progestin’s (synthetic progesterone) effect on breast cancer. Progestin has not been independently studied. The women’s health initiative found that when you added progestin the risk of breast cancer almost doubled, but that the estrogen alone was protective against breast cancer. Estrogen has unfortunately been labeled the bad guy where when it’s really the progesterone synthetic progestin that raises the risk of breast cancer.

There’s a lot of mixed information that we don’t understand about hormones and cancer. In the history of the treatment of breast cancer, estrogen, progestins, testosterone have all been used in the treatment of breast cancer. High dose estrogen has been used successfully for the treatment of breast cancer. In one study, they looked at women who had failed all other treatments. They put them on high doses of estradiol versus chemotherapy. Estradiol was as effective as chemotherapy in resistant breast cancer.

Birth control pills have no relationship to infertility.

If you’re having treatment for pre-cancer should you stop taking birth control?

No. There’s no reason to stop birth control pills, but there is a good reason to start multivitamins. The risk of birth control has to be weighed with the many benefits. The risk of ovarian cancer is reduced 80% with hormonal birth control. It also decreases the risk of autoimmune diseases, benign breast issues, among others. If you’re concerned about cervical health, supplementing vitamin with B vitamins is key.

What dietary supplements can people take to help with early menopause?

The best one by far is actually the birth control pill. There is a birth control pill specifically designed for women in perimenopause, which controls bleeding and mood, all of those thingsand hot flashes. If a woman doesn’t want birth control, she can try go on an over - the - counter progesterone cream. Over - the - counter progesterone creams are weaker, but they can help with things symptoms like PMS and breast tenderness.

Diet can play a huge role in everything, including symptoms of menopause such as depression, mood changes, and low energy. My favorite diet to recommend is a low-glycemic diet. Staying away from the white foods – sugar, flour, rice, corn, bread - all . All of those things change very quickly in our body to sugar. I routinely hear “wow” all the time from my patients who try a low-glycemic diet. They’re sleeping better, have more energy…they’ll say, “I didn’t realize how fatigued I was.” It really does have a wow factor.

Are there any other dietary or lifestyle changes that can help balance women’s hormones?

There are some herbs. If a woman hasn’t gone through menopause, chasteberry can help make the periods regular. Black cohosh, red leaf clover…Soy can be very helpful with hot flashes. The problems with soy are is that it is it’s a common allergen, and the other problem is that it is it’s in everything we eat, so usually it’s not necessary to supplement it.
Genistein is a plant estrogen which is a component of soy which can be very useful for bone density, and you can get that as a supplement. Other fundamental supplements that I always recommend for women are a multivitamin, probiotics, calcium, magnesium, Vitamin D. Fish oil also helps so many things .

You can maintain hormonal balance by keeping yourself healthy. Somebody can have great hormone levels but their health may be awful; this will cause their experience going through menopause to , then when they go through menopause their experience will be awful. There are other hormones that can be imbalanced other than the ones we normally think of: DHEA, testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. There’s also cortisone, insulin, growth hormoneshormone, thyroid hormone…those are all hormones that usually are not discussed when a woman is going through menopause. You can try manipulating the classic hormones estradiol and progesterone until the cows come home, but until you address the other ones, you are not going to feel hormonally balanced.

To find out about how to manage the side effects of Cervical Cancer Treatment, FoundHealth interviewed an esteemed advisor, Dr. Metzger.

Dr. Metzger

Deborah A. Metzger, PhD, MD, FACOG is a gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist whose major interest is the integrated treatment of women with complex medical problems. She has lectured extensively throughout the world, published widely in peer-reviewed journals and textbooks, and is one of the editors of Chronic Pelvic Pain: An Integrated Approach, the first book on the subject. She is also the Medical Advisor for Stay Fertile Longer.d chemo.

What alternate options do I have at stage 2B cervical cancer if I do not want chemo/radiation treatment?

2B is really hard because it’s right on the boundary between needing to be surgically managed and responding to radiation and chemo. Some 2B is contained within the cervix. Some may be on one side of the cervix, but close enough to the lymph nodes where it’s the higher risk, but it really does come down to surgery.

At a very, very early stage that is acutely that’s very localized, if a woman wants to continue to have children, they can cut out a piece out and leave the uterus intact. When it has it’s spread to lymph nodes beyond the cervix, it needs to be it’s a combination of chemo and radiation. There are some non-chemo treatments that are becoming available. There’s high-dose IV vitamin C, and other intravenous treatments. Those are all experimental. Oncologists generally don’t like a woman to be on any other alternative treatment when they’re taking care of her, even though it may improve their responses and decrease chance of complication. Vitamin C and E may reduce risk of complication complications from radiation. It even helps with chemo. There are a lot of medical articles on this subject. It can make a big difference in side effects, and also in benefits.

