It’s very hard to avoid these sources.  However, it’s interesting (and slightly scary!) to think of how much we each are exposed to radiation on a daily basis:

• Smoking
• Medical Imaging
• Air Travel
• Living at high altitudes
• Watching TV
• Cell Phones

What does this have to do with ovarian cysts?  Hopefully, not that much.  Still, it would be a good idea to limit your radiation exposure in general.

There might be.  However, there’s not a lot of scientific research to back it up.  There are quite a few personal testimonials though.  And the ideas behind it just might work…

You see, there’s a lot of places that our bodies pick up contamination.  We are exposed every day to estrogenic compounds.  In pesticides, in the drinking water, in dairy products, in meat, in soy…the list can go on and on.  This exposure to excess estrogen is having an untold effect upon our bodies.

Just think about it – we have things going on like young girls maturing earlier, women having menopause later, higher incidence of diabetes and insulin resistance, infertility, ovarian cysts, the list could go on and on!

Now, your liver is capable of removing extra estrogen from your system.  However, most people’s livers are very clogged up with gallstones and even parasites (YUCK!)  But fortunately, it doesn’t seem especially hard to get rid of these.

There are several liver cleanses available (there’s other cleanses as well, but if you want to try a cleanse, I’d start with this one.)  Before you do it, you have to do a parasite cleanse to get rid of liver flukes. Otherwise, it will just make you very sick.

A liver cleanse should usually be done over the weekend, after you complete the parasite cleanse.  Before you start it, you will want to drink a half gallon of unsweetened natural apple juice for 3 days.  This will soften the stones to help them pass easily.  It doesn’t taste that great, but it’s very necessary!

For the liver cleanse, there are not a lot of supplies that you need.  I’ve included links to Amazon for a few of these, but you probably will be able to find ingredients in your local health food or drug store.  Here’s a quick list:

• 4 TBSP Epsom Salts
• Olive Oil
• Large fresh pink grapefruit (or 2 small).
• Ornithine – to help you sleep Saturday night.
• Large plastic straw
• Pint jar with lid
• Black walnut tincture (You can also use this with the parasite cleanse.)

Here is the schedule you will follow.  Stick to this for the best results.

2:00 PM – Stop eating and drinking.  Prepare your Epsom salts.  Mix 4 teaspoons in 3 cups of water and pour it into a jar.  This will be four servings at ¾ cup each.  Put it in the fridge to get cold – this helps with the taste.

6:00 PM – Have your first serving of Epsom salts.  Drink ¾ cup.  You can drink a few sips of plain water afterwards to rinse out your mouth.  Get out your olive oil and grapefruit to warm up.

8:00 PM – Have your second serving of Epsom salts.  Take care of any tasks you need to do before bed, as you will be laying down after the next serving, and staying down most of the day tomorrow.

9:45 PM – Prepare the cleansing drink.  Pour ½ cup of olive oil into the jar.  Wash your grapefruit well and dry it.  Squeeze it into the measuring cup.  Make sure you get at least ½ cup of juice, but up to ¾ cup is best.  You can add part fresh lemonade (not from a mix) if you don’t have enough.  Remove any pulp, and add this to the olive oil.  Also add 10 to 20 drops of the black walnut tincture.  Put a lid on the jar, and shake it hard until it’s watery.

Then visit the bathroom one more time.

10:00 PM (Not more than 15 minutes late).  Drink the mixture.  Take 4 ornithine capsules to make sure you can sleep through the night (take 8 if you already have insomnia).  You can use a plastic straw to make drinking this easier.  You can also have straight honey to chase this down between sips.  Get it all down in 5 minutes.

Then lie down immediately.  The sooner you lie down, the more stones you will get out.  Lie flat on your back with your head high up on the pillow and try to keep perfectly still for at least twenty minutes.

You’ll feel a really weird sensation at this point.  You can actually feel the gall stones rolling out of the liver.  It doesn’t hurt because you’ve opened the ducts with the Epsom salts.  But it is one of the weirdest sensations I’ve ever felt.

Go to sleep at this point in order to get the most stones out.

The Next Morning:   (not earlier than 6 AM) When you wake up, drink your next dose of Epsom salts.  If you feel nauseous, wait until it passes before you drink them.  Then go back to bed.

2 Hours later:  Take the last dose of Epsom salts.  You can then go back to bed again.

After two more hours you can eat again.  First drink fruit juice.  In another half hour, have some fruit.  An hour later, eat regular food but keep it light.  By dinner time, you should feel back to normal.

