#324 The Gut-HPV Connection: Why Healing Your Gut May Be the Key to Clearing HPV

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 does your gut health have to do with why you're testing positive for high-risk HPV virus? I know it may seem completely unrelated, but stay with me because I'm not just saying this, it's actually true. From a naturopathic doctor's perspective, all health starts in the gut, and from that premise alone, I always I take my patients' gut health into consideration right from the beginning. And it's not even just a principle. It's based on research and clinical experience. You see, over the past 26 years, I've been helping thousands of patients, including thousands of women with abnormal Pap smears and high-risk HPV virus, and in the process, I've looked for any and all possible reasons why Some women continue to test positive for HPV and others don't. And it's not just about exposure to the virus because if that was the case, then a lot more— we're talking millions more people— would be testing positive for HPV virus. So it's not just about exposure, it's about susceptibility and why one person's body isn't protecting them from HPV while other people's bodies are protecting them. And when you realize that 70 to 80% of our immune system comes from our digestive system, from our gut. That starts to bring relevance to your gut health and when it comes to having an immune system that can fend off HPV virus. Even though the HPV virus may be existing in the vaginal area or other areas of your body, your immune system is coming from your gut. And that's what connects your gut to the area of your body where the HPV is existing. Then when you take into account that stress of all types, from emotional stress and physical stress to exposure to toxins, caffeine, and even gluten exposure, all cause damage to the intestinal lining, leading to what is referred to as leaky gut. And inflammation and inflammatory responses to the foods that you're eating. And that inflammation can then spread everywhere in your body, including the vagina, if that's where you're dealing with HPV, such as an abnormal Pap smear. So you'll see why gut health issues are so common and so often missed. It's not something that's going to get identified. Leaky gut, at least, is not going to get identified in the gastroenterologist's dentist's office, and it's definitely not going to get identified in the OB-GYN's office because they don't have the testing. They're not doing the testing to identify leaky gut or imbalanced gut bacteria, for that matter. So how would you know if you have leaky gut? How would you know if your gut microbiome is out of balance? It's not going to happen in the standard medical approach. And so you have to start thinking outside of that system and outside of that box and work with practitioners who actually understand the gut, leaky gut, the gut microbiome, and the connection between other health issues, including HPV. So from my perspective, one of the first signs that a person might have leaky gut is testing positive for HPV. Because I so often see a correlation between someone who is testing positive for HPV and testing positive for leaky gut. And I'm seeing that correlation time and time again clinically, so much so that I'm starting to say that if you're testing positive for HPV, and certainly if you've been testing positive for HPV for several years, that's a sign already that we need to be paying attention to your gut. Both your intestinal cells and your gut microbiome. And that's exactly why, for my patients and my program participants, I recommend doing a food sensitivity panel first thing. And that's for a couple reasons. One is a food sensitivity panel is the best way to identify leaky gut. And not only do we end up identifying leaky gut, but we also identify which foods are you eating that are triggering inflammation? Because if you're eating foods every day that are— you're not even likely benefiting from the food or the nutrients. You're just ending up getting an inflammatory response, and that inflammatory response is disrupting your immune system and this and even causing inflammation in your vagina that's making you more susceptible to HPV. So by doing a food sensitivity panel, we can clearly see what's going on and then we can take precise action. While, yes, you can just think, "OK, likely you have some degree of leaky gut." Leaky gut is either mild, moderate, or severe. If you haven't done anything to help heal leaky gut— most humans do have some degree of leaky gut— and you could decide, "OK, I'm just going to start avoiding gluten and work on my stress levels and stress recovery," and that can get you somewhere. It's at least a start. However, what I see is if, if you are generally kind of, sort of avoiding gluten and maybe dairy, the two most likely food sensitivities, you're going to make some progress, but it might not be enough to clear HPV. And the cases where women do the food sensitivity panel that I recommend, which I'll put the link down below, and it's a finger poke test you can do from home and mail in, and it tests for over 100 different foods. Most common foods that you're eating. And when we test positive for a food we're eating, some people think, "Oh, there's a problem with the test." It's not that there's a problem with the test, it's that there's a problem with your intestinal lining. So if you think of your intestines as a tube that goes— starts in your mouth and goes all the way down and through, and in the small intestine, the intestinal wall is just one cell thick. And that's called intestinal lining. And those cells have such an important job to make sure our food is digested down to glucose and amino acids and fatty acids and nutrients, and then only allowing the digested nutrients to get through the cells to get into your body. And so what happens with this exposure to stress and gluten and pesticides and so on is that those cells are not as healthy as they should be. They should be growing back every week, new cells. But if we're constantly bombarding them, they become depleted. And now— and then also when we're under so much stress, we don't digest our food very well. So now the food is not well digested and there's spaces between the cells so the food can get through undigested. That's what's leaking. It's leaking through the cells into the space underneath the cells. And in that space underneath the cells, that's where the immune system is hanging out to protect you. To, from any kind of foreign substance getting through. And so then your immune system starts creating antibodies and histamine and other types of