We’re at a real frontier right now. There are so many new treatments being developed in that area. Some are antibody based, meaning that can actually shut down the cancer by just giving antibodies, which has less of the risk of chemo. That is the future of cancer therapy. There are a couple of people doing experimental work where they take a person’s cancer cells , letting let them grow, injecting inject them into an animal, let the animal grow antibodies, then injecting those antibodies inject them back into the patient.

Avastin is a relatively new drug which prevents cells from making new blood vessels. When a cancer starts to grow, it’s only going to grow if it has a good blood supply. It’s called a vascular growth vector, which causes new blood vessels to be forms. If you block that, cancer doesn’t really get big. The hope was that it would make it go away, but it’s currently being used just to prevent tumors from growing.

What treatments exist for nerve damage caused by radiation?

Nothing. Not much. There is some evidence that hyperbaric oxygen, ACE inhibitors, antioxidants, anticoagulants and acetyl-L-carnitine may have some benefit. Some of these approaches are most effective when they are started immediately after radiation therapy. For some people, given enough time, they might get some of the neurological function back. The problem is the fibrosis, the scarring when the tissue is radiated irradiated enough. The , the blood vessels go away, and what is left is it’s just dead tissue that is that’s being kept alive. But there are radiation techniques that might limit these effects. One is that you to give radiation from different directions each day so no one tissue gets too high a dose. There’s some really localized radiation where they actually put rods of radiation Radiotherapy to the cervix can be localized by placement of rods of radioactive material into the cervix, then after a period of time they remove themare removed.

For coping, it depends on what nerve is affected. I see some patients with post-chemo brain fog and fatigue and just not feeling well. Their quality of life is not all that great. There are things that can be done, including the nutritional supplements . I mentioned earlier, and finding what else is weighing them down. Are they gluten sensitive? Has their body accumulated heavy metals? Are there other food sensitivities? Following After chemo , it is a good idea to cleanse time for cleaning out the body so that it can cope. Chemotherapy Chemo is toxic. For some people these residual effects can last the rest of their lives, while and others slowly get better. But most people feel that’s a small price to pay for having their lives.

Why does pre - cervical cancer keep coming back? Is there anything I can do to stop this?

Pre-cervical Precervical cancer, known as dysplasia, is primarily caused by high-risk HPV. It’s a sexually transmitted disease. In another 20-30 years it may not exist because of the vaccine that women are getting to prevent HPV. For right now, that’s why it’s recommended that women have regular pap smearshaving regular Pap smears is a way of catching it before it becomes cancer. Recommendations vary, some say every year, others say every three years. Right now the FDA has approved the HPV vaccine for young girls, starting at age 12. They’ve also started looking at it for young boys. When a woman does have HPV and dysplasia, it’s generally due to one of the high-risk viruses, and there are four. So even if she already does have dysplasia, it does make sense to get the vaccine to prevent the other three. For women outside the recommended age bracket, still consider the vaccine if your doctor will provide it. The other point of view is that that’s why we have annual pap smears. The progression from dysplasia to cervical cancer is relatively slow, and only a fraction of dysplasia cases progress into cancer. Even severe dysplasia only has a 20-30% chance of becoming cancer, and mild cases only have a 5% chance. Dysplasia can come back if you get a different type of HPV, the original treatment did not get rid of all of the abnormal cells or your immune system is not up to the task.

How can bladder damage from radiation be reduced? Burning, stinging, low bladder capacity and other side effects often occur.

Something that’s being researched now is if a woman gets vitamin C and E during radiation, will that reduce bladder problems? We don’t know. And then we talked about the radiation that comes from different angles. There are some oncologists who are by the book. If there haven’t been a lot of randomized control trials, they aren’t going to try supplements. Other docs say believe the patient should get to make the decision about what supplements go into their body. I would say, when supplementing vitamins C and E to support your body during chemotherapy and reduce side effect severity, take as much as you can without getting diarrhea Bladder damage from radiation comes from the free radicals that form in normal tissue and ultimately result in permanent damage. Much of this bladder damage can be prevented with antioxidants: selenium, Vit E, Vit C, and plant based favonoids, polyphenols, and carotenoids.

How promising is herbal treatment of cervical cancer?

There are oncologists that specialize in integrative treatment. Botanicals used with chemotherapy have been found to reduce multidrug resistance to cancer.

