Why Is There an Increased Risk of HPV During Menopause?

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Lonnie Wilson. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about the five reasons that high risk HPV virus and abnormal Pap smears are more common during peri and post menopause. So here's the thing. As a lot of women start to think that, oh, dealing with HPV and abnormal Pap smears is all about what happens to women who are younger, maybe in their 20s and 30s. And while, yes, it is a concern for women in their 20s and 30s, it also is a concern for women over age 35. Over 35 is the beginning of perimenopause, which means around the time of menopause. And menopause is defined by one year since your last period. The average age of menopause is 51. That means that anything after menopause or post menopause is most of women's life, actually. And so we need to be thinking about women's health and how to support women during this transition and beyond and to understand why it is and how it is that high risk HPV virus can test positive during that time of your life and that there's so much you can do to protect yourself from high risk hpv, to prevent it from causing cervical cancer, vaginal cancer or other types of HPV related cancers. Perhaps some of you listening have already dealt with abnormal cells or cancer related to hpv. And you're wanting to know, how do you prevent a recurrence? Well, I'm going to be sharing that with you because the fact is, as a naturopathic doctor, midwife and clinical nutritionist, I've been specializing in Women's Health for 25 years now. And I've been helping women to address abnormal Pap smears and, and get rid of hpv, actually clear it to negative. So the way I do that, the way I help women to do that, is to understand what's making them susceptible to the virus in the first place. Right. It's not just about exposure. Most all of us are exposed to the high risk HPV viruses. There's 13 different high risk HPV viruses and most all of us are exposed by age 50. So it's not just about exposure. It's about your environment in your body that's allowing the virus to continue to exist and to thrive and to cause issues. So we need to look at the environment in your body and make some shifts, make some changes, make some improvements, make some redress imbalances and deficiencies so that your immune system and microbiome can protect you from HPV virus. So let's get into this. Okay, so the five ways. The five most common susceptibilities that I find in patients and program participants who are peri and postmenopausal. The first is the change in estrogen and progesterone. Now, women in their 20s and 30s, we might find that they have high estrogen, and that can also be associated with risk for hpv. But what happens with peri and postmenopause is the estrogen decreases. Even before the estrogen decreases, the progesterone decreases. So we start to have a decrease in ovary function overall starting in our late 30s and 40s. And as the progesterone, as the ovary function decreases, they start making less and less progesterone. And that's what also causes all kinds of different menstrual irregularities and a lot of other symptoms associated with perimenopause. And at that, around that same time, the estrogen starts to decrease as well. And it's different for each person, but it could go down in turbulent form, like up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, gradually down over months, and usually over years or even over a decade or more. So as those hormones are dropping, that's a change in your body. And that what we realize is that estrogen and progesterone are talking to receptors throughout our body, not just in the pelvic area, not just the uterus is responding to estrogen and progesterone. But as you go through perimenopause, right, you realize, oh, my gosh, this estrogens and progesterone has been talking to all different receptors in my body. And so as those hormones shift, that also affects many different areas of the body, causing various different symptoms, from headaches to, to, to joint pain, to hair, skin and nail changes, to digestive issues and bloating, also vaginal changes. So the vaginal tissue is very sensitive to estrogen levels. So as estrogen decreases, it also decreases in the vagina. And the vaginal cells are not as protective when they don't have enough estrogen. So as the estrogen drops, the vaginal tissue becomes weaker, and it's not as able to protect you from all different kinds of vaginal and urinary infections. You're more likely to get bv, which is a bacterial vaginal infection, yeast vaginally. Also bladder infections become more likely. That's how you know all the estrogen must be dropping. And then HPV is more likely to Test positive. So we need to be thinking about your estrogen levels, especially vaginally. And now the research shows that there, for most women, there are safe and effective ways to use vaginal estrogen, either estradiol or estriol vaginally, to support the vaginal estrogen level so you can help your vaginal cells to recover and so they can protect you from infections. So definitely this is important to talk to your doctor and I always talk to my patients about vaginal estrogen and the safe use of vaginal estrogen. The research is coming out even, you know, to make it clear that so many more women would benefit from vaginal estrogen than we ever realized before. So if you're not already using vaginal estrogen, that's something to talk to your doctor about or reach out to me and, and I can help you with that. So estrogen is a big reason why we need to be helping protect you from hpv, including the fact that estrogen vaginally also interacts with and supports the microbiome vaginally. And this is the second reason why we get very susceptible to HPV during peri and postmenopause is our microbiome changes. Remember, we