6 Myths About HPV That Are Keeping You Stuck (And What to Do Instead)

A 2026 YouTube monologue by Dr. Donni(e) Wilson (naturopathic doctor and midwife) that debunks six common myths about high‑risk HPV and abnormal Pap results. Dr. Wilson emphasizes that HPV is common (cites that ~80% will test positive by age 50), challenges stigma and blame, argues that high‑risk HPV can be cleared by supporting immune function through diet, nutrients, microbiome, hormones and lifestyle, and urges active, preventive steps rather than passive 'wait and see.' She cites that ~90% of people clear HPV within two years, references 14 high‑risk HPV types, describes an eight‑factor susceptibility model (referenced but not enumerated here), and promotes her free workshop, paid programs (Say Goodbye to HPV) and practitioner training.
Questions this video answers
Over 25 years.
80% will test positive by age 50.
14 types of high‑risk HPV.
90% of people will clear the virus within two years.
By age 50.
Chapters
Have you gotten an abnormal Pap smear result and testing positive for high risk HPV virus? And you're searching online and you're getting very confused because there's so much information and misinformation and conflicting information that it ends up just spiraling into a state of paralysis of not knowing what to do. Well, if that's the case, then you're in the right place because I'm going to be breaking six of the most common myths and misconceptions that I see about high risk HPV and abnormal Pap smear results for women so that we can set the record straight and you can get to helping your body to heal. I'm Dr. Donni Wilson. I'm a women's health expert, a naturopathic doctor and midwife, and I've been practicing and helping women with abnormal Pap smears for over 25 years. So that means I've helped thousands of women in this situation. And I want you to know that because I want you to know that a lot of times when you're looking for information out on the Internet or in ChatGPT or wherever you're searching, you may or may not be getting information from someone who has this much experience actually helping women to reverse an abnormal Pap smear and get rid of HPV once and for all. So I just encourage you, whenever you're out there searching for information, first ask yourself, who is this that's sharing this information? What is their training and background and experience before you then go ahead and take on and move forward with the information that they're giving you? And that's also true, I have to say, about most conventional medical practitioners, whether that's a gynecologist or even sometimes other naturopathic doctors and midwives, they might not have all of the extensive information that I have. And so this is what really upsets me and breaks my heart, is that so often women are getting the wrong information, even from their healthcare providers. And so please know that if you're talking to a healthcare provider, if they're training is in how to use surgery or medications to treat health issues, they probably don't have training in how to use diet, nutrients, herbs and natural approaches with your lifestyle in order to help you heal, that's probably not part of their training. And if it's not part of their training, they're not going to know that this could make a difference. And so I just want you to have the information so that you can make an informed decision for yourself and your health and your Future. I work with women every day, every week we see women coming, turning it abnormal, Pap smear and high risk HPV to negative. And it's changing their lives. And I wouldn't want you to miss out on that or to have things progress when you could have taken action sooner. So I'm glad you found me. And let's dig in to these six common myths and misconceptions. Now the first one that I find is so pervasive from women around the world still, and it's actually hard for me to believe that this is still a concept out there, but still, women are led to believe that high risk HPV virus is because of having multiple sexual partners. And while, yes, if you have more sexual partners, it increases the likelihood of exposure to high risk hpv. That makes sense based on exposure risk. But what I can tell you is all the time I hear from women who've only had one or two sexual partners and they are dealing with high risk HPV virus and an abnormal pap smear. So what I've observed, and this is again from thousands of cases for over 25 years as a women's health expert, is that it's not just about having multiple sexual partners. And I say that because, I mean, you yourself know how many sexual partners you've had and you, you, many women will say to me, but wait a minute, how come I've been, let's say, in the same relationship for 30 years and now dealing with this. And so I want you to know that that's absolutely more common than we realize. You have to keep in mind that high risk HPV virus is a quite a common virus. Actually, 80% of us will test positive by age 50. So if 80% of us are testing positive for this virus and then it's much more common than we realize and it doesn't require numerous sexual partners in order to be exposed. And so I want you to be gentle with yourself because a lot of times women will feel embarrassed because of this. They feel like if they talk about having HPV that