Food is the foundation for all health. You can make or break the future of your health through simple decisions made in your diet.
How does this apply in HPV?
Human Papilloma Viruses can be complex, yet so simple at the same time.
Learn how to help support the treatment of HPV symptoms and prevent recurrences through 3 simple steps in your diet!
Healing HPV Through FOOD
If you have been diagnosed with HPV, warts, or abnormal cervical cells, like cervical dysplasia, we can understand that the future may not seem as bright as it used to.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
There are many treatment options for HPV complications from intensive surgeries to at-home treatments.
Step 1: Diet
Rather than patiently waiting for your doctor to make the call for treatment, in the meantime, you can take your health into your own hands through education, nutrition, and lifestyle.
Is there a cure for HPV?
While there is no cure for HPV, as outlined in some of our other blogs, you can make healthier lifestyle choices starting with the foundations – DIET.
Through diet, you can get the nutrients necessary to help boost your immune system, keeping it robust enough to reduce HPV symptoms and prevent recurrent infections of the human papilloma virus.
How do you start changing your diet?
Studies have shown that those who eat nutrient-poor diets, especially those low in fruit and vegetables, are missing key nutrients. This makes those with poor diets more likely to develop persistent HPV. Fruits and vegetables have high levels of antioxidants, which help to neutralize toxic molecules in your body. They also contain key nutrients such as folate, beta-carotene, vitamin C, among other nutrient goldmines!
We know that dietary changes can be difficult; especially the part of knowing exactly what you can and cannot include. Severe restrictions may not be warranted for you depending on your medical conditions, and are also easy to maintain long-term. What we can help with is making general suggestions that everyone will benefit from. We want to help make things easy, so here it is:
3 Suggestions to Help your Body Heal from HPV with Food
Cut out any simple, refined carbohydrates from your diet
Wondering what simple refined carbohydrates are?
They include white sugar, white bread, white flour, white pasta. You get the trend!
Opt for whole grains instead; the more complex the carbohydrate, the healthier it is for you. This includes, wheat, oats, quinoa, beans and starchy vegetables, like white potato.
Choosing natural forms of sugar are less toxic and are more supportive for your body by including super-nutrients like antioxidants, such as acerola cherry, raspberries, or goji berries. Citrus fruits are also great for high levels of vitamin C, which helps to support your immune system.
BONUS: Vitamin C is also seen to be lower in those with HPV-related cervical cancer. Check out our blog post on Vitamin C and HPV for more details!
Increasing your daily intake of fruit and vegetables
This is the simplest way to improve your overall health.
Try to aim for two handfuls of fruit or vegetables with every meal, equaling out to 7 to 10 servings a day. This may seem like a lot, but 4 to 5 cups (1/2 cup = 1 serving) of fruit and vegetables a day isn’t too hard to implement if you do it strategically!
There are easy ways to sneak more vegetables into your diet, like making a spaghetti sauce that’s jam-packed with veggies, or a smoothie full of blended veggies, balanced out by some sweet fruit!
Choose your favorite vegetables and eat those in large quantities! Green leafy vegetables, such as kale and spinach, are great sources of folate, carotenoids, vitamin C, vitamin K, fiber, and calcium.
Cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, and again, kale, have a number of very important components, one being diindolylmethane, or DIM, another being indole-3-carbinol (I3C) that play a key role in killing HPV infected cells and cancer cells.
Some small human trials are showing new evidence that I3C supplementation may help to treat conditions related to HPV, including CIN. Significant regressions of CIN were seen in I3C treatment groups, even though they originally had higher numbers of HPV-positive subjects!
Sulfurophane, found in high quantities in broccoli has shown in preliminary cell studies to increase cell death of cervical cancer cells!
Try to incorporate half of your vegetable servings from these 2 groups of veggies!
Support Your Immune System with Herbs and Nutrients
In addition to an optimal HPV diet, there are several key herbs and nutrients that have been studied in relation to HPV.
These nutrients enhance the immune system, and are found concentrated in herbs such as Green Tea, Astragalus membranaceous, and Reishi Mushroom, all of which are key ingredients in Papillex.
Other immune system enhancing herbs that are traditionally considered to be anti-viral HPV herbs or HPV natural remedies include Goldenseal, Curcumin, AHCC, and many more. Through enhancement of the immune system with these natural, herbal approaches, you suffer no side effects and help your body support and regulate itself.
