Although sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are better understood and more treatable than in the past, they remain a major health concern in the United States. In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that there were nearly 20 million new infections annually, with direct medical costs totaling nearly $16 billion. While many people realize that there has been progress in the conventional medical treatment of STDs, what they may not know is that there has also been progress in using alternative, particularly herbal, treatments.
Gonorrhea is caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Women are far more likely to become infected than men. Carol Dalton, a nurse practitioner, says that because gonorrhea can cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and other illnesses, as well as infertility, she believes in treating it by conventional means. “We don’t want women who have the infection to pass it on. Gonorrhea can occur without any symptoms for a long time, so that you might be passing it on without being aware of it. We treat this very aggressively.”
The first recourse is antibiotics. However, Dr. Allan Warshowsky cautions that antibiotics must be carefully monitored. Dr. Warshowsky is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist whose specialty is holistic gynecology. He says, “Most of my treatment of this disease is fairly conventional. I use antibiotics unless patients specifically ask me not to use them. But it is also important to maintain and restore gut bacteria while treating a patient with antibiotics. I use bifidum, acidophilus, and some of the Saccharomyces strains of beneficial yeast to maintain normal gut biosis. I think this is paramount.”
He combines this with herbal treatment and psychological counseling. “It is also important, especially if a patient is having recurrent problems with STDs, to look at her relationships, because whatever is going on physically is a manifestation of a deeper energy problem in the individual. If the patient is amenable to examining these deeper problems, it can really help lead to a much more lasting cure than just taking antibiotics.
“There are certainly people I see who prefer not to have antibiotics and, then, as long as the patient is a willing partner in her own therapy and not just looking to me to cure the disease, I use some herbal products, such as echinacea and goldenseal, and other herbs and supplements that can be helpful in enhancing immunity and fighting off infection.”
Dr. Linda Page, a doctor of naturopathy who is the author of Healthy Healing, has found a variety of herbs useful in treating STDs, including gonorrhea. She uses a combination that includes goldenseal, myrrh, pau d’arco, vegetable acidophilus, ginkgo, and dandelion. Another combination she uses is burdock, juniper, squawvine, bayberry, dandelion, gentian, and black walnut.
She adds, “You can see where we are going with these herbs. This is obviously a broad-spectrum approach—antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial. This is because these categories of STDs seem to exhibit symptoms of all these types of infections: fungal symptoms, such as discharge; bacterial symptoms, such as inflammation; and viral symptoms, in that these infections can migrate to other parts of the body.”
In 2013, 1.4 million chlamydia diagnoses were reported in the United States. Because many cases go undetected, it is estimated that there are actually many more new cases annually. Amanda McQuade Crawford, health expert and author of Herbal Remedies for Women, provides some background: The infecting organism, Chlamydia trachomatis, is a one-celled parasite with a rigid cell wall. Chlamydia is harder to clear up with herbal agents than some other one-celled organisms, such as bacteria and yeast, which respond very well to herbal treatment. “It often goes undiagnosed and can cause an inflammation of the cervix in women. This is why it is one of the leading causes of more serious pelvic diseases, particularly PID.”
“Usually the first symptom is a painless bump that goes unnoticed, followed by swollen lymph glands and headaches,” Crawford says. “Some women get strange fleeting pains in their joints and muscles, as well as chills, and even weight loss, one to four weeks later.
“There will be a vaginal discharge that feels like mucus but has a bad odor. There may also be pain with sexual intercourse and some spotting after intercourse. If there is spotting between menstrual periods, a woman should see a licensed practitioner to look for signs of redness on the cervix.
“Other signs that women might experience are urinary frequency and painful urination, as well as some lower abdominal pain, although these symptoms may be caused by some other conditions as well.”
Carol Dalton emphasizes that chlamydia often leads to PID. “It can go up into the uterus, the fallopian tubes, and the ovarian area and cause very serious infections and scarring and, therefore, infertility.” As with so many diseases, early detection is essential. It can also cause problems in pregnancy, including premature or difficult delivery.
In conventional drug treatment, antibiotics are used. “Which antibiotic is chosen, if any, will depend on whether a woman is pregnant or not,” Crawford explains. “There are often secondary infections with bacteria or viruses, and that can complicate the picture. That’s another reason why chlamydia is difficult to treat with simple remedies.”
In Dalton’s practice, she uses antibiotics. “We use antibiotics because of the risk factor. I think in health care you always weigh the risks versus the benefits of treatment. In this case, you see that the risk is great. Even if someone isn’t concerned about fertility, you still weigh the risk of damