The 3 Most Common Nutrient Deficiencies in Patients with HPV (and How to Address Them)

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donny Wilson and in today's episode, I want to talk about the three most common nutrient deficiencies that I find in my patients who have HPV virus testing positive. So here's the thing is that I feel like this information is important for everyone because we're all exposed to HPV virus at some point in our lives. And so it's important to know what you can do to protect yourself from HPV virus and in particular those of you who've been testing positive for hpv. Sometimes I talk to women from various areas of the world. Not I'm located in the US but I help women everywhere with HPV virus and they sometimes have been testing positive for HPV for more than 20 years now. It's more and more common to be tested for hpv. And so more and more women are finding out that they are testing positive and then having to go through all kinds of different invasive procedures to identify whether abnormal cells or even cancer cells have developed. And in the conventional medical setting, the only thing that can be done is to remove abnormal cells. They're not able to stop the virus from causing abnormal cells again. And so this is why I've put so much of my intention and focus on researching this topic for my patients to figure out what's making these women susceptible. By the way, men can also have HPV virus and even be susceptible to HPV related cancer. It should that there's no screening for men for HPV at this time. And so most times men don't know that they have it until they develop cancer. So men, if you're listening, I encourage you to also pay attention to what might be making you susceptible to HPV as well. So let's go into the three most common nutrient deficiencies. The first that I find over and over again when I review cases, and I sometimes am reviewing very complex cases, women who have had abnormal cells over and over treated leaps over and over, even hysterectomies and have had abnormal cells occur again because of hpv, even after a hysterectomy and vaginal abnormal cells over and over again. So I'm seeing more, sometimes more severe and complex cases. And in those cases, I'm having to be a detective and look for why is this virus not giving up? Why is this virus continuing to cause abnormal cells for this woman? And what I find is very often there is a deficiency of protein in women's diets. And I think this is actually quite common because I'm constantly As a nature belly doctor and clinical nutritionist evaluating my patient's diet, and I over and over again find that we're just not getting enough protein in our diets. We so often are focused on getting healthy carbs. And of course, it's important to get fruits and vegetables, which is where we get healthy carbs. It's also important to get healthy fats, which is going to be from olive oil and avocado oil and olives and things like that. So you definitely want healthy carbs, fruits and vegetables and healthy fats. But the thing that I find is often lacking is protein. And this is also true if you're following what's kind of considered a standard diet. Right. The standard breakfast is often mostly carbs, or sometimes if you're having a snack in the afternoon or a treat, it's mostly carbs. And so we end up not getting enough protein. And the thing is, there's not a good way that this even shows up in blood work. So you could be getting standard blood work and it's not going to show that you're lacking in protein. The only time on the blood work where it measures protein, right, you've probably seen on a complete metabolic panel, it measures your protein levels, but that's not based on really your protein in your diet. That's based on the protein being produced by your liver. So in order for protein to drop low on your blood work, it means you're really deficient and likely dealing with a chronic and severe illness before it actually shows in your blood work. So just because your approaching your blood work is in the normal range, that doesn't mean that you have adequate protein levels. It's also really difficult to identify in any other tests. The place that I often identify low protein for my patients is when I measure their neurotransmitter levels. I measure neurotransmitters in urine to identify serotonin, dopamine, GABA levels, adrenaline levels. And these neurotransmitters are made from amino acids that come from protein. So if a patient has all low neurotransmitters, it says to me, they, they're likely not getting enough protein. They're likely. If they are getting enough protein, they're definitely not digesting it well or absorbing it well because it's not getting into their bodies to make neurotransmitters. So that's where I end up really clearly seeing protein deficiency is in when patients have a deficiency of neurotransmitters. And so that's a possible test, but it's not a test that's going to get done at the regular doctor's office. You're going to need to come through my office as a patient in order for me to measure your urinary neurotransmitter levels, which I recommend. But what you could start with is. Is to look at your diet. Just simply write down what you're eating. Or you can use an app. There are apps out there, like the Chronometer app, for example, where you write down what you're eating and then it calculates how much protein you're getting each day. But you could also do it on. On a piece of paper, with a pen and paper, right? You can be like, okay, what did I have for breakfast? How much protein was in that? And if you're wondering how much protein is what I'm eating, you can Google it. You can. How much protein is in one egg? How much protein is in 3 ounces of chicken? Enter it into Google. It's going to tell you. Or you can, if you're eating something that's coming from a package, what it should say it on the label and you start to look for how much protein you're getting. You should really be aiming to get protein every time you eat in a meal. And I would say you want to be eating at least three meals a day. So if you have a meat three meals a day, each of those needs to have 30 grams, I