people are going to assume that they had multiple sexual partners. And we need to stop making that assumption because it's simply not the case. Also, women feel like they are concerned about if, if, you know, if their partner has had other sexual partners. And so we can easily get into this spiral of, of fear and anxiety and resentment and all that gets caught up in the questions about how did I get exposed to high risk HPV virus? Now I wish, I mean, in some ways, if the test would tell you where and when exactly you got exposed. But even then, honestly, even if you knew exactly where you got this virus and when, it wouldn't change the fact that you currently have the virus. And so I want you to just be present with yourself and have a lot of compassion for yourself. You are a human. Humans have sex, that's something humans do. And humans get exposed to high risk HPV virus. It's a very common virus. And so it's not about anything that you should feel ashamed about or embarrassed about. This is something that we get exposed to. And I'm hoping to break that stigma and say, hey, this is also not just something that women deal with, this is something that men also deal with. So, and it's a virus. There's 14 types of high risk HPV virus that have been associated with cancer risk and it's cancer risk for both men and women. Luckily, women are more often screened and so find out that they have it sooner than men do. Sometimes men don't find out they have high risk HPV until they end up getting cancer. And so my hope is that by knowing you are testing positive, instead of getting caught up in the how did this happen and what people might think about you, let's instead put our focus in how to help you protect yourself from this virus, because that's absolutely possible. Now this leads me to the second very common misconception, which is that women are told all the time that it's not possible for HPV to go away. They will sit sometimes, practitioners will say, it will never go away. You're going to have it for the rest of your life and you're just going to have to deal with it. And I don't know if one of you has heard that from your practitioner. I would want to just tell you that from my experience, that is not the case. It's simply misinformation and ignorance. Because if your practitioner would read the research, they would see that even their researchers talk about how the human immune system can clear HBV2 negative. That means the human immune system can get rid of high risk HPV and it doesn't go to dormancy or hang out. It can actually be gone and stay gone. And so if you're hearing that it's never going to go away, please know that the person who's saying that simply hasn't tried is all that I can figure. Because as soon as I started thinking about how to help the human body clear the virus and supporting your body to do that, I started seeing this virus clear to Negative over and over. We see cases all the time clear to negative and stay negative years, years, years into the future. So I just want you to know that if you've been thinking, oh, it's never going to go away and therefore, what's the point of trying, then I want to, to say, wait a minute, let's rethink that. Actually, it can go away. And therefore there is a reason for you to try to support your health. There is a reason for you to invest in your health, prioritize your health, take steps each and every day to, to pay attention to this and take this instead of this is never going to go away. I would change it to let me understand the message that HPV is bringing to you because ultimately that's what's happening here. The fact that HPV is testing positive is a message from your body, a message from the virus, even as a messenger to say to you, there's a reason why HPV is here and it's not just because you were exposed to the virus. There's something in your body that's causing you to be susceptible. And that's where we need to start paying, putting our attention and paying attention. Why is it that your body's not clearing it? Because the research shows that 90% of people will clear the virus within two years of testing positive. So if 90% of people who are exposed to HPV and test positive for HPV, 90% clear it's a negative within two years. And if you're still testing positive after two years, there's a reason. Right? We need to start asking why? Instead of asking why did you get exposed? We need to start asking why is your body not clearing it? And that's where we go into what I call the eight most common susceptibilities to high risk hpv. And when we systematically address each of those eight susceptibilities, that's when I see women completely clearing the virus and preventing it from coming back again. And I can tell you more about those eight susceptibilities in other videos and definitely if you come to to my how to get Rid of HPV free online workshop, I'll teach you all about those susceptibilities and how you can address them for yourself. I'll put the link down below so you can join me. So the next myth and the misconception that I want to break is that it's the virus is passed back and forth between partners. A lot of people think this and a lot of people have been told this that, you know, even if you were to take action to clear the virus, but then maybe you have sex with the same partner, or a