The Stress-HPV Connection: How Cortisol Affects the Likelihood of Testing Positive for HPV

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson and I'm so glad you're here and hope you will subscribe and join me for the next episodes of How Humans Heal as well. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about the relationship of stress to risk of HPV and cervical cancer as well as other HPV related cancers in women and men based on the research. There's some recent research that I think all of you need to know, and really it ultimately relates to so many other health issues and cancer risk as well. But I'm going to be specifically looking at the research related to high risk HPV and cancer risk associated with stress. Okay, so this is one of the things that a lot of times, even when you find out that you're testing positive for HPV or have an abnormal pap smears old, the doctor's likely not going to say anything about how it's related to stress. But I can't tell you how many women, because I speak to thousands of women every year, and I can't tell you how common it is for women to share with me that the HPV started testing positive after they went through a significant stressful time in their life. Whether that was a getting married, sometimes even happy events are stressful. A move, a job change, a home change, a relationship change, a death in the family. So many different possible stresses that we go through as humans can then increase our risk of testing positive for hpv. And I see this over and over again, especially because not only am I an expert in hpv, but I'm also an expert in stress. So I'm paying attention to the connection between stress and health issues all the time in my practice. And I started seeing over the years that there was a relationship. And I found that when I helped women who are testing positive for HPV and potentially abnormal cells, when I guided them through my stress recovery protocol, they were much more likely to clear HPV to negative and keep it negative. So I started completely integrating the stress recovery into my HPV protocol because I want everyone to be successful at clearing HPV and preventing cancer. So I started looking at the research to say, hey, is there research studies to document what I'm seeing in practice? A lot of times I do that with what I notice in practice and what I find to work. I then go look at the research and be like, oh, someone else been researching and discovering this. And sure enough, there's research. Especially very recently. I mean, I've been noticing this pattern over the past 24 years. But even recently there's some studies, so I wanted to report those to you and I'll share the references down below as well in case you would like to read the studies yourself. So I thought it was really interesting that this One study from 2023 is showing that and confirming that, that just the diagnosis of HPV is stressful. Right. To add to all the other things I just mentioned, stresses in our lives, simply receiving a diagnosis of positive hpv, let alone going through the medical procedures associated with that, whether that's biopsies, knee procedures or other surgeries, the more procedures that women go through related to hpv. What this research showed, and this was a research review, so it was looking at many different studies and bringing all the information together. What it showed is that 89%.

Of women diagnosed with HPV and potentially going through procedures, 89% of them report anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression are result of stress. That's what happens when we're stressed as humans. We start feeling anxious and then we can also experience depression. 89%. I mean, that's really high. That's. Almost everybody who is diagnosed with HPV experiences some degree of anxiety and depression. And that is really concerning because it's not often addressed. Most practitioners who are diagnosing patients with HPV are not addressing the anxiety and depression. And so women are feeling very un. Alone and on their own with these feelings of anxiety and depression related to their diagnosis. And not only that, but these. This research study also showed that 87% of women experience a negative impact on their sex life, meaning they have less sexual activity, less interest in sex, less sensation with sex, especially after lean procedures, and also increase pain with sexual activity. So this diagnosis of HPV is having a huge impact on women's mood, their stress response and their sex life. And again, this is very concerning because it's something women are experiencing, but it's not getting addressed in the medical system, in the standard medical system. And which is why I'm so passionate about helping women with it and making sure that if you listening have experienced anxiety, depression or change in your sex life because of the diagnosis, I want you to know that there's help, there's things we can do to help reverse that, solve that, help you with that. We can help clear the hpv. First of all, right, if the virus was gone, then all of your worry about it would be gone. So that's one thing that I find in my sigabyte HPV protocol. The, the whole reason is called say goodbye to hpv is because I'm helping you to clear the virus and we have very good success rates, over 90% of cases. And really ultimately I stay with it. I stay with each and every case until we get to negative. Because I don't. It's not like I'm going to give up. I'm going to say, let's figure out why your body's susceptible and let's keep helping you until we get it to clear and leave you alone and protect you from cancer. So then of course women are like, yeah, I'm going to feel a lot better when it's gone for sure. And also there are things we can do in the process. While you're working on clearing hpv, we can help you so that it doesn't have to cause so much anxiety, depression and impact on your sex life by helping you learn what you can do, become proactive, have a strategic plan, feel proactive and really become your own health advocate by having the right information and the right guidance so that you can, you can solve this hpv, protect yourself from cancer and you can prevent it from causing anxiety, depression and impact on your sex life as well. So I really, if this is sounding like something you need help with, I want to invite you to reach out to me. You can always contact my office by phone, by email. I'll put a link down below to drdonnie.com where you can find our contact information. Reach out because we can do a call with you. My team is trained and has been working with me for very for many years. They know how to communicate and look at your results and see what your needs are and help you to get the right support to be preventing these health issues and help you to get confident in your ability to protect yourself from HPV and from cancer associated with hpv. I know how scary it is to test positive for HPV virus and I know it's even more concerning when your gynecologist tells you that all you can do is wait and see if it continues and if it causes abnormal cells. That's exactly why as a naturopathic doctor and midwife that I feel so passionate about helping women to be proactive about protecting themselves from HPV virus. I've been helping thousands of women for the past 20, 23 years to do exactly that and to get HPV to negative and stay negative. And that's why I developed the say Goodbye to HPV online program where you can get access to my proven protocol from wherever you are in the world. So I hope you will come check out the say Goodbye to HPV program, Review the success cases and see if this is going to be a good fit to help you get your life back from hpv. Now, I want to share another study because this one has to do with looking at cortisol levels. Now, some of you who maybe have read my book, the Master Stress Book, and have listened to me talk about stress, know that when we're talking about stress and we mention stress or burnout or adrenals, we're talking about cortisol is really what we're talking about, because our main stress hormone is. Is called cortisol. Now, cortisol is a hormone that we all rely on day in, day out. We all need cortisol. It's not about having zero cortisol. We need the right amount of cortisol at the right time of day. In fact, cortisol should come in and go up in the morning when we wake up, like 6am and then it should gradually decrease through the day so that it's lowest at night when we're ready to go to bed. Okay? So that's what creates our circadian rhythm. And cortisol does so much good stuff. It communicates with all our other hormones and communicates with our digestion, our nervous system, our immune system, our microbiome. We want healthy cortisol levels to keep us healthy. And the issue is when we're under so much stress, right, and we're feeling that burnout, we're under constant demands. We feel like we can't even catch a break. Ever done. We know that the cortisol levels are spinning out of control. And what can happen is then our stress response is stuck in a stress response. And for some people, that causes cort high cortisol constantly. Some people, it causes high cortisol some of the time and low cortisol some of the time. And for other people, it ends up resulting in low cortisol. But no matter which scenario it is, if your cortisol is not optimal, research is very clear that that's going to have a negative impact on your health in so many different ways. A negative impact on your hormones, your digestion, your mood, your sleep, and your risk of hpv. So there's a study that I was referring to, and I'll put the reference that shows that.

