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The work of Dr. Georgianna Donadio DC, MSc, PhD has touched the lives of millions of people worldwide. For more than 35 years, she has been educating the healthcare community, as well as her patients, students and the public…
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The Link Between Fibroids and Childhood Abuse
In the November 9, 2010 journal Epidemiology, an abstract was published on the relationship between childhood abuse and uterine fibroids. The researcher article states: “Childhood adversities are associated with adult health. We hypothesize that exposure to physical and sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence will be associated with incidence of clinically symptomatic uterine leiomyomas (fibroids) through influences on health behaviors and reproductive hormone regulation.”
Translated into non-clinical language, this article discusses findings that indicate there is an identified accumulative, lifelong effect of physical and emotional childhood abuse on mature women’s reproductive health, resulting in uterine fibroids. These fibrous growths cause pain, abdominal bleeding and infertility. They can turn into a life threatening condition if not treated and controlled.
The relationship between abuse and fibroids should come as no surprise, as it is well documented that prolonged stress has detrimental affects on health. Hans Selye, MD, PhD, named “the father of stress” for his 55 years of medical research on the subject, demonstrated how prolonged stress affects the immune system, digestive system, reproductive and hormonal systems as well as the cardio-vascular integrity of the body.
Why the specific stress of childhood abuse should manifest itself physically as fibroids requires a closer look at how self-esteem and reproduction are linked.
Study author Dr. Renee Boynton-Jarrett of the Boston University School of Medicine, explained that “among those who developed fibroids, nearly 70 percent reported some history of abuse. Relative to women with no history of abuse, women who said they had been abused as children were between 8 and 36 percent more likely to develop fibroids, with the risk of fibroids increasing the greater a woman's exposure to severe, chronic or multiple types of abuse.”
The abuse was not limited to sexual abuse, but included emotional, verbal and physical abuse as well. What is well known in psychological circles is that when we as human beings are not valued and are treated in a way that is degrading - by being attacked or abused in any form - this has a profound impact on our self-esteem, which in turn has a long-term stress impact on our hormonal system.
For women with a long term hormone imbalance brought about by fear and self-esteem issues, the hormonal system becomes easily choreographed to create reproductive organ dysfunction such as fibroids. However, other forms of reproductive conditions such as the absence of the menstrual cycle, infertility, abnormal menstrual spotting or bleeding and abnormal/missed menstrual cycles can also occur as well.
What can be done for women who have experienced childhood abuse and are now experiencing fibroids? Today, Integrative, Whole Person focused medicine offers “inside out” healing modalities women can explore, such as homeopathy, nutrition intervention, visualization, meditation and a host of other approaches designed to change the way the nervous system functions and thus in turn heal or improve the condition.
- Dr. Georgianna Donadio
Translated into non-clinical language, this article discusses findings that indicate there is an identified accumulative, lifelong effect of physical and emotional childhood abuse on mature women’s reproductive health, resulting in uterine fibroids. These fibrous growths cause pain, abdominal bleeding and infertility. They can turn into a life threatening condition if not treated and controlled.
The relationship between abuse and fibroids should come as no surprise, as it is well documented that prolonged stress has detrimental affects on health. Hans Selye, MD, PhD, named “the father of stress” for his 55 years of medical research on the subject, demonstrated how prolonged stress affects the immune system, digestive system, reproductive and hormonal systems as well as the cardio-vascular integrity of the body.
Why the specific stress of childhood abuse should manifest itself physically as fibroids requires a closer look at how self-esteem and reproduction are linked.
Study author Dr. Renee Boynton-Jarrett of the Boston University School of Medicine, explained that “among those who developed fibroids, nearly 70 percent reported some history of abuse. Relative to women with no history of abuse, women who said they had been abused as children were between 8 and 36 percent more likely to develop fibroids, with the risk of fibroids increasing the greater a woman's exposure to severe, chronic or multiple types of abuse.”
The abuse was not limited to sexual abuse, but included emotional, verbal and physical abuse as well. What is well known in psychological circles is that when we as human beings are not valued and are treated in a way that is degrading - by being attacked or abused in any form - this has a profound impact on our self-esteem, which in turn has a long-term stress impact on our hormonal system.
For women with a long term hormone imbalance brought about by fear and self-esteem issues, the hormonal system becomes easily choreographed to create reproductive organ dysfunction such as fibroids. However, other forms of reproductive conditions such as the absence of the menstrual cycle, infertility, abnormal menstrual spotting or bleeding and abnormal/missed menstrual cycles can also occur as well.
What can be done for women who have experienced childhood abuse and are now experiencing fibroids? Today, Integrative, Whole Person focused medicine offers “inside out” healing modalities women can explore, such as homeopathy, nutrition intervention, visualization, meditation and a host of other approaches designed to change the way the nervous system functions and thus in turn heal or improve the condition.
- Dr. Georgianna Donadio
RELATED POSTS
I just got home from having a transvaginal ultrasound. Apparently, I have several fibroids on my uterus. He didn't say what kind, etc. I also have cysts.....which I already know. I am wondering if any of you also have fibroids in conjunction with PCOS?
Posted on 02/12/08 07:18:42 pm
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I keep an open mind, and question everything.
I did find this article interesting, not saying I agree, but I am pondering right now.
I had very large Fibroids removed a few yeas ago in my late forties. Never smoked, drank very little alcohol. Grew my own fruit & veg. In all had an excellent diet. kept fit, good health, apart from some gall bladder pain, no op. And shoulder neck pain. I did lose a lot of hair, that no cause could be found apart from stress. No medications, or hormonal contraceptives, or HRT.
Fibroids didn't run in the family either. My mother and two sisters had no problems. But I was under a lot of stress during a 30+ yr marriage. I was also physically abused by my ex after I became his teenage bride. Been subject to verbal & emotional abuse by this same person until I left him recently. So, for me this is food for thought. Our bodies and emotions are linked. I will read it again and ponder some more
Childhood abuse does not cause any of these diseases but toxins do - all kinds of toxins we are exposed to on a regular basis.