A study on phytotherapy, or using natural plant extracts as a treatment, showed therapeutic effects comparable to western treatments in improving side effects in the bladder and rectum from chemotherapy and radiation. They studied a Chinese blend which included Chinese blend containing cinnamon, astralagus, ginseng, and curcumin . They saw 4-17x fewer side effects than the conventional treatments. So it does improve the outcome better than no treatment at all. Looking at that outcome, that’s pretty impressive. There was less damage to the bladder when the herbs were usedfound that, when combined with traditional chemotherapy, the chemotherapy was more effective and there were significantly fewer side effects compared to those taking a placebo. Seeing a Chinese herbalist alongside your oncologist would definitely be worthwhile. Looking at that outcome, that’s pretty impressive.

To find out about how to manage the side effects of Cervical Cancer Treatment, FoundHealth interviewed an esteemed advisor, Dr. Metzger.

Dr. Metzger

Deborah A. Metzger, PhD, MD, FACOG is a gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist whose major interest is the integrated treatment of women with complex medical problems. She has lectured extensively throughout the world, published widely in peer-reviewed journals and textbooks, and is one of the editors of Chronic Pelvic Pain: An Integrated Approach, the first book on the subject. She is also the Medical Advisor for Stay Fertile Longer.d chemo.

What alternate options do I have at stage 2B cervical cancer if I do not want chemo/radiation treatment?

2B is really hard because it’s right on the boundary between needing to be surgically managed and responding to radiation and chemo. Some 2B is contained within the cervix. Some may be on one side of the cervix, but close enough to the lymph nodes where it’s the higher risk, but it really does down to surgery.

At a very, very early stage that’s very localized, if a woman wants to continue to have children, they can cut out a piece out and leave the uterus intact. When it’s spread to lymph nodes beyond the cervix, it’s a combination of chemo and radiation. There are some non-chemo treatments that are becoming available. There’s high-dose IV vitamin C, and other intravenous treatments. Those are all experimental. Oncologists generally don’t like a woman to be on any other alternative treatment when they’re taking care of her, even though it may improve their responses and decrease chance of complication. Vitamin C and E may reduce risk of complications from radiation. It even helps with chemo. There are a lot of medical articles on this subject. It can make a big difference in side effects, and also in benefits.

We’re at a real frontier right now. There are so many new treatments being developed in that area. Some are antibody based, meaning that can actually shut down the cancer by just giving antibodies, which has less of the risk of chemo. That is the future of cancer therapy. There are couple of people doing experimental work where they take a person’s cancer cells let them grow, inject them into an animal, let the animal grow antibodies, then inject them back into the patient.

Avastin is a relatively new drug prevents cells from making new blood vessels. When a cancer starts to grow, it’s only going to grow if it has a good blood supply. It’s called vascular growth vector, which causes new blood vessels to be forms. If you block that, cancer doesn’t really get big. The hope was that it would make it go away, but it’s currently being used just to prevent tumors from growing.

What treatments exist for nerve damage caused by radiation?

Not much. There is some evidence that hyperbaric oxygen, ACE inhibitors, antioxidants, anticoagulants and acetyl-L-carnitine may have some benefit. Some of these approaches are most effective when they are started immediately after radiation therapy. For some people, given enough time, they might get some of the neurological function back. The problem is the fibrosis, the scarring when the tissue is irradiated enough, the blood vessels go away, it’s just dead tissue that’s being kept alive. But there are radiation techniques that might limit these effects. One is to give radiation from different directions each day so no one tissue gets too high a dose. Radiotherapy to the cervix can be localized by placement of rods of radioactive material into the cervix, then after a period of time they are removed.

For coping, it depends on what nerve is affected. I see some patients with post-chemo brain fog and fatigue and just not feeling well. Their quality of life is not all that great. There are things that can be done, including the nutritional supplements I mentioned earlier, and finding what else is weighing them down. Are they gluten sensitive? Has their body accumulated heavy metals? Are there other food sensitivities? After chemo is a good time for cleaning out the body so that it can cope. Chemo is toxic. For some people these residual effects can last the rest of their lives, and others slowly get better. But most people feel that’s a small price to pay for having their lives.

Why does pre cervical cancer keep coming back? Is there anything I can do to stop this?

Precervical cancer, known as dysplasia, is primarily caused by high-risk HPV. It’s a sexually transmitted disease. In another 20-30 years it may not exist because of the vaccine that women are getting to prevent HPV. For right now, having regular Pap smears is a way of catching it before it becomes cancer. Recommendations vary, some say every year, others say every three years. Dysplasia can come back if you get a different type of HPV, the original treatment did not get rid of all of the abnormal cells or your immune system is not up to the task.

How can bladder damage from radiation be reduced? Burning, stinging, low bladder capacity and other side effects often occur.

Bladder damage from radiation comes from the free radicals that form in normal tissue and ultimately result in permanent damage. Much of this bladder damage can be prevented with antioxidants: selenium, Vit E, Vit C, and plant based favonoids, polyphenols, and carotenoids.