different partner, for that matter, and you get exposed again, isn't it going to just come right back again? And what's the point, right? We keep getting to this, like, let's give up and let's give in, and we can't do anything about it. And I'm, like, thinking, why would we take that approach? Why would we just give up to a virus that can cause cancer? And there's women dying of cervical cancer every day around the world. Why would. Why would that be the life story that you want to go down when. No, there's some other truth that I'm observing that, in fact, I help women who are still sexually active with the same partner, and they don't test positive for hpv. There's actually studies that show that having sex doesn't influence the likelihood of, you know, continuing to have sex with the same partner, doesn't de. Doesn't increase your risk or doesn't decrease your risk, your ability to clear the virus. So, and that's what I see in my practice as well, when women who are married and they're still sexually active with the same partner who isn't doing. May not be doing anything to clear the virus. So theoretically, their partner still has HPV present, and these women are still exposed to the virus, but now their body can protect them because they're following my Dr. Dahani's HPV protocol to support their immune system and to help build up their own inner defense mechanisms, their microbiome, their hormones, their nutrients, and so on. And so when women realize that they can build up their fortress, they can build up their defense, inner defenses, and they can fend off HPV even if they were exposed again, even if it's a different partner. Say you're dating and you're dating someone new, and you don't know if they have hpv and you might get exposed again. And you don't want to just live in fear of this virus. Right? Like, a lot of women end up feeling like, oh, my gosh, now I can't date, and I'm. I'm never going to have sex. And I don't. I don't want to be intimate because I'm afraid this is going to happen again. And what I'm here to tell you is that I've helped so many women in this situation to gain their confidence, to feel empowered, to know that their body can protect them, that they can take steps each and every day. And this does not have to be hard or complicated, but simple things that you can do to take care of yourself and your body and your microbiome so that it won't matter. You can have sex with, with confidence that you're not going to get HPV again. You can have be dating without fear also of giving it to your partner. A lot of women fear that they're going to give it to their partner. But here's the thing. When you clear HPV to negative, you're not going to be able to give it to your partner. That's the beauty of aiming for negative HPV result. So that's what we do in my protocol. We aim for negative and not detected because that means that the virus cannot cause cancer for you and cannot be passed to your partner. And that's the goal, right? Imagine the freedom of being able to be intimate without fear of cancer or giving it to your partner. And that's exactly what we do in my say Goodbye to HPV program. And when I work one on one with women from around the world to help them to learn what was their body trying to tell them all along? To protect them from HPV so they don't have to stop being intimate and they don't have to fear giving it to someone else. If you've recently received an abnormal Pap smear result or told that you test positive for high risk HPV virus, I'm here to empower you. Your body is powerful and it's designed to heal, even from HPV. Hi, I'm Dr. Donni and I've spent years helping women to tap into their natural healing potential. The say Goodbye to HPV program provides you with a personalized natural approach to support your immune system and clear hpv. This is about giving your body the boost it needs to do what it's made to do. Join the thousands of women who've taken this journey with me and start your own path to healing. So this leads to the next very common misconception is when you go to the doctor's office and let's say you test positive for high risk HPV and maybe mildly or low grade abnormal cells. And the doctor might say to you, well, let's just wait and see. Okay, so what are you going to wait and see to? 4, right? What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for, maybe it's going to be better. Maybe you're in the 90% where your body's going to clear it naturally, right? So you could be waiting to see, are you in the 90%? And you could be waiting to see are you in the 10% where it doesn't clear and it could get worse. Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to just wait for that. That feels like a real gambler. Talk about gambling with really not great odds. You're going to be gambling to see if it gets better or if it goes to cancer. I mean, to me, if I. If someone said to me, okay, you have two options here. You can either just wait around and do nothing and see. Maybe it's going to go away, or maybe it's going to turn into cancer in the next six months to 12 months. I would be like, no, thank you. I would rather take option C, which is to follow the Dr. Donnie's HPV protocol, and take action to make sure you're in the 90%, right? How about you get an insurance policy and you start taking care of yourself and your body and figure out what has it been trying to tell you so that you can make sure it doesn't turn into cancer? And this is when you're taking your health into your own hands. You put yourself behind the driver's seat instead of letting the virus decide and let. Instead of months of fear and anxiety and sleeplessness and. And dread of the next doctor's appointment. Instead of that, what if we actually give you a strategic protocol to follow so that when you go back to your next doctor's appointment, you know that you've been taking action. You go in with confidence and you say, okay, I want to know what my pap smear says because I've been working hard. And then you end up getting the results, and you see that it's negative, and you're like, yes, I did it. I actually helped my body protect me from hpv. That's what I'd rather do. And the women who follow my protocol, that's what they think, too. So I just want you to know that it's not just an either or. It's not just a wait to see if it gets better or worse. It's why don't you decide to take it into the reins, into your own hands and make sure it doesn't get worse. And that's what we do in my office and in with my protocol, which I help women from around the world to do this. You don't have to be in person to benefit from this. So the other thing, the other myth I want you to know about is a lot of times women tell me that their doctors told them that diet has nothing to do with HPV and abnormal cells on the cervix. And I'm just floored by this one, too, because I'm a naturopathic doctor, a clinical nutritionist. So I've been learning about nutrition since the 90s and using it to help people heal their bodies. Because I see that our food can be our medicine if we choose to eat the foods that are going to help us heal and avoid the foods that are going to work against us. But you have to remember that most practitioners don't learn nutrition in their training. Most doctors have very little education about diet and nutrition. So of course they're going to say that diet doesn't make a difference because they weren't trained about how to use diet to make a difference. In my world, diet makes all the difference. I mean, if you think about it, our diet is where our nutrients come from. That's how we get the nutrients into our bodies. And our nutrients is what creates our immune system and our healthy cells and feeds our healthy microbiome. So our food has everything to do with whether we're testing positive for HPV or not. And so a lot of where I begin with women is teaching them from the beginning, how are you feeding yourself? And how can we start to make small, incremental changes in the way you're feeding yourself so that we can actually make a difference in how your body is functioning and protecting you? And this does not have to be really overwhelming or you're not going to be starving yourself. You're not going to be restricting, you're not going to be eating boring things. You're going to be eating really yummy, healthy foods. It's just going to be where you actually have the right knowledge and training and understanding of how to eat in a healthy way. We didn't learn this. This is not what we learned from elementary school. And certainly even when I trained to be a Nutritionist in the 90s, they were trying to teach the wrong information. Luckily, I figured it out right away and I was like, that's not going to work. And that's when I went to nature bathing medical school and I learned what actually works with diet and nutrition so that I can guide you. You don't want to try to figure this out on your own because there's way too many conflicting bits of information out there. And most providers don't have information about how to use nutrients clinically. So even once we get your diet optimized, we still need to make sure we have additional nutrients for the clinical purpose of helping your cervix to heal and your immune system to clear the virus. So this is why working with someone like me, with all my education and background in this area, can just streamline things for you. Instead of trying to recreate the wheel and figure it out for yourself, why not have me teach you exactly what to do, simplify it, make it easy to implement so that you can get going and get to healing? Because I don't think lack of information should have to stop you from preventing cervical cancer. So if you heard the diet doesn't have anything to do with it, then I beg to differ. And I welcome you to join me. Whichever form works best for you. Certainly there's a lot of other videos for me you can listen to. And you can also join me for the next how to Get Rid of HPV workshop, where you'll learn a whole, whole lot about how you can support your healing. And then you can decide from there if you'd like to join into one of my online programs where I support you from one month to three months to longer, as long as you need. We just stay at this and listen to your body and learn little by little to what your body needs in order to heal. So that's one of the most common myths and the sixth most common myth or misconception that I hear has to do with women feeling and believing that it's their fault that this is happening. Women often will internalize this diagnosis and be very angry with themselves, depressed and even disgusted with