#313 What Your OBGYN Isn't Telling You About HPV and Abnormal Pap Smears
23 Apr 2026 · 1 min
Dr. Doni Wilson explains what OB-GYNs often don't tell patients about abnormal Pap smears and HPV, and how to read your results. She describes a holistic approach using nutrition, specific vitamins like vitamin C and folate, medicinal mushrooms, and stress management to help your body clear the virus, rather than just treating lesions.
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The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Doni Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body, but with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Doni Stress Recovery Protocol. On this show, you're gonna hear from doctors, nutritionists, and experts along with Dr. Doni who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is How Humans Heal.
What your OB-GYN hasn't told you about your abnormal Pap smear and HPV results. Hi and welcome, I'm Dr. Doni Wilson, naturopathic doctor and women's health expert, and in this video I'm going to be walking you through everything you need to know about your Pap smear and HPV results and the questions to ask your doctor so that you can make informed decisions about your health going forward. So a lot of times women feel very caught off guard when they get an abnormal Pap smear result. Sometimes they've gone their whole life without an abnormal Pap, and out of nowhere, they're finding out that they're testing positive for HPV, and they feel like, "What is going on? What's happening?" And it can be very scary and very overwhelming, and then you start searching, searching, searching everywhere you can for information. And I'm hoping that that's how you found this video because I want you to have the information that you're probably not getting from your doctor's office. Oftentimes, the doctor's office doesn't call you when you have a normal result, and then when you have an abnormal result, they may only have someone in the office call to tell you that, and, and then you may be left up in the air wondering, "What does this mean? What do I do?" And ultimately, even when you talk to the doctor or the nurse or whoever is helping in the doctor's office, they might not give you all the information, and they might just say, hey, just come back in 6 months or 12 months and we'll recheck it. So that means you have 6 to 12 months to worry and wonder if there's anything you could be doing. And yes, the answer to that question is there are absolutely things that you can be doing to protect yourself, to prevent HPV from causing abnormal cells or worsening abnormal cells. And there are absolutely ways to support your body to clear HPV and get it to go go to negative and stay negative. And I can say this after thousands of cases of helping women to do exactly that using a holistic, natural approach. Now, the important thing to know is that we need to individualize this approach and we need to know where you're starting from. So that's why it's important to understand your test results and then understand what you need to do, how you need to think about this differently so that you can actually achieve the result you're going for, which is negative and normal pap smear, right? So we have to think about this differently. If we simply think about it as, let's just wait and see if it gets worse, then that leaves you vulnerable to it getting worse. And yet, in the standard doctor's office, that's likely what they're going to say. And it's not because they're holding out on you, it's because that's all the information they have. Uh, OB-GYN is trained in procedures, so what they're trained to do is if there are abnormal cells, they can offer a procedure to remove those abnormal cells. They're not trained in nutrition, herbs, nutrients, lifestyle medicine, stress recovery. So those are not in their toolbox, and so that's why they're not offering that information. It's not that there's nothing you can do, it's just that there's nothing in their toolbox, including the surgeries and procedures do not kill the virus, HPV virus. And so there's research showing that many cases, even after a procedure like a LEEP procedure, even after a hysterectomy, women can still test positive for HPV because the procedure itself doesn't remove the virus, and there's currently no medication. Even the vaccine that currently exists is not 100% effective. So many women are dealing with HPV despite what they may have already been doing as precautions, and that's why, number one, it's such a shock when you find out that you're testing positive, But it's also number 2, the reason why so many women are testing positive and then sitting in this wait-and-see plan, which is to me not really a plan, right? Waiting to see if it gets worse or waiting to see if it causes cancer is not really a plan when there's a lot of research and evidence to show that there's a lot we can do to help your body protect you from high-risk HPV virus. So let's come back to that in a second. First of all, I want you to understand the steps to take and what your Pap smear means. So you would open up— ask your doctor's office for your test results, open it up, and you're going to be looking for a few things. We're going to be looking for on the Pap smear result, was it an adequate sample? Was it satisfactory? Did they— were they able to see the cells they need to see on your cervix and inside the opening of your cervix called the endocervical canal? So that's number one. Number 2 is, did they see any abnormal cells? Because that's what we want to know, is if the HPV is present, is it currently causing abnormal cells? And if there are abnormal cells, how severe are they? And I'm going to come back to this. How do you determine the severity of the abnormal cells? And then usually the third thing is, is HPV present and detected? Um, a lot of times you're, you're gonna start with HPV being detected and then look for abnormal cells. But sometimes you're looking for abnormal cells and then look and see, is the HPV positive? Most cases of abnormal cells on the cervix are caused by HPV. More than 90% of abnormal cells on the cervix are caused by high-risk HPV virus. So most times the abnormal cells and the HPV go together. You can, however, have HPV positive without any abnormal cells, and that's a good thing. That means your body's been able to prevent the virus