"The Best Diet for Fibroids"
Fibroids are the most common benign tumors in women.
They get up to a foot in diameter
and affect the majority of women before they hit menopause.
They tend to be asymptomatic, though,
but when symptoms do occur,
they tend to manifest as heavy menstrual bleeding—
so much so women may get anemic and lots of pain.
So what can women do?
Up to half go to surgery and get their entire uterus removed.
Although it's generally considered a safe operation,
obviously, you can't have kids any more,
and complications occur in a significant proportion of patients.
The alternative is a variety of hormone-modulating drugs,
which can shrink the fibroids and provide relief,
but many of these drugs have
significant side effects like bone loss.
So you really don't want to be taking them
for more than a few months.
And so bottom line, there is currently no evidence to support
the routine use of drug treatment in women for fibroids.
No wonder many women turn to complementary and alternative
treatments, such as exercise, diet, herbs, and acupuncture.
Women who exercise 7 or more hours a week
do seem to have lower risk of having fibroids
than women who exercise less than like 20 minutes a day.
But it's never been put to the test for treating fibroids.
And likewise, there's not a single randomized controlled trial
of acupuncture for the treatment of fibroids to date, to help guide us.
In terms of herbs, there are two Asian herbal preparations
that show promise, a five-herb combo called Guizhi Fuling,
and a Malaysian ten-herb formula, which contains secret ingredients,
so secret they just list them,
but seemed to work as well as a leading drug.
The problem is that traditional Asian herbal remedies
may contain a few extra bonus secret ingredients
like arsenic, mercury, and lead in most of the samples tested
off of Asian market and health food store shelves
And not just a little;
some, apparently, had really toxic amounts.
So yeah, these two Asian herbal preparations may reduce fibroid size,
but there remains insufficient evidence as to their safety.
And certainly don't try to apply caustic herbs internally,
as this can lead to scarring, stenosis, and ulceration.
OK, but what about diet?
In one of the largest studies of diet and fibroids,
fibroid tumors were associated with beef and ham consumption,
whereas high intakes of green vegetables
seemed to have a protective effect.
They figured that the association between estrogen, diet, and
breast and uterine lining cancers might help us understand why.
For breast and endometrial cancers,
there's a similar direct association
with the frequency of meat consumption,
with a similar protection conferred by vegetables and fruits.
Thus, there may be these shared risk factors
between estrogen responsive malignant tumors like breast cancer,
and estrogen responsive benign tumors like fibroids.
See, we know the presence of fibroids seems to correlate
with an increase in the amount of estrogens,
for example, flowing through your body,
and women eating vegetarian have significantly
lower levels of excess estrogen.
Now, they're using this to try to explain why there are lower rates
of endometrial cancer (meaning lining-of-the-uterus cancer),
and possibly breast cancer among those eating vegetarian.
But it could also help explain the fibroid findings.
The incidence of breast cancer among vegetarian Adventists
is only 60 to 80% that of American women in general,
and the incidence among women in Africa or Asia is even lower.
Why might women eating vegetarian
have lower estrogen levels?
This famous study in the New England Journal
concluded that it was their increased fecal output
that leads to increased excretion of estrogen,
resulting in lower blood levels. Double the output, in fact.
You can see all the heavy weight V's
compared to the welterweight omnivores.
And you can put it to the test.
Maybe the same reason African-American women
have more fibroids is the same reason they have
worse breast cancer survival: too much estrogen
in their bloodstream due to a less than optimal diet.
So researchers designed this study to see
what would happen if they were switched
to a more plant-based, higher fiber diet.
The women started out with much higher estrogen levels,
again helping to explain
their increased mortality from breast cancer.
But put people on a healthier diet and all their levels come down,
suggesting a substantial reduction in breast cancer risk
can be achieved by adopting a diet
centered around more whole plant foods.
And the same appears to be true for fibroids,
especially eating lots of cruciferous vegetables—
broccoli, cabbage, and Chinese cabbage—
as well as tomatoes and apples.
Women who underwent premature puberty,
starting their periods before age 11, may be also
at increased risk of fibroids later in life,
and we know higher childhood red meat intake
is associated with earlier age of starting one's period,
though total and animal protein in general may contribute.
For example, girls who eat meat tend to start their periods
about 6 months earlier than girls who eat vegetarian.
Those that eat meat analogues,
meaning like veggie burgers veggie dogs,
started their periods 9 months later on average,
and a similar puberty normalizing influence
was found with the consumption of whole plants foods, such as beans.
It could also be the endocrine-disrupting pollutants
that build up the food chain.
Researchers took samples of internal abdominal fat
from women, and there appeared to be a correlation
between the presence of fibroids
with the levels of a number of PCBs in their fat.
So does that mean fish eaters have higher risk of fibroids?
Researchers did find a small increase in risk associated
with the intake of long-chain omega-3 fats, mostly from
dark fish consumption,
by which they meant like sardines and salmon.
This could be because of the endocrine-disrupting chemicals
commonly found in fish, or it could just be a statistical fluke.
It would be consistent, though,
with the increased risk among sport fish consumers.
They're talking about this study.
Recognizing that diet and endocrine disrupting persistent
organic pollutants have been associated
with a variety of gynecologic conditions, including fibroids,
they looked at consumers of fish fished out of the Great Lakes
and found a 20% increased risk
for every 10 years they had been eating the fish.
This is the most comprehensive study to date.
They've compared pollutant levels
in fat samples of women with fibroids,
compared to fat liposuctioned out of women without fibroids,
and didn't just find higher levels of PCBs in fibroid sufferers,
but also long-banned pesticides like DDT
and hexachlorocyclohexane,
and PAHs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons formed
when coal is burned, tobacco is smoked, and meat is grilled,
as well as heavy metals—arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury—
levels which correlated not only to fibroids,
but to seafood consumption or excess body fat.
So shedding excess weight and limiting seafood consumption
might confer a protective effect on fibroid tumor development
by minimizing exposure
to environmental pollutants as much as possible.