would say at least a protein. So you're getting 90 grams of protein a day is really an absolute minimum. The standard dietetics recommendations is to consume 0.8 grams per kg, which is the same as 0.36 per pound. So basically, if you take your weight in pounds and you multiply it by 0.36, that's going to give you, like, the very minimum of protein you need each day. And if you're going in kilograms, you're going to go times 0.8 and you're going to get your minimum, very minimum. But now we know from research that actually humans need more protein than that, especially if you're exercising, lifting weights, building muscle under stress. If you're under stress, you definitely need more protein than the minimum. And so I encourage you to really start to pay attention to how much protein are you getting? I ask myself. I do it like a game. I just constantly ask myself when I go to eat, where's the protein and how much protein? How much protein am I getting? So you can. Then you start to learn, oh, okay, I need to be getting at Least this much. Chicken, turkey, fish, beef. Of course you want to get grass fed, hormone free, really healthy versions of these animal proteins. Egg. If you're not reacting to egg, then you might be able to choose egg. But I really warn you against having eggs as your only protein. So many people I talk to really like have eggs every single day or multiple eggs every day. And sometimes, as I've mentioned in another video, a lot of people have inflammatory reactions to eggs. And so you really need to know and make sure am I having an alert, an inflammatory reaction to egg, in which case I need to choose a different protein. I also love to use protein shakes, protein powder, but I stay away from dairy protein. So I don't use whey protein. I use either a pea protein or bone broth protein that does not contain sugar. And that's a great way to start the day with protein is my favorite is a protein shake. Protein shake saved me from having complete adrenaline distress and exhaustion and blood sugar issues. And I'm telling you it's even though we would think that when our blood sugar is down, we need carbs, actually what really helps is to eat protein. So protein to me is like if you aim for protein, the carbs and fats come easily, but the protein you have to focus on and you really need to be getting, I tell people at least 20 grams of protein four times a day or 30 grams of protein three times a day. Hi, I'm Dr. Donnie and I want to invite you to attend my next Heal HPV Worldwide workshop. This is an online event that's going to be three days where we're going to be able to go into detail about HPV or human papilloma virus, what it is, how to identify it on your Pap smear, what your Pap smear results mean, mean and really how to help you transform your health and your body so that you can protect yourself from this virus that's associated with cancer risk. I know that you're not hearing this from your regular doctor's office and I know that you're probably feeling really afraid and really alone and potentially even ashamed at finding out that you are testing positive for HP. And I'm here after more than 23 years of helping women to be able to share success stories with you and for you to know for sure that it's possible to protect yourself from this virus, prevent it from causing abnormal cells, and actually get to freedom from HPV virus once and for all. I really believe that everyone should have this information as well. So that's Why I put on this worldwide workshop and I'd love for you to join me. It's something that you can find at the link below. And sign up and join me today. I'll see you there. Okay, so that covers you for the protein because there's other factors, by the way, reasons why lack of protein makes you susceptible to hpv. One is if you don't have enough neurotransmitters, they're not going to be able to protect you from your stress exposure. And if we're not protected from stress exposure, we become more susceptible to viruses like hpv. Plus, protein and amino acids are used to not only make our neurotransmitters, but to build muscle and in our immune system. If we don't have enough protein and amino acids, we're not going to have healthy immune system function. And so much more amino acids are used in our bodies in so many ways. And so really, if we're not getting enough protein and amino acids, it's going to make us less able to protect ourselves and from HPV virus. Okay, let's move on to the second nutrient. The second is iron. And this is something that I had never learned when I was in my training and many years of helping women. It's because I'm constantly encourage women who work with me to do blood work and not just standard blood work. I mean, sometimes, yes, on a cbc, you can see if you have anemia, but many people do not have anemia, but they do still have low iron. And for a clinical nutritionist like me, I can look at a CBC and I can look at the trends to see if you're trending toward low iron versus low B12 and folate, which are all important for fending off HPV iron, B12 and folate. But the thing that I find people really miss is the iron. Often they're already paying attention to folate and B12, but they're not always paying attention to iron. And so you have to make sure that you're doing in your blood work, you're measuring the ferritin, F, E, R, R, I, T, I, N to find out your iron storage. And if the ferritin is less than 50, in some cases I'm seeing it less than 10. And it's really scary to me, especially because this could be in women who maybe are having heavy bleeding during their menstrual cycle. And so they're losing a lot of blood each month. And then they may not be getting all the way to anemia, but they end up low in iron. And if we don't have enough iron, iron is what helps us make red blood cells to carry oxygen around our body. And we need oxygen circulating around our body to have healthy cells and healthy tissue and a healthy immune system. We need iron for immune system. We also need iron for healthy protection of our cells. So iron is really important. And I see over and over again once I help women to restore healthy iron levels