so far from causing abnormal cells. Now our goal becomes we want to have the cells stay negative so this virus is not able to cause abnormal cells, and we want the HPV virus to go to negative and not detected, which means that your body's been able to protect you from it, and your immune system can then develop a memory to protect you going forward, even if you're re-exposed to the virus. Okay, so let's go back to understanding the severity of the Pap smear results. Think about it on a spectrum. You're gonna have either negative, normal cells— it's gonna say negative intraepithelial lesion— or the next step up, it's on the spectrum, is inflammation on the cervix, which is called ASCUS, atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance. After ASCUS comes CIN1, which is considered a low-grade dysplasia, low-grade abnormal cells, and it does not require a surgical procedure to remove those abnormal cells because it's well established that the body and the cervix can heal those abnormal cells that are low-grade. And so if your body can heal it on its own, it doesn't require a procedure. Now, if it crosses over this line into severe dysplasia, CIN 2 or 3, that's when your doctor is likely to start talking about a procedure to remove abnormal cells, whether that's a LEEP procedure, which is, uh, electrolarynx excision, or, uh, conization, or cold knife cone biopsy, where they remove part of the cervix, or they might mention a hysterectomy because The cervix is connected to the uterus, so when they remove the uterus, they also remove the whole cervix. Again, important thing to know is any of these procedures doesn't remove the virus, so the virus can then still cause abnormal cells in the vagina. So we're going to want to address the severely abnormal cells, and we're going to want to address the virus. And that's something you're not going to hear about at your doctor's office. So let's see. So there is also more severe abnormal cells such as carcinoma in situ, and if it turns into carcinoma, in which case you're going to want to talk to an oncologist, a gynecologist who specializes in cancer, to understand how you're going to address those cancer cells. So you're going to want to address the abnormal cells again, and then we're going to still address the HPV virus because even after cancer treatment, the HPV virus can remain. So, is that making sense? So we want to know, are there abnormal cells? Are they mildly abnormal, in which case we can help your body to heal and eliminate them? Are they severely abnormal, in which case you're going to need to consider whether you need a procedure to remove them, whether that's with your gynecologist or a gynecological oncologist, and or a naturopathic doctor. So as a naturopathic doctor, I'm trained to offer a procedure called escharotics. And escharotics is using, uh, natural substances, uh, enzymes, herbs, nutrients to slough off the abnormal cells. Escharotics can be used safely and effectively for CIN2 and CIN3. It's not used for more advanced forms of abnormal cells. So if your results come back as CIN2 or 3, on a Pap smear, then likely your doctor is gonna recommend a colposcopy, which is a biopsy, so that they can get a closer look at those abnormal cells. And a colposcopy is considered to be the most accurate way to identify abnormal cells. So the— you would do a Pap smear. If there's abnormal cells, they do a colposcopy to accurately assess those abnormal cells. If it's CIN 2 or 3, you can then decide to follow the procedure that your doctor recommends, or you can contact my office if you're interested in finding out if you're a good candidate for escharotics as a possible way to remove those abnormal cells. Ladies, high-risk HPV virus doesn't have to control your life. I'm Dr. Doni Wilson, and I've been at the forefront of women's health for over 20 years. I've helped thousands of women to clear HPV naturally with my proven protocol. And this isn't about just managing the virus, it's about eliminating it for good. Join my workshop and take control of your health and your body with an expert guide by your side. Click the button below. And either way, whether you do a LEAP or a surgery or Escharotics, I really highly encourage you to not stop there, to then follow my HPV protocol to help your body to eliminate the HPV, get it to negative so that it's not able to cause a recurrence. Because I also hear from so many women, hundreds of women every year, who had a procedure and then ended up with HPV still causing abnormal cells. I also hear from hundreds of women who've been dealing with this for decades. So women who maybe even in their 20s or 30s started testing positive for HPV, and they've had LEEP procedures, multiple LEEP procedures, conization, even hysterectomies, and still they're dealing with HPV and abnormal cells. And this, this does not have to be the case. There are so many ways we can help your body to protect you from HPV, and I know you're not going to hear this in the standard doctor's office, so it sounds like I'm saying something that's totally off the wall, but I want you to know that it's not, that this is well established in the research. There's research for all kinds of different natural substances, including vitamin C, vitamin A, as well as folate and green tea and curcumin and mushrooms. There's actually such a long list of natural approaches to help with HPV that it can be quite overwhelming when you start looking for yourself. So maybe some of you have been researching and you come up with a long list of things that you might consider using to help yourself, and maybe you've already started taking certain supplements and, and even have found somewhere maybe some vaginal suppositories. And my concern there is that very often when women come to meet with me, they might have a list of things they're taking, but it's Usually not. I would say every single person that I review what they're taking is not at clinically effective doses, and, and so the likelihood of it working is quite low. Now, that's not to say that it's not going to work. There are times when sometimes the simplest changes is enough and you're able to get the HPV to negative, and that's wonderful. It's just that I want you to know that to not give up if you've been trying, if you started taking a few supplements and and you started, you know, taking things that you found online, and