How promising is herbal treatment of cervical cancer?

There are oncologists that specialize in integrative treatment. Botanicals used with chemotherapy have been found to reduce multidrug resistance to cancer.

A study on a Chinese blend containing cinnamon, astralagus, ginseng, and curcumin found that, when combined with traditional chemotherapy, the chemotherapy was more effective and there were significantly fewer side effects compared to those taking a placebo. Seeing a Chinese herbalist alongside your oncologist would definitely be worthwhile. Looking at that outcome, that’s pretty impressive.

To find out about how to achieve hormonal balance before, during, and after Cervical Cancer, FoundHealth interviewed an esteemed advisor, Dr. Metzger.

Dr. Metzger

Deborah A. Metzger, PhD, MD, FACOG is a gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist whose major interest is the integrated treatment of women with complex medical problems. She has lectured extensively throughout the world, published widely in peer-reviewed journals and textbooks, and is one of the editors of Chronic Pelvic Pain: An Integrated Approach, the first book on the subject. She is also the Medical Advisor for Stay Fertile Longer.d chemo.

Does hormonal birth control affect your risk of cervical cancer or pre-cancerous cells? Breast cancer? Fertility?

It turns out that birth control pills deplete B vitamins. Folic acid deficiency is one of the contributors to cervical cancer. If a woman takes a multivitamin, she’s going to be less likely to have cc as a result of birth control pills, because she’s getting enough folic acid.

Birth control pills appear to be relatively neutral in their relationship to breast cancer, with perhaps a slight increase in risk. We’re only now learning about progestin’s effect on breast cancer. Progestin has not been independently studied. The women’s health initiative found that when you added progestin the risk of breast cancer almost doubled, but the estrogen alone was protective. Estrogen has unfortunately been labeled the bad guy when it’s really the synthetic progestin that raises the risk of breast cancer.

There’s a lot that we don’t understand about hormones and cancer. In the history of the treatment of breast cancer, estrogen, progestins, testosterone have all been used in the treatment of breast cancer. High dose estrogen has been used successfully for the treatment of breast cancer. In one study, they looked at women who had failed all other treatments. They put them on high doses of estradiol versus chemotherapy. Estradiol was as effective as chemotherapy in resistant breast cancer.

Birth control pills have no relationship to infertility.

If you’re having treatment for pre-cancer should you stop taking birth control?

No. There’s no reason to stop birth control pills, but there is a good reason to start multivitamins. The risk of birth control has to be weighed with the many benefits. The risk of ovarian cancer is reduced 80% with hormonal birth control. It also decreases the risk of autoimmune diseases, benign breast issues, among others. If you’re concerned about cervical health, supplementing with B vitamins is key.

What dietary supplements can people take to help with early menopause?

The best one by far is actually the birth control pill. There is a birth control pill specifically designed for women in perimenopause, which controls bleeding and mood, and hot flashes. If a woman doesn’t want birth control, she can go on an over the counter progesterone cream. Over the counter progesterone creams are weaker, but they can help with symptoms like PMS and breast tenderness.

Diet can play a huge role in everything, including symptoms of menopause such as depression, mood changes, and low energy. My favorite diet to recommend is a low-glycemic diet. Staying away from the white foods – sugar, flour, rice, corn, bread. All of those things change very quickly in our body to sugar. I routinely hear “wow” all the time from my patients who try a low-glycemic diet. They’re sleeping better, have more energy…they’ll say, “I didn’t realize how fatigued I was.” It really does have a wow factor.

Are there any other dietary or lifestyle changes that can help balance women’s hormones?

There are some herbs. If a woman hasn’t gone through menopause, chasteberry can help make the periods regular. Black cohosh, red leaf clover…Soy can be very helpful with hot flashes. The problems with soy is that it’s a common allergen, and the other problem is that it’s in everything we eat, so usually it’s not necessary to supplement it.
Genistein is a plant estrogen which is a component of soy which can be very useful for bone density, and you can get that as a supplement. Other fundamental supplements that I always recommend for women are a multivitamin, probiotics, calcium, magnesium, Vitamin D. Fish oil also helps so many things

You can maintain hormonal balance by keeping yourself healthy. Somebody can have great hormone levels but their health may be awful, then when they go through menopause their experience will be awful. There are other hormones that can be imbalanced other than the ones we normally think of: DHEA, testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. There’s also cortisone, insulin, growth hormone, thyroid hormone…those are all hormones that usually are not discussed when a woman is going through menopause. You can try manipulating estradiol and progesterone until the cows come home, but until you address the other ones, you are not going to feel hormonally balanced.