reactions to your food, even if it's healthy food. So it could be causing reactions to gluten and dairy, which often, if you think about it, many of us have gluten and dairy almost every meal. So of course, whatever is leaking through frequently, the immune system is going to start to protect us from. If you're eating eggs every day, sometimes then you start reacting to eggs. Sometimes, if you're having almonds or bananas or whatever you're eating regularly, could leak through and start triggering your immune system. But it's not a solution to stop eating, and it's not a solution, I don't think, to restrict your diet for long periods of time and guess what you're reacting to. To me, I see much more accurate information by doing a single finger poke blood test and we can run it through a machine that shows us exactly which foods your immune system is trying to protect you from. And we can look at different assessments for what's called the gut barrier, this intestinal lining. There's signs— we can look for zonulin levels, we can look for inflammation, we can look for secretory IgA levels, we can look at different levels that help us understand, is the gut lining leaky? I find that if you're reacting to foods you eat often, that alone is a sign that you have leaky gut. And if you're reacting to a lot of different foods, that's severe leaky gut. And so then we need to start action— taking action to not remove all your food. We don't want you to restrict that much. We want to remove the most reactive foods, the most inflammatory foods, and then we need to introduce in support for you to digest your food and nutrients and herbs that can help your body regrow a healthy intestinal lining. And this can It can happen over several months. You can regrow your intestinal lining. I see people do it all the time. And then you have much more awareness on how to prevent it going forward. Meanwhile, in terms of the gut microbiome, we know that there's microbiome all over our body, including in our mouth and our intestines and, and in our vagina and everywhere. And as microbiome also get disrupted by stress and toxins and medications, and so we need to be in hormone changes, and so If your, your gut microbiome has been disrupted, which again, if you've been under stress, you've been eating gluten, if you've had to take antibiotics, if you're getting bloating, if you're getting bowel changes, constipation or diarrhea, then likely there is some imbalance. If you've had vaginal yeast or BV and HPV, you probably have also an imbalance in the vaginal microbiome. And especially if you have low estrogen levels postmenopausally. So then we start to go, "Okay, we need to look closer to see, is there a microbiome imbalance?" And what I recommend in that case is to do a stool analysis, which is not just a culture. A couple decades ago, we only had stool cultures. Now we can do a PCR analysis of the gut microbiome, which is a much more highly sensitive way to assess who's living in your gut, right? We want to know how much of the good guys and how much of the not-so-good guys are there, and how— is there inflammation, and how well are you digesting your food? And we can get so much more information from a stool panel now. And there's a lot of different stool panels out there, but the specific panel that I use is from a company called Diagnostic Solutions, a GI Map, because I see the most accurate information and I've seen the most amazing clinical turnarounds using that panel over for— since it's existed. And so I recommend if you think there may be an issue with your gut microbiome or you want to know, then you would run and want to do a GI Map panel and you want to work with a practitioner who's done thousands of these and who knows what the results mean and how to help you get your gut microbiome back on track again. I can't tell you how many patients I see who've been to other practitioners who maybe did a different panel or even did the GI MAP panel but then didn't give them an effective protocol to heal. And so, uh, that's where I feel like if you really want to get better faster, I would recommend reaching out to my office so that I can help you, or some one of the practitioners who I've trained, so I can give you much more confidence that you're going to get the right healing protocol and get better faster, more efficiently, right? That's the whole goal. We don't want you to have to be spinning your circles for any longer. We want you to have the most accurate information and the most precise plan with a strategy you can follow and support so you can actually heal faster. And so that's what we do through my office. And if we want to know about your vaginal microbiome, we can do a vaginal PCR analysis to find out about the vaginal microbiome and see, are there overgrowing bacteria or imbalance of bacteria or yeast? And then I can guide you to address them, not with antibiotics, with natural substances that can help to reestablish a healthy microbiome. And it's really important because, first of all, you, you need to heal leaky gut in order to have— be able to have an environment where the gut microbiome can maintain in a healthy state. If there's leaky gut, it's very hard for the gut microbiome to stabilize. So we have to do both at the same time. We have to heal, start working on healing leaky gut, and then address any imbalance in the gut microbiome so that then the gut microbiome has a healthy home to survive in and thrive in and support you going forward. And the gut microbiome has a huge influence on your immune system. So once you get the right microbiome working for you, it's helping your immune system in your intestines, and it's helping your immune system throughout your body. And when you have a healthy microbiome vaginally, that's also protecting you vaginally. And so by the time you do this important gut healing work, it's so much easier for your body to clear high-risk HPV vaginally. Ladies, high-risk HPV virus doesn't have to control your life. I'm Dr. Doni Wilson Wilson, and I've 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 I understand this might be like the first time you're hearing this and and you're like, what the heck, how come nobody told me this? And is this actually the case? There are some studies now that exist that are starting— definitely there are studies on the gut microbiome connected to the vaginal microbiome. That's definitely well established that the gut microbiome influences the vaginal microbiome. And there's starting to be research on leaky gut, what's called intestinal permeability, and how it makes us susceptible to all different health issues from