yet the HPV is not going away yet, I don't want you to give up because oftentimes that's— you may not be taking effective doses, and that's where I can come in and help you. I can review what you're currently taking in terms of supplements and help guide you to get to high-quality products at clinically effective doses. And not even that, we're not going to stop there. We're gonna dig deeper and we're gonna say, what is it that's making your body susceptible to HPV? And that's the key question that the doctor's office isn't gonna tell you. They're not gonna say to you that HPV could be related to your stress exposure. They're not gonna tell you that HPV could be related to your gut health and your digestive health. They're not gonna tell you that there's a connection between an imbalance in the microbiome in the gut and an imbalance in the microbiome in the vagina, and that, that imbalance of the microbiome can make you susceptible to HPV. And they're also not likely to tell you that after menopause, when estrogen levels decrease, that it increases the risk of testing positive for HPV because the low estrogen vaginally increases susceptibility to infections like HPV. So there's a lot of susceptibilities that we need to look for in your individual case, and I can guide you to do the right tests to get that information. We can sometimes get that information from a regular blood test that may even be covered by your insurance. It's just that your doctor's office might not be ordering it, or they might not be telling you that it's related to the HPV because they may not know that, but the research exists. And I can tell you from my clinical experience that I can identify nutrient deficiencies, blood sugar issues, hormone imbalances, toxin exposures, gut health issues, microbiome imbalances. These are things that— tests exist to help us identify. I can then help get you access to the right tests so that you can get the right information so that you can give your body what it really needs to protect you. There's no reason for you to have to go through day after day and procedure after procedure in fear of HPV and cancer when I can help you get access to the right tests, to the right information, to the right supplements at the right doses, and even the vaginal suppositories that have been shown to be effective to help protect you from HPV. So I know that you've been told probably that there's nothing you can do and that you're just gonna have to deal with this and you're just gonna have to wait and see if cancer develops. And I'm here telling you a completely different perspective. And I encourage you to just sit with that, journal, take some notes, see what this brings up for you, and really consider reaching out to me and my office for help because that's what we're here to do. We love helping women to get the information you need to understand your results, to understand your options. And so when you can go back into your doctor's office, you can ask them what is it that they recommend for you. Not that you're necessarily going to choose that right now, but you want to know what are they going to recommend for you, when do they recommend retesting, and when, at what point would they recommend that you do a procedure. Because this way you have the information you need to be able to take steps. If your doctor says, I want to recheck in 6 months, then you know you have 6 months to implement diet changes, lifestyle changes, stress recovery, as well as the right supplements and doses and vaginal suppositories and healing for your whole body. You've got 6 months, let's get to it, because there's a high likelihood that you're going to be able to heal your cervix and clear the HPV by that time. And so Ask your doctor questions about what they recommend and when they want to retest, and then that gives you your timeline for when you can implement. And then I encourage you to sit down and say, what do I want to do between now and my next test? Am I going to do nothing? Am I going to just do the same thing as before, in which case there's a low likelihood that it's gonna— the HPV is going to go away? Are you going to take some minimal steps like some diet changes and better sleep and better stress recovery? Are you going to come to one of my free 5-day workshops so you can learn more and I can help you create a plan of action and help you understand your body and your risk factors better? Are you going to join my 30-day Kickstart program where I teach you specific diet changes and the most important supplements to start taking to help you clear HPV? Or are you going to join my 12-week Say Goodbye to HPV online program with the community of women and live sessions with me where you can ask questions and you can get the tests that you need and you can get help to implement in an effective way? Or maybe you want to work with me one-on-one and we can work together over the next 6 months and I can give you exactly the doses and give you access to exactly the tests you need so that not only are you helping to heal your vagina, and your cervix and to clear HPV, but you're also helping to improve your whole health. Because what I find is that when we start really looking and asking the right questions, that we figure out that the HPV is just one of the things that's showing up telling you that your body needs attention. Very likely there's other things going on in your whole health, mind, body, spirit. That are needing attention, and it just happens to be the HPV and abnormal Pap smear that's really pointing it out to you. And so this could be your opportunity to change the way that you're relating to yourself and your body, to help yourself heal from anxiety, depression, migraine, sleep issues, hormone imbalances, even gut issues, sleep, skin issues, and even supporting your fertility by going through the process of helping your vagina heal and to fend off HPV, all of a sudden you walk away feeling so much better and so much more empowered about your whole health and your future. So if you'd like to learn more, I encourage you to check out the links down below. And to definitely, if you're new here, I welcome you to subscribe to How Humans Heal so you can watch my next video. I look forward to connecting with you very soon.
Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdoni.com.
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