that they are much better able to protect themselves from hpv. And HPV even goes to negative. Now one thing you might notice for those of you who are following a plant based diet, because a plant based diet is much harder to get enough protein, it's also much harder to get enough iron. And I find that a lot of women who are testing HPV positive have been following a plant based diet. And so I really want you to notice that and to be mindful. It's okay to follow a plant based diet, but it's important that you make sure you're still getting enough protein and enough iron on your plant based diet. So you're going to have to work hard to look up what are the plant based sources of iron and protein and make sure you're getting them throughout the day. You can use things like pea protein powder for, for protein and you can take extra iron, but you have to make sure you know that and you bring it into your daily routine. Because if you become deficient in protein and iron, it's, you're, you're going to become susceptible and it's, it's actually like you're, you. Most people who are following a plant based diet are doing it for health reasons and they end up becoming susceptible to health issues because of the nutrients that they're not ensuring that they're getting enough of. So I really want to remind you and, and encourage you to make sure on a plant based diet that you're getting enough protein and iron. The third nutrient that I find very often deficient in patients with HPV is vitamin D. And vitamin D is something that can be measured in standard blood work and even covered by insurance. And so you can find out easily if you're low in vitamin D, especially those of you who are living further away from the equator, you know, like in the northern hemisphere, like me, where we, many parts of the year we're not getting as much sunlight exposure. And so it's very common to become deficient in vitamin D. That's where we get vitamin D is from sun exposure. So if you're able to get your skin out into the Sunlight so that you can get vitamin D through your skin, skin on a regular basis. And, or if you're in areas of the world, or if we all have a unique ability, by the way, to absorb and store vitamin D. Same with iron. And this has to do with our genetics. Some people, they only need a little bit of iron and their body holds on to it and they tend to have even high levels of iron. So. And some people, same with vitamin D. Sometimes all they need is a little bit of D and their levels go way up. And other people, it's the opposite. Other people, it seems like they just have to keep trying to get more iron and keep trying to get more vitamin D because they tend to be low. Or it could be either, you know, one high and one low. So you want to know your body is a thing like you. I can't say that everybody needs more iron, and I can't say that everybody needs more vitamin D. I can tell you those are common deficiencies because I think what happens is, first of all, we're, we're stressed, we're living busy lives, we're running through the day, we're probably not getting time out in the sun, and we're not realizing that we're lacking these nutrients in our diet and we're not getting tested in our blood work. Some because most practitioners, when they do annual blood work, they aren't checking ferritin and vitamin D. So a lot of people don't realize they are low. And so I'm encouraging you to, when you go get your blood work, ask for your ferritin and vitamin D to be measured or when patients who work with me, then I can guide them to get those tests measured so we have the information we need. And so then we know your body, we know, oh, your body tends to need more of this nutrient. We're not all the same, even though we're all human and there's a lot of things we have in common. We're different in terms of how our bodies absorb, maintain and utilize these nutrients. And I really encourage you to get to know your body. What is your. We want to find out what is the amount that's going to be the best maintenance for you through your life? Based on your stress levels and based on your activity levels, these amounts will change. And for women, depending on if you're having a menstrual cycle, how much you're bleeding, your iron needs are going to change. And for vitamin D, it's going to depend on where you live on earth and how much time you get out outdoors in the sun. So these are all considerations to take and to account and to know your body better. Because if it's when we're not paying attention that then we become susceptible to hpv. And as soon as HPV has its chance, because to me, it's not just about exposure. Most all of us are exposed, it's about their susceptibility. And if you're low in these nutrients, you're going to become more susceptible. In the case of vitamin D, we know that vitamin D, we usually think of it for our bones, but we also now know that vitamin D is essential for immune function. So if we don't have enough vitamin D, our immune system is not as able to protect us from any infections, let alone hpv. That vitamin D is also known as helpful to prevent cancer of all different types. So to make sure you have enough. Vitamin D is really protective of your health overall. Same with iron. So I really encourage you. Again, I'm not saying that everybody needs to go. I definitely think everyone needs to evaluate protein in your diet and make sure you're getting enough. And I definitely think we all need to evaluate our iron and vitamin D levels and make sure you're getting enough. And, and I wouldn't say just go out and take some. I would say find out what your levels are and then take what's the right amount for you. So thanks again for joining me. I look forward to your questions and comments and I definitely encourage you to subscribe and join me for the next episode of How Humans Heal. And I'd be happy to hear from you if there's any particular topics related to HPV or any other health issues that you'd like for me to cover more in depth. So I look forward to seeing you more soon. Take care.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review and for more research sources, visit drdonnie. Com.