have. Our microbiome is the trillions of bacteria living in and on our bodies that we live in symbiosis with. They're helping us, we're helping them. It's if when we have these positive balanced microbes in our in and on our system, they're actually benefiting us. Right? That's why we swallow probiotics, is because we're hoping to benefit our gut microbiome. Well, during peri and postmenopause, as the hormones are shifting, so is your microbiome. It actually shifts the bacteria that are living in your gut and you can make you more likely to have gas and bloating. And also weight gain is associated with a shift in gut bacteria and also a change in the vaginal microbiome. There are some healthy microbes in the got in the vagina that shouldn't be protecting you from HPV and other infections. So if you are testing positive for high risk hpv, it tells me those bacteria are not doing their job. And so when the estrogen drops, it shifts the microbiome, the lactobacillus drop. And this allows HPV to show up. And then once the HPV shows up, it starts affecting the microbiome even more. So this is a huge reason and something we can address. We can, yes, you can take oral probiotics. I developed a Women's probiotics specific for this specific purpose to help you get your oral and vaginal bacteria back on track again. And there's more we can do. So if you need help with imbalances in your vaginal microbiome, please reach out, because you're probably not going to hear about this at the regular gynecology office. We need to. There's special testing we can do, there's treatments we can do that are not in the standard of care. So please don't just leave yourself dealing with this for years or decades. Please reach out for help. 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. Be proactive about protecting themselves from HPV virus. I've been helping thousands of women for the past 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. We review the success cases and see if this is going to be a good fit to help you get your life back from hpv. Okay. The third way that perimenopause makes you more susceptible to HPV is because there are changes in insulin function. So what happens is as the estrogen progesterone drop, so does our insulin function. And our insulin is so important because it's what helps manage our blood sugar levels. So when insulin function drops, that means you're more likely to have high blood sugar. And as your blood sugar is higher, not only does it make you more likely to gain weight and more susceptible to high cholesterol and diabetes, but it also makes you more susceptible to high risk HPV virus. So you just go, oh my gosh. No wonder it. And you need to make sure your doctor is testing for high blood sugar in your blood. When you get your blood work, you can get a fasting glucose, you can get hemoglobin A1C tested in your blood work. And even if it's not diabetes, even if it's higher than it used to be, that could be increasing your risk of HPV virus and cancer. So we need to be helping you to drop that. We can do that with diet changes and we can also do that with nutrients and herbs that help increase insulin function and counteract that effect during menopause. So by the way, when the microbiome changes, it also affects your insulin. So it all ties in together. Right? Really? And so we need to address all of these factors. Okay, so so far we have estrogen, progesterone changing, we have the microbiome changing, we have insulin changing. And the fourth one is we have higher inflammation in the body likely because of these other things. And just on its own, when women go through menopause, inflammation levels increase in the body. And we, you especially know this if you're experiencing joint pain, headaches, sometimes skin rashes and just feeling fatigued and, and, and even kind of like swollen or puffy. This is all inflammation in the body. And inflammation can be because of high blood sugar, it can be because of imbalanced gut bacteria. It can also be because of something called leaky gut where the intestinal cells are not as healthy and they're allowing food to leak through and trigger inflammation. So we need to know if you have leaky gut, which I test my patients for and help them to heal it. Because we can heal leaky gut and therefore we can drop your inflammation. We don't need to be relying on anti inflammatory medications when we can use diet and, and nutrients and herbs to lower inflammation. Right. My patients, amazingly, we drop inflammation levels and they feel so much better. And when there's inflammation in the vagina, because inflammation anywhere in your body is going to end up in the vagina, do the inflammation in the vagina increases risk of high risk hpv? High risk HPV drives it, loves it. When there's inflammation, there's not enough good bacteria, there's not enough estrogen, then the immune systems dropped and the high risk HPV is like great. This is the perfect place for me. So we need to change that whole environment. And yes, we can address directly in the vagina, but the fact is, is if we address your whole body, then we're going to have much better long lasting results than if we just focus on the vagina. Okay, so we're going to do both focus on vaginal health and focus on your whole health. Okay, Ready for the fifth thing? The fifth thing that changes during perimenopause that makes you susceptible to HPV is, is cortisol levels. Cortisol is our main stress hormone. It's there all the time. We need it, we need it to wake us up in the morning and get us through the day and then decrease at night so we can go to sleep. And so we need cortisol all the time. However, when we're under a lot of stress and we're. When we're going through life transitions like perimenopause, it affects our cortisol level and it can go, for some people higher at certain times a