Expect to have very loose, watery diarrhea in the morning.  You should see green gallstones in your bowel movements.  These will float.  Count them all the best you can – you may see up to 2000 stones!  You will also sometimes see what is called “chaff.”  These are cholesterol crystals that didn’t form into stones.  Usually, these float and are tan colored with millions of tiny white crystals.

Most people who do this report a big boost in energy levels, both from the death of the parasites and the increased functioning of the liver.  Now, don’t do this if you are pregnant or nursing – herbs may have a bad effect on a baby.    Also, I would talk to your doctor if you have any preexisting liver conditions or are taking any medications.  Herbs do interact with medications, or could make an underlying health condition worse.

If you try this, let us know what your results are!

There are some instances where cancer is more likely.  For example, if there is any solid material in the cyst, then surgery is necessary to test it.  Also, if there are any papillary projections (little finger like areas sticking out), then surgery is done.  Other than that, doctors are advised to watch the cyst on ultrasound.

In a test, 38.8% of these septated ovarian cysts resolved on their own.  10% of them were removed, with none of them being cancerous.

So complex septated ovarian cysts are not necessarily considered complex anymore.  There’s a good chance that it can be treated naturally and go away on its own, without invasive surgery.

The National Instititute of Health announced that it awarded several grants to study botanical treatments for certain disorders.  Two of these studies directly cover herbs commonly recommended for ovarian cyst treatment.  Here’s the 411:

Botanical Dietary Supplements for Women’s Health

Principal Investigator: Norman Farnsworth, Ph.D.
Institution: University of Illinois at Chicago

This center has been supported for 10 years and has always focused on women’s health. In this new cycle, the center’s mission has evolved to a focus on the safety of botanical dietary supplements, such as black cohosh and licorice, which are widely available. The investigators will study how multi-component mixtures work together; how they are absorbed, distributed and eliminated by the body; how they affect chemical and physical processes within the body; how they interact with drugs; and how they impact women’s own estrogenic hormones.

Botanical Estrogens: Mechanisms, Dose and Target Tissues

Principal Investigator: William Helferich, Ph.D.
Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Partner Institutions: University of Mississippi, University; Oregon State University, Corvallis; National Center for Toxicological Research, Jefferson, Ark.

This new center will address safety, efficacy, and mechanism of action of botanical estrogens, such as wild yam, soy and dong quai, currently being consumed by women. The projects will look at biological effects of botanical estrogens on molecular mechanisms and cellular pathways, and their actions on bone, uterus, breast tissue, breast cancer metastasis, and cognition.

Of specific interest are dong quai, wild yam, and soy.  Dong quai and soy are both estrogenic herbs – they affect your level of estrogen.  Wild yam is used to make progesterone cream, which may be useful in controlling ovarian cysts.  Black cohosh and licorice are also often recommended to treat cysts as well.

However, not all of these herbs work.  Some actually make cysts worse in certain women.   Most women already have an overabundance of estrogen, thanks to many sources in the environment.   This can actually increase the number of follicles released which are not all reabsorbed.  It also can worsen endometriosis, a common contributor to cysts.

Progesterone cream, on the other hand, shows promise for helping heal endometrial cysts and PCOS.   The progesterone applied at the right time of the month signals the cyst to dissolve.  It also helps to shrink endometrial tissue.

It will be very interesting to see what the results of this study will be!  Of course, it’ll probably be a few years until we find out

You can see the news story here.

There was an article on CNN today about hormone replacement therapy.  Apparently Wyeth, a pharmaceutical giant, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to deliberately misled people on the benefits on hormonal therapy.

These articles were published in medical journals, and overly stated the benefits of replacement hormones, while underplaying the risks.  CNN said,

The analysis of those articles found that they “implied that estrogen could preserve youth and health.” Further, the study says, physicians were prescribing estrogen to millions of women who had no symptoms.

“In 1975, an eight-fold increase in endometrial cancer was linked to estrogen use and estrogen sales decreased,” Fugh-Berman wrote. “Today, despite definitive scientific data to the contrary, many gynecologists still believe that the benefits of HT outweigh the risks in asymptomatic women. This non-evidence based perception may be the result of decades of carefully orchestrated corporate influence on medical literature.”

The articles were crafted to downplay the perceived risks of hormone therapy and to promote unproved uses for hormone therapy, such as preventing dementia, Parkinson’s disease, vision problems and wrinkles, according to Fugh-Berman’s analysis.

However, the Women’s Health Initiative found that HRT is linked to an increase in breast cancer, ovarian cancer, strokes, and other problems.

The main hormone prescribed was estrogen.  Now, this seems to show that artificially boosting estrogen levels is dangerous. However, this is what most birth control pills will do.