themselves, feeling like, oh, my gosh, I did this wrong. I ruined my life. I can't fix it. What am I going to do? I can't tell anybody. And women feel very isolated, and women feel like they have to deal with it on their own and alone. And what really saddens me is the number of women who are treating cervical cancer and even dying from cervical cancer alone. And I want to break this myth and say to you, you do not have to be alone with this. I'm here. This is something that in my office, we talk about every day, all day. You can even just come to my Instagram or my YouTube channel and you'll see me talking about this all day long. Because I, more than anything, want to help women to know that you are not alone and it is not your fault and is nothing to be ashamed of. No matter what your culture or religion or your parents or your family thinks or says, I'm here to tell you you're human. And this happens to Humans and we are all impacted by stress in our environment as well as like we talked about diet and nutrient deficiencies and hormone imbalances. And all of this spirals into a susceptibility to high risk hpv. So it's not your fault. Nobody taught you that or told you that. And in fact, your doctor may have even been dismissing the fact that this was even a concern. And so then another year goes by and things get worse and lo and behold, you start thinking, there's gotta be something else I can do. And so the fact that you had that thought and you started searching and you found this video that tells me that you're already starting to think outside the box and to take your health and your life into your own hands and to say, no matter what anybody else says, no matter what anybody else thinks, I'm going to invest in helping my body heal because I want to be free of HPV and I want to learn what it is the message that HPV had to deliver to you. Maybe that message was just simply believing in your body's ability to heal. Maybe that message was that there's nothing wrong with you, that you can heal. Maybe that message is that you are loved and that you can love yourself. Maybe that message is that it's time to prioritize you. You've been taking care of others and it's to time time for you to take care of you. Maybe that message is that your nutrients got depleted and that you've been eating some things that were working against you and you didn't realize it and now you have the opportunity to change that. There's so many potential messages in there from hpv. And I invite you to be curious and to, to have compassion for yourself. You're human. And there's being hard on yourself about it only makes it worse. So take a breath, be gentle with yourself and say to yourself, I deserve support. And the fact that Dr. Donnie has. I have a whole HPV healing community of women who are in the same situation as you. So you do not have to be alone. You can join us in the HPV healing community and learn with other women, from other women and share with them. So it's a, it's a beautiful, sacred healing space where you get to show up as yourself and you don't have to be afraid of what anybody thinks because we're all in the same boat anyway. And you can learn from each other and you can get the support you need. Those cheerleaders who are on your side to say you can do it. I know you can. And get that inspiration to keep going each day to protect yourself from high risk HPV and prevent cancer. Because I see amazing transformations. It gives me goosebumps. Women who've been dealing with HPV for years, surgeries, biopsies, doctors telling them that there is nothing they can do and they find me from you name it, the UK to Australia to Africa to India, and these women start following and you know what? They start going step by step and little by little they start to notice things in their body changing and then they go back in to get retested and lo and behold that HPV goes to not detected. And they feel on cloud nine the best thing ever because now they know what to do to keep it gone and protect themselves going forward. And I only wish that for more women. And that's exactly why I offer these trainings and that's exactly why I'm training practitioners. So if you're a practitioner listening and you want to learn how you can help women with hpv, then please reach out to me because I would love to teach you the Dr. Donnie's HPV protocol so we can serve more women around the world and help decrease rates of cervical cancer so women don't have to go through this in fear and alone. That does not have to be the case when cervical cancer is preventable by helping women to understand their bodies and what their bodies need in order to heal. Thanks again so much for joining me today. Please, if you'd like more information, don't hesitate to reach out to my office. You can go right through my website@clearhvnow.com or drdani.com and I look forward to connecting with you and helping you on your journey to freedom from Heimsk HPV virus. I'll see you soon. Thanks for joining and if you haven't already, I welcome you to subscribe to the How Humans Heal podcast as well as the Wellness Wisdom newsletter so you don't miss the next information from me. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review and for more resources visit drdonnie.com.
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