When women have hpv, they are likely to have high cortisol. And when they measure cortisol, they measure it in the morning, what we call the cortisol awakening response. As I mentioned, cortisol should go up when we're waking up in the morning, so we can measure that to see does a person have that healthy increase in their cortisol. Not too high, not too low, but just the right amount of cortisol in the morning is called the cortisol awakening response. And we can measure that in the blood, we can measure that in the saliva or the urine. What the research showed is that when the cortisol is high, women are at increased risk of testing positive for hpv. So there's this correlation between HPV and high cortisol. So we need. We can go, oh, my gosh, of course, that makes sense. When we're under stress, it shifts our cortisol and makes us more at risk of hpv. The research also checked cortisol throughout the day and showed the same thing. When women have high cortisol throughout the day, they're also at higher risk of hpv. So, okay, so that means, first of all, we need to be measuring cortisol for women. Like, and this is something that I've been doing in my practice for 20 years also because I research stress. So I measure cortisol levels either in saliva or urine. And we measure it four different times a day. When you first wake up, the middle of the day, the evening, in the bedtime. And I do see this, that many women who are testing positive for HPV have a cortisol that's high at some point in the day or all day. Now, I want to point out that I also see some women who have low cortisol who have. Have HPV and have low cortisol. So this is another possible scenario. But the main point is when. When we're under stress and our cortisol is disrupted, we're much more likely to test positive for hpv. And what the study showed is that when cortisol is optimal, there's a lower risk of HPV and lower risk of cancer associated with hpv. That's exactly my premise. That's exactly what I've been noticing with my patients, and that's exactly what I teach in my say goodbye to HPV protocol. And now this research is showing it's true, documenting exactly what I've been observing and teaching. So exciting to me because now it's not just me seeing it, it's researchers documenting it in stuff bodies. And I'll put the link for you so you can see. And it, to me, it's super exciting because that means that all we need to do is help you recover from stress. Now, I know it's a little Tricky, because having HPV is stressful, as we talked about. So we have to essentially outsmart this virus. The virus is making us more susceptible by stressing us out. And once you can realize that once you can see, oh, this HPV virus, of course it wants us stressed and it wants our cortisol high because then we're more susceptible to the virus and it can do what it does.

Once we realize that that that's just the mechanism of this virus, then we can do something about it. I teach my whole protocol for stress recovery in the Master Stress Reset your health book. So I encourage anyone listening who's wondering, how am I going to outsmart this virus? To get the book, the Master Stress Book, you can get it in a print copy, digital or audible at Amazon. So I welcome you to go look for the Master Stress Book and I'll put a link down below. Also.

You can always reach out to meet with me. You can meet with me one on one if you feel like, hey, I really need more help to recover from the stress I've been through, including toxic relationships and narcissistic abuse. There's also studies that show that when women have experienced toxic relationships, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, such as in narcissistic or other types of toxic relationships, they're at increased risk of hpv. So I feel very strongly that women need access to support to.

Get through this, to recover from the trauma, even the medical trauma of dealing with hpv, to recover from the anxiety, depression, to recover their cortisol levels, to prevent cancer. This is all doable and possible and I've written about it and talk about it many times. So I want you to know that you don't have to be left alone with these risks. And even though your medical practitioner that's covered by your insurance is likely not talking about this, you sometimes it does require an investment in your health to help you recover. And I welcome you to just know that I know sometimes it's really scary. Again, the virus is already causing anxiety, so I know that it already creates this fear response and it's scary to try something new and trust someone. And so that's why I'm so glad to be able to share so much information and so many resources with you so that you can start to trust that healing is possible and people like me exist to help guide you. I can guide you through testing cortisol as well as adrenaline and neurotransmitter levels. We can test for the other effects of stress. I can guide you through the dietary changes the right supplements to help you recover, including nutrients, herbs, homeopathic remedies that match for your body and is not one size fits all. Because stress is not one size fits all. It affects us each uniquely. And so we need to understand how stress is affecting your stress response system, how stress is affecting your body physically, emotionally, spiritually. And then we need to create a plan, individualized plan, to address that step by step. And that's exactly what I do through the Stress Recovery Protocol. So please know that this information is here for you and you can reach out anytime. And I'm happy to help guide you. So thanks again for joining me for How Humans Heal and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Have a good rest of the day.

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