Fibroid Treatment Options
If you have been diagnosed with fibroids, the first question that should come to your mind is, what are the fibroid treatment options available? and not questions like, “why me?”
If it is not you, it could be your sister or your friend or your loved one somewhere. So what you need to look at, is the fibroid treatment options available so you can make your choice of treatment.
A study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that between 80% and 90% of African American women and 70% of white women will develop fibroids by age 50.
This shows that a high percentage of women are at the risk of developing a fibroid in their lifetime.
What Are Uterine Fibroids?
Uterine fibroids are noncancerous muscular tumors that grow in the wall of the uterus. Fibroids usually grow in women of childbearing age and they are of various sizes.
Fibroids range in size from seedlings, undetectable by the human eye, to bulky masses that can distort and enlarge the uterus. They can be a single growth or multiple growths.
What Are the Symptoms of Fibroids?
Fibroids may cause very mild symptoms, women who do feel symptoms may experience the following:
- Pressure on the bladder or rectum
- Frequent urination
- Constipation and/or rectal pain
- Lower back and/or abdominal pain
Fibroids may also cause changes to a woman’s period, these include:
- Mild to severe cramping and pain
- Heavier bleeding, sometimes with blood clots
- Longer or more frequent menstruation
- Spotting or bleeding between periods
Other symptoms may include, pain during intercourse and reproductive problems.
If fibroids become very large, they can enlarge the stomach, making a woman look pregnant.
What Causes Uterine Fibroids?
Medical science does not know exactly what causes uterine fibroids to form. Their growth has been linked to the female hormones estrogen and progesterone. Specifically, estrogen dominance or excess estrogen in the body.
This happens when there is too much estrogen in relation to progesterone in the body.
What Causes Estrogen Dominance?
The chemicals used in producing the things we use can cause estrogen dominance and they are found in most of the things we use from our lipsticks to our nail polish and our household cleaning products.
You can have excess estrogen in your body as a result of the following:
- The beauty and body care products you use
- The foods you eat
- Stress
- Sleep Disorder
- Environmental factors
Who Can Get Fibroid?
Some patterns have been observed for women who can get fibroid.
- They are more common in black women.
- They usually occur between the ages of 30 and 40.
- They grow more quickly and appear at a younger age in black women.
- Having a family member with fibroids increases a woman’s risk.
- Being overweight or obese
- Having high blood pressure also may increase your risk
- No history of pregnancy
- Vitamin D deficiency
- The use of soybean milk may increase a woman’s risk, especially a developing uterus. Though these findings are conflicting, I think it is better to use “wisdom” here.
Types of Fibroids
Intramural fibroids – these are the most common types of fibroid, they grow in the wall of the uterus.
Subserosal fibroids – they grow on the outside of the uterus. As they grow larger, they can cause pain due to their size or pressure put on surrounding organs.
Submucosal fibroids – they grow just underneath the uterine lining and can flood into the uterus cavity and cause heavy bleeding and other more serious complications.
Pedunculated fibroids – they grow on small stalks inside or outside the uterus.
It’s also possible to have more than one type of fibroid.
How Can Fibroid Be Diagnosed?
Uterine fibroids are frequently found during a routine pelvic examination. Your doctor may feel irregularities in the shape of your uterus during a manual examination, which suggest the presence of fibroids. If you have symptoms of fibroids, then you may have to go for more tests:
Ultrasound – Uses sound waves to get a picture of your uterus to confirm the diagnosis and to map and measure fibroids.
Lab tests – If you have abnormal menstrual bleeding, there may be the need to investigate potential causes. These might include a complete blood count (CBC) to determine if you have anemia because of chronic blood loss and other blood tests to rule out bleeding disorders or thyroid problems.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – Uses magnets and radio waves to create the pictures, sizes, and locations of the fibroid.
Hysterosonography ( saline infusion sonogram) – uses sterile saline to expand the uterine cavity, making it easier to get images of submucosal fibroids.
Hysteroscopy – your doctor inserts a small, lighted telescope called a hysteroscope through your cervix into your uterus. Then injects saline into your uterus, expanding the uterine cavity to examine the walls of your uterus and the openings of your fallopian tubes.
Fibroid Treatment Options
What Are the Treatment for Fibroid?
At your doctor’s office you can get a prescription to control the growth and the symptoms of fibroid you are experiencing. This means you can only get a prescription to manage the fibroid and not to treat it.
Let’s look at these prescriptions you may get:
Pain Medications – such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen can help relieve menstrual cramping, this may make you feel better for some time and the pain may return every now and then.
Birth Control Pills – Oral contraceptives manage levels of estrogen and progestin. This can lessen some of the pain associated with fibroids. Hormonal birth control comes with a lot of side effects that eventually make hormonal imbalances worse.
Hormonal therapy drugs such as gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists may offer temporary symptom relief from fibroids by stopping your periods and shrinking fibroids.
GnRH agonists block the production of estrogen, and thereafter, causes bone loss, hot flashes, and vaginal dryness.
Fibroids will return to their previous size once treatment ends and you may even have much bigger sizes of fibroids to deal with.
Embolization – this is when your doctor uses a slender, flexible tube called a catheter to inject small plastic particles into the uterine arteries, which supply blood to your fibroids and uterus.
The purpose of this procedure is to block the fibroid blood vessels, starving the fibroids and causing them to shrink over time.
Embolization should not be an option for women wanting to get pregnant at some point after treatment because it affects your fertility.
The risks of complications from embolization include damage to the blood vessels, infection of the uterus, damage to other organs, possible problems in future pregnancies, ceased periods that can lead to menopause for women above 40 and uterine injuries which may lead to the remover of the uterus.
Surgery – A myomectomy typically removes the largest fibroids but the removal does not stop the fibroid from growing back.
The removal of the fibroid does not treat the root cause of the fibroid, this is an obvious reason why the fibroid can start growing back.
Endometrial A
Does your doctor really have the solution for treating fibroids?. Do not give up, regardless of what your doctor may have told you, medications and surgery are not your only fibroid treatment options.
Fibroid Natural Treatment
Fibroid natural treatment involves the processes of treating fibroids without the use of medications and surgery.
This fibroid treatment option is mild on the system and yet very effective. It is potent enough to handle the root cause of your fibroid and stop new fibroids from developing.
It does not harm your reproductive system or obstruct future pregnancies but rather nourishes your uterus and encourage pregnancy to occur if you are trying to conceive.
Uterine fibroid is one fertility condition a large number of women will have to deal with, it is best you are equipped with the fibroid treatment options available so you know what to do when you are faced with this condition.
Click here to find out how to treat fibroid naturally without surgery and reverse the problems of fibroid completely.