So what should you do if your doctor prescribes birth control to clear up your cysts?

First, try natural methods to get rid of them.  If you absolutely must take birth control, consider doing progesterone only.  This is a little less effective, but it is much safer.

Now, cattle are often treated with hormones to increase their milk production.  Could there a connection between this hormonal treatment and the prevalence of cystic ovarian disease?  It’s very possible.  And you could even extrapolate that to humans…

It would be interesting to see if nonhormonally treated dairy cattle experience this in a signicantly less percentage than those treated.  It would definitely be a case to see if the hormones entering our diet are causing the increase in ovarian cysts that we see today.

There are two potential complications that you need to be aware of with functional cysts.  In either of these cases, you need to see a doctor right away.  These are:

• A burst cyst.
• A twisted cyst, or ovarian torsion.

If the cyst happens to burst, you will generally experience a sharp pain from the cyst bursting.  This is generally followed by a burning sensation in your abdomen.  If the fluid from inside the cyst has sprayed into the surrounding area, it irritates the tissue, which creates this burning.  Generally, a cyst is more likely to burst right after intercourse, heavy lifting, or sudden pressure on your stomach.  Of course, it may burst just because as well…

If this happens to you, call your doctor right away.  He’ll probably want to see you in order to get you started on antibiotics.  They’ll also want to make sure you don’t have any internal bleeding.  In most cases, a burst cyst will resolve itself as long as you avoid the risk of infection.

Ovarian torsion is a more severe situation.  Fortunately, it’s not very common.  In some cases, the cyst grows on a stem.  As it gets larger, it twists downwards, twisting the ovary as well.  This cuts off the blood supply to the ovary, causing intense pain.  This pain is more like a kidney stone.  If it’s not treated right away, the ovary will die from the lack of blood supply.  Treatment for this is generally surgery.

So to sum it up, if your pain suddenly worsens, and it’s not time for ovulation (middle of your menstrual cycle), call your doctor.  Each woman will experience pain differently.  A good rule of thumb is that it’s better not to take chances.  If you think something is going on, it’s better to go and get it checked out than let a potentially dangerous problem go undiscovered.

Basically, these foods contain compounds that are called antiangiogenic.  What that means is that they keep the body from growing new blood vessels.  Tumors need blood in order to survive.  In fact, studies showed that animals with large tumors who were treated with antiangiogenic medications had a significant reduction in the size of the tumors.  In human studies, most cancers responded well to this sort of treatment, as long as they were in the early stages.

What does this mean for ovarian cysts?  Well, if there is any fear that the cyst is cancerous, you can try a diet of these foods to help your body shrink the cyst.  However, for fluid filled cysts, this may or may not help.  Since those don’t rely as much on blood vessel supply, they are less likely to shrink.  Still, including these foods in your everyday diet may help your overall health.

Some of the common herbs used to treat ovarian cysts are burdock, mullein, St. John’s Wort, Black Cohosh and dandelion.    St. John’s Wort is expecially known for interacting with other medications.  It tends to affect how the body absorbs prescriptions medicines, which can be especially harmful if you are taking drugs for blood pressure or a heart condition.

US News lists nine supplements to avoid while taking heart medication.  With herbal remedies, it’s important to remember to check with your doctor to make sure you avoid any interactions, especially if you are taking any prescription medication.  You can also consult a herbalist or a naturopathic doctor.

Most of the time, this type of cyst is harmless.  However, there is a small chance (less than 5%) that it is cancerous.  For this reason, most doctors will recommend you have surgery so they can biopsy the cyst.  It is the only way to absolutely rule out cancer.

There are a few tests that you should ask for before you have the surgery.  These can give you and the doctor a better idea of what you are dealing with.  One of the most common is a blood test for CA-125.  Elevated levels of this hormone are found in 80% of women with ovarian cancer.  If it’s not elevated, then your chances of cancer are somewhat less.  However, having normal levels does not completely rule out cancer.

It can be scary to think about having surgery for this, especially when the chances of it being cancer are relatively low.  However, since ovarian cancer is usually not diagnosed until it’s too late to treat, it’s best to rule out the possibility while it is still relatively contained.

Usually, doctors will do a laparascopy to remove the cyst.  However, if the solid component is over 2 ½ inches in diameter, they may need to do a traditional abdominal surgery.  Also, if the doctor finds evidence of cancer while doing the laparascopy, he will often change the procedure in order to make sure any possible cancer is removed.  It will cause you to have a longer recovery time, but if it turns out you do have cancer, it is worth it.