infections anywhere in the body, including vaginal infections. And so you can look to the clinical evidence and you can— the research evidence, and you can look to clinical evidence. And I can tell you that as I guide women to heal their gut by finding out which foods are they're highly sensitive to and guiding them with my Leaky Gut Protocol, they actually become able to not only clear HPV but to heal their cervix if they have abnormal cells and to prevent this HPV from coming back again because they might be re-exposed from their partner or from a new partner. And so they worry that that's just going to come back again. And the key to making sure it doesn't come back again is we have to get to these underlying susceptibilities. And the gut health is one of the most significant susceptibilities that I find is important to address, that as well as stress because, as I mentioned, the stress is what disrupts our gut. So we need to be not just trying to eliminate all your stress. I mean, stress is going to be there. That's part of our human experience. We need to help you recover from the stress. And so to do that, I guide you to do a test to check your cortisol levels at different times of day, adrenaline levels, as well as neurotransmitter levels. And lo and behold, Cortisol, when it's too high or too low, disrupts the gut and the gut function, makes you susceptible to leaky gut and imbalanced bacteria. And what's mainly produced in the gut is our neurotransmitters like serotonin and GABA. So if we have a disrupted gut microbiome, likely we're going to have depleted neurotransmitters, let alone depleted nutrients like vitamin D and iron. And so it becomes this whole interrelated perfect storm, so to speak, where all of these things end up causing each other. The stress causes the leaky gut and the microbiome imbalance, and then that causes nutrient deficiencies and neurotransmitter deficiencies, and then that makes you more susceptible to stress. And it becomes this vicious cycle, like it snowballs. And next thing you know, you're like, how come I have HPV? Well, if we can step back and we can see and ask the right questions. Have you been exposed to a lot of stress, especially over a long period of time, or maybe your whole lifetime? And have you been exposed to antibiotics or other medications that can disrupt your gut and your gut microbiome? And have you been eating gluten and foods that are not organic? And you start to see, like, wow, what we're eating is actually influencing our health so much, including your susceptibility to HPV. And I know if you first start hearing this, you start to go, oh my gosh, this can seem like, first of all, like mind-blowing, right? Because you're like, this makes so much sense. And for some of you, it might feel overwhelming because HPV has already got you to your max on your worry level. So what I want to— I'm hoping when you hear this from me that you hear it from the perspective of Okay, this means you can do something about this. This puts the power back in your hands. We can heal leaky gut. We can rebalance your gut microbiome. We can rebalance your vaginal microbiome. I see women every year, time, time after time, case after case. We reestablish a healthy vaginal microbiome, and then the HPV clears and they feel better, and then they don't need to be meeting with me all the time because they know what they need to do to maintain that. And I feel like that's what healthcare should look like. And I know that that's not what maybe you're experiencing in standard healthcare. It's certainly— while the research and evidence is there, it's not been integrated into the standard of care yet. And so, yes, it means you're likely going to need to step— find a way to step outside of what a lot of people are doing and what a lot of practitioners are saying and decide for yourself that you're going to take your health into your own hands and you're going to invest in some of these tests that can actually change your life, right? To do a finger poke food panel that you can do from home, a cortisol and neurotransmitter panel that you can do from home, and you actually get the information you need and then you get the guidance because I have all of my protocols in my books, including the Master Stress Reset Your Health book, and in video modules that you can access through my website. You've had enough of dealing with this, then I encourage you to, to look into more of the options that I have available for you. And I'll put links down below to drdoni.com as well as my Say Goodbye to HPV, which is a group online program where you get access to me in a group of women who are working on the same thing, and you get all access to these tests that I mentioned, as well as how to heal leaky gut and how to rebalance your microbiome and how to rebalance your vaginal health and how to clear HPV. That's all part of the Say Goodbye to HPV program, and you can also access information about meeting with me one-on-one virtually from wherever you are in the world to help guide you through this, because I know how hard it is to get help, especially how hard it is to get help to effectively clear HPV once and for all. And if this is something you've been dealing with for a long time, or even if this is something you just found out about, why not change it now? Why deal with it any longer? Might as well get started. And to me, when you, when you talk to me or you meet with me, you're going to see that right away I start talking about, "How is your digestion? How is your gut health? What have you done so far to assess your gut health and look at your diet?" And then I can step in and guide you from there. What do we, what tests do we need to do to get this information so that we can see really what's going on with your gut health? It's not what we're going to see with an endoscopy or colonoscopy. We can't see leaky gut that way. We need to do it with these tests that actually give us information that we— that help us take action to actually help you heal and get your health back. So I speak also from having done these tests on myself and what a difference they've made for my health over the years, let alone what I see them doing for women in my practice day after day. Year after year. So I'm so glad you found me here. I'm so glad you're listening in. And please reach out if I can help you more. I'd love to hear any of your questions down below about the connection between the gut health and HPV. And if you're new, I welcome you to subscribe and join me for the next episode of How Humans Heal. I'll talk to you soon.

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