day, for some people, lower at certain times of day. It's so unique to you. So we need to test your levels. I don't like to guess, as you can tell. I like to test. I like to see exactly what's happening with your cortisol levels. When is it high, when is it low? And the reason is because the treatment is affected by that. Right. If your cortisol is high at night, I'm going to suggest herbs and nutrients that lower cortisol at night. And it's not just a. A masking of it or a temporary suppression. It's actually helping to reset the signaling in your body to bring your cortisol back to optimal. How great is that? We want to reset your cortisol back to optimal so that it can maintain it optimal. It's way different than what we find and what we do with conventional medicine and pharmaceuticals, which are temporarily changing and manipulating levels. This is way different. When we use lifestyle, diet, herbs and nutrients, we're actually creating a shift that you can maintain going forward. That doesn't happen in standard of care, that doesn't happen with conventional medicine. So what I do is I want to test your cortisol, which we can measure with urine or saliva when you wake up in the morning, the middle of the day, the evening, the bedtime. So we know exactly what your cortisol is up to, then I can recommend exactly which herbs and nutrients at what time of day for you to get your cortisol back on track. Because the fact is, is that cortisol communicates through our whole body. It's really like the manager of everything. It's going to send us, if it's off balance, it's going to send stress signals to your digestion, which further causes leaky gut and microbiome issues. It's going to send signals to your insulin, further raising your blood sugar levels. It's going to send signals to your poor ovaries that are already struggling, causing them to struggle even more in your thyroid, to struggle even more. It's going to send signals to your nervous system, disrupting your neurotransmitters like serotonin, GABA and dopamine. Affecting your mood and sleep and energy and focus, and it's going to disrupt your immune system. More than anything with hpv, we need your immune system protecting you. But if cortisol is too high or too low, it's going to disrupt the signal to your immune system. Same with when your microbiome is out of balance, it disrupts the immune system. When your insulin is out of balance, it disrupts your immune system. And pile on top of that, the cortisol is out of balance. Your poor immune system is going to have a really hard time protecting you from all different infections, including high risk HPV virus. So does that make sense why it's all connected? And I'm hoping this helps you understand maybe other symptoms you might be experiencing in your body as well. And you go, oh my gosh, these are not all separate things. This is all to do with one thing. This is all that, your body. As a humans, we wish we didn't go through an aging process, but we do. And as humans, we go through Perry and postmenopause. And as women, as our ovary function decreases, these are the effects that we can identify and we can help ourselves through it. You don't have to just throw up your hands and say, there's nothing I can do. There's a lot you can do, right? There's a lot we can do to understand exactly how it's affecting your body using specialty testing that I offer through my office to patients around the world. And then we can support your body. We can use natural hormones in very safe and effective ways to help replace estrogen and progesterone. And for some women, they that's a priority. And for some women, they prefer not to use estrogen and progesterone very much or not very much. And that's fine. You have to do what feels right to you. Still, we can use herbs to support your estrogen, progesterone as best as we can. We can also use herbs, nutrients in diet and so much more to support insulin function, to drop inflammation, to support your microbiome, to rebalance your cortisol. You see what I mean? Doesn't that seem amazing that we can bring everything back into balance, including your immune system and now your body can fend off hpv. HPV doesn't have a chance in your body and your vagina anywhere in your body, because HPV can also thrive in the oral area, right? So we want to help protect you from head to toe, from high risk HPV virus. To me, HPV related cancers are completely preventable by taking this approach. So if you would like to learn more then please just come come check out my website. You can come to Dr. Donnie.com d r d o n I.com you can also go to clinical clearhbv now.com which brings you straight to all the resources I've created to help you with HPV clearhv now.com and you can also click on the links down below to join me at my next how to Get Rid of HPV Workshop, which is a free online workshop for you anywhere in the world to join. And you can also if you would like to become a one on one patient, you can contact my office and see.

I'm only able to accept so many one on one patients each month. Contact my office and see. Can you become one of my one on one patients so I can walk with you side by side? Do this process and support you now and into the future to fend off hpv, protect yourself from cervical cancer, vaginal cancer, and also to protect you from so many other health issues associated with menopause, for example Weight gain and diabetes, let alone heart disease, diet, dementia and bone loss. All of these things can be prevented. So I'm so glad you joined me here to learn more about menopause and high risk HPV virus and look forward to connecting with you again soon. Please if you would would like to continue listening in to me with the How Humans Heal podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. I'll see you soon.

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