Dr. Tabatha Barber explains that uterine fibroid growth is not solely due to estrogen but reflects hormonal imbalance (excess estrogen, insufficient natural progesterone) and has become more common in recent generations. She attributes a major role to environmental endocrine-disrupting chemicals (plastics, phthalates, fragrance chemicals, thermal receipt coatings) that amplify estrogen signaling, and to dietary factors such as vitamin D deficiency and insulin-like growth factor (IGF) from dairy. She describes limitations and side-effects of traditional hormonal treatments (combined hormones, synthetic progestins, GnRH agonists) and gives practical prevention tips: reduce exposure to plastics and receipts, minimize dairy (prefer grass-fed, hormone/antibiotic-free if consumed), correct vitamin D, and lower systemic/gut inflammation.
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The question would be then, what is causing the fibroids to grow? When I went to medical school a long, long time ago, I was taught that fibroids were only from estrogen and that the birth control pill was the treatment. So we would give you synthetic estrogen and progestins to combat the excess estrogen to prevent those fibroids from growing. Then we started using synthetic progestins by themselves. And then we started using GNRH agonists, which puts you in a menopausal type state and prevent you from making estrogen and progesterone. Women do not enjoy being on those medications because they put you in a menopausal state. It causes hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings. It can cause bone loss, hair loss, skin thinning, vaginal discomfort. And those medications can only be used for so long. They recommend one to two years max. And then going off of them. So it's kind of a temporary solution. But once you go off of those, the fibroids tend to grow again. It's not just estrogen, so. So it's more an imbalance of your hormones. It's too much estrogen, not enough progesterone, not synthetic progestins, but not enough actual normal natural progesterone. But there are other major factors, because what we now see is that fibroids were not common 50 to 70 years ago the way they are now. Their incidence has tripled in. The major reason for this is environmental factors. Endocrine disrupting chemicals. So all of the plastics and the phthalates, the fragrances, the cash register receipts, all these different things that didn't exist 70 years ago are now in our environment. And as women, we get bombarded with these chemicals all day, every day, and they disrupt our hormones. The US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences defines endocrine disrupting chemicals as chemicals that interfere with the body's endocrine system and produce adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological and immune effect facts. So this contributes to estrogen overload signaling at the receptor sites and causes fibroids to develop and grow. So that is why we're seeing so many fibroids that we never saw before in previous generations. It's all of these endocrine disrupting chemicals, all the persistent organic pollutants, all of their breakdown products. So it's super important. Don't take the register receipts unless you absolutely need to, because the chemicals on that receipt go directly into your skin, into your system and send estrogen signals. Same thing with plastics. Don't heat your food in plastic Try not to drink out of plastic water bottles. Get rid of the chemicals in your hair products and skin products. I have a nice little pamphlet on how to decrease your toxic burden. It's got all of this information. I'll put it in the show notes. Because it's really important to get control of your environment. That is what's feeding these fibroids. Okay? So diet also seems to play a huge role. Vitamin D deficiency is a big factor when it comes to fibroids. Also your dairy consumption. So unfortunately the dairy industry has really messed with our hormones. It is very common to get a lot of insulin like growth factor in dairy because that's what's used to fatten cows up and keep them pregnant, which keep them in a nursing state so that you constantly have milk production from these cows and all of the insulin like growth factor and hormones that are injected into these animals goes into us and it insulin like growth factor feeds those fibroids. So really try to minimize your dairy significantly. Like literally as an adult woman, I do not recommend you drink cow's milk at all. I recommend you if you are going to eat dairy, try to make sure that it is non GMO so they're not being fed, you know, pesticide laden corn feed, that they are grass fed cows, that they are antibiotic and hormone free. So if all of those are true, then you're probably a little bit better off. But you really got to be careful with the dairy. So get your vitamin D, minimize your dairy, focus on inflammation, getting that down like I mentioned all the time. If your gut's inflamed, your pelvis is going to be inflamed and that's going to contribute to fibroid growth.
