Ep. 23 How to Heal Fibroids Holistically with Chinese Medicine, Functional Medicine & Feminine Wisdom
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Hello and welcome to Radiance the podcast, a space where mysticism, feminine embodiment, and modern wisdom meet. My name is Dr. Irene. I am an acupuncturist, a spiritual hacker of the feminine mysteries, and a guide to womb sovereignty and sacred health.
So today I wanted to bring into our episode a subject that is a very personal healing journey for me, which is how to heal fibroids holistically. Because I've been through this journey and let me tell you that it is possible. It requires your devotion and dedication to your sovereign health, but it is possible, sister. I wanted to share what fibroids are and how to heal fibroids from a very holistic lens. Weaving Chinese medicine, but also functional medicine and spirituality, because I truly believe that true healing comes from the integration of body, mind, heart, and spirit.
If you only address the physical component of an illness, you will only get to a certain point. You really need to go to the root cause, and this is why I went into Chinese medicine after studying Western medicine, because in Chinese medicine we see the person holistically. We see the illness from a very holistic lens.
And we're always investigating to get to the root cause of the illness, of the imbalance. So to begin with, what are fibroids? Fibroids are benign tumors that grow in our womb, in our uterus, and there are several types of fibroids. You can have intramural fibroids that are little tumors, benign, that grow in the muscle of the womb, of the uterus. Then you have the submucosal, which is fibroids that grow on the inner wall of the uterus in the endometrial lining. And then you have the subserosal, which is the outer wall of the uterus, and you have cervical fibroids as well. So they can grow in different parts of your womb.
Now some of the symptoms that women experience with fibroids are heavy bleeding, painful periods, feeling bloated, feeling pressure, feeling a heaviness, frequent urination because fibroids can grow to a certain size that they start to create pressure on the bladder, and also women that are experiencing challenges getting pregnant—so infertility challenges. I just really wanted to bring into this space that instead of seeing fibroids as something bad or wrong, see them as a message of your body that is calling for your attention. And this is with everything in our bodies, every illness, every pain. There is always a message there for you to receive and a story to transform.
So looking at fibroids through the Chinese medicine perspective, for example, let's start there. In Chinese medicine we work with different lenses to create a diagnosis. And it's not a diagnosis like in Western medicine where we diagnose you with fibroids. For example, in Chinese medicine we utilize different ways, and some of those ways are the 8 principles, for example, where we are trying to analyze everything through these principles: external, internal, cold, heat, yin and yang. And also we work with pathogenic factors, for example, with heat, cold, dampness, dryness, wind. And also we work with the energetics of the meridians and the channels. So as you have organs, like a lung and a liver and a heart, and as you have skin in your body, you also have energy channels in your body. You have chakras, you have nadis, you have energetic channels. And these energetic channels have a flow, have a pattern of energy. And if some of these patterns, if some of this flow gets stagnant, there can be an excess of energy. Or if the energy is not flowing, then some part of the body might be receiving less energy, so there's deficiency.
So we're also working with excess and deficiency, stagnation of energy, or deficiency of blood, of chi, of essence. So we're trying to find where these imbalances are in your body. And we do this by doing a very, very in-depth intake form. We ask a lot of questions. And we investigate where the imbalances are, what elements—we work with the elements as well. We work with five elements. Which elements, the yin and the yang, how are they flowing with each other? Are they in a healthy relationship? And so with that, we start to see patterns in the body. And your body, depending on its preferences and weaknesses and how it flows through life, it's going to start creating certain identities, an armor, a defense mechanism.
For example, fibroids can be because of phlegm, or dampness. Phlegm can be a way of containing something that needs protection. When there's badness around something, it's something that is going to create some kind of buffer so that you don't access what's inside—this phlegm, this containment of a story. So this is how the body works. The body is amazing energetically.
So in Chinese medicine we say that fibroids can be divided in different patterns. One of them, like I mentioned, is phlegm and dampness. And this is for women that usually have poor digestion, that have spleen chi deficiency, that are very low in vitality. Other fibroids might be created because of blood stagnation in the uterus. And some symptoms of this might be sharp, painful cramps, dark, clotty menstrual flow. And this is rooted in emotional stagnation. When there's stagnation in the womb, a question that I always ask my patient is, where do you feel stuck in your life? Is there any area where you feel stuck? And so let's investigate there, because once you start moving that in your outer life, your fibroids, your inner life, is going to start moving as well. So the treatment for blood stagnation is to create more flow, to promote blood flow, to break the stagnation. A beautiful herb for women with blood stagnation is turmeric, it's curcuma. It's a beautiful herb to help break stagnation and promote blood flow.
For phlegm and dampness, as I said, this is women that have poor digestion. They may have phlegm in their throat, in their lungs, in their sinuses. They might have IBS symptoms. They feel heavy, they feel fatigued. And so the treatment principle is to transform the phlegm and to tonify the spleen, to tonify the earth element. For these kinds of women, I always say that grounding is very important and cleaning their diet—no sugar, no flour, no cold foods, no raw food. Giving your digestion foods that are already cooked, aiding and helping your digestion so that you can absorb the energy from the foods and you can use that energy to clear the dampness. A beautiful herb for this is orange peel. So making tea with ginger and orange peel, lemon and honey. It's a great, great remedy for you with phlegm and damp fibroids.
Now, women also can get fibroids because of cold wombs, because of deficiency of chi and blood. So there's not enough blood, there's not enough nourishment and warmth that comes. So there's a cold womb. Think about what happens to water when you freeze it, when you put it into a cold temperature. It congeals, it freezes. So the same happens within our wombs. Women here usually have anemia, low iron. They can be pale, they can be fatigued. This can happen also after you've given birth because you lost a lot of blood, or after a trauma as well. So here we're trying to warm the womb, we're trying to nourish the blood. For this I really love goji berries. Goji berries are a beautiful herb to nourish blood. Rose petals as well, because it's also nourishing for the heart. And a nourished heart is a nourished womb. Also mugwort moxibustion is really good for warming the womb, and yoni steaming as well.
Another pattern that we see in fibroids is liver chi stagnation, and this has to do with stress, with women that are very stressed, that are very anxious. The liver is the one that is in charge of directing energy in our bodies, of the flow, the wood element. So women here, when they are in a lot of emotional overwhelm, they can freeze or they can burst into anger. So here, fibroids have to do with suppressed anger, with resentment. And here what we need to do again is movement, to use that energy for creative expression. Go and create, do art, dance, do a sport, go and do arts and crafts, emotional release. I truly believe that we all should do therapy at some point in our lives, because it gives us that safe space for us to express our emotions, our anger, whatever is alive in the moment.
Okay, so that's in Chinese medicine. Now, looking at it from a functional medicine perspective, the root cause of fibroids is very much because of estrogen dominance. Here we have to look at how your hormones are flowing throughout your cycle. I really love and really recommend for women to start tracking their cycles, because when you track your cycles you start to track the estrogen phase and the progesterone phase of your cycle, and then you start to see where you have maybe poor progesterone or excess estrogen. So tracking your cycle will give you a lot of information. And I teach you how to do this in my Womb Medicine Bundle. I explain exactly how to do this and what correlates to what. So if you're interested in starting to track your cycles, which gives you more awareness and connection to what's happening with your inner rhythms and inner cycles, go to the link below and go check it out. The Womb Medicine Bundle has so many resources for you.
So you really need to be careful with how your body is metabolizing estrogen. How are your liver detox pathways? Are you metabolizing well? Are you detoxifying well? Do you have slow digestion? Looking at your microbiome is also very important. For this, doing a test like the DUTCH test would be very, very beneficial and insightful. Also looking at your microbiome, getting a GI map, looking at your liver enzymes to see how your liver and your kidneys are working in the detoxification process, and also to look at your iron and ferritin levels. Because as I said before, one of the main symptoms of fibroids is heavy bleeding. So you can be low in iron, and that can create other problems like feeling very tired, not having motivation. Some women that have low iron think they are depressed, and actually once we start replenishing the iron, their depression symptoms start to dissipate. So it wasn't really an emotional cause, it was more an organic cause. So same-same, right? We're looking at all the causes: the organic, the physical, checking reality, but also the psycho-emotional and spiritual.
For this, an anti-inflammatory diet is super important. Having a nutrition that is high in iron is super important: eating green leafy leaves, beets. For those of you who eat meat, organic bone broth, organic meats. Lentils are high in iron, spinach as well. Also, I love suggesting castor oil packs to help the detoxification process of the liver, as well as saunas and dry brushing.
That's more like in the functional medicine, the Western medicine, organic, physical, biochemistry part. Now for the transpersonal healing and spiritual aspect. As I mentioned at the beginning, fibroids are a message of your body that is telling you that something is in misalignment.
So I'm just going to tell a personal story. When I found out that I had two intramural fibroids, which are now gone, the first thought that came to me was, oh my god, those are the two little babies I never had. Because I always wanted to be a mama. I am not a physical mother in this lifetime, and I had to go through that whole journey of letting go of that dream and of that desire. But it was something that was very, very much ingrained in me. My whole thirties were very much focused on becoming a mama, and that never happened. And when I found out about these two little fibroids, the first thought was that, oh my god, those are the two little babies I never had.
And then I started to go deeper into that. And for me it makes sense, because our womb is our center of creation, our matrix. It's where we create life. And so the womb is always receiving energy, and if we don't move it, if we don't create, then that energy starts to get stagnant. And I do consider myself a highly creative person, but this year, this first half of the year, I was in a very, very deep creative journey phase of my life where I was birthing a baby. My second baby. I don't want to say my second baby because my first baby was last year with Radiance the community. This was my second baby—birthing the Sacred Sexuality program called Womb Awakening. And I was very much immersed in that process.
While I was creating the curriculum, of course I was practicing all the techniques. I was doing the sacred sexuality practices, I was doing the seven gates practice, I was doing all of this. I was also doing the castor oil packs, the saunas, the Mayan abdominal massage, womb massages. I'm doing it all, because of course I need to move it through my body first in order to offer it to you. And voilà, six months later, the fibroids are gone.
And I didn't only do the energetic piece and the physical piece, but also the spiritual and emotional piece of the grief and the sadness of letting go. Another layer of not being a physical mama and healing ancestral patterns of guilt and shame that I've been carrying around not being a mother.
This is another piece that is really, really important for you to consider when you are healing fibroids: to go into the spiritual realms of what is your womb asking you? What is your womb needing? What part of you is asking to be expressed and liberated? This can be done through tending to your womb, talking to your womb, having a dialogue with your womb, having a womb journal. Again, in the Womb Medicine Bundle there is a womb journal for you to receive that will help you to unlock and reveal the voice of your womb.
It is very important to connect with your body, connect with your emotions, to go out to nature. Hug trees, put your feet in the river, swim in the lake. Connect to nature. Mama Gaia is our most potent healer. She has all the medicines that we need, and if we listen, if we open up our ears, we can receive that medicine. And remember that we are the medicine, that we have everything within us also to heal.
With this, I'm going to wrap it up and just say that healing fibroids is possible. It needs to be done with devotion and commitment and trust in the process, and to address it holistically—in body, mind, heart, and soul. And yeah, my sister, I truly believe also that as we heal ourselves, we heal the collective. I feel that the gynecological illnesses that we're having—fibroids, PCOS, infertility—are just another symptom of the imbalances that we have in our culture. So it is a beautiful opportunity for us as women to regain our sovereignty, to regain our sovereign health, to reclaim our power as magicians, as high priestesses, as witches.
Remember that a witch is someone that knows how to utilize the medicines of the earth, that is connected to the seasons of nature. The witches are the midwives, the doulas, the painters, the artists, the dancers, the lovers, the mothers, the healers, the mentors.
So if any of this resonated with you, I would love to hear from you. Remember to subscribe to my channel. Click the little bell so that you don't miss any of my episodes. If you feel this episode will help a sister, please forward it to her and give me a review, because that's also very helpful for this podcast to keep creating and to keep having a dialogue between each other. I always love to hear from you.
All right. Remember that healing fibroids is not just about shrinking tissue. It's about reclaiming truth, reclaiming your power, reclaiming your voice. Remember that your womb is not broken. She is wise and she's speaking. And yeah, I love you. And until the next one, I honor your womb, and let's keep walking the beauty way together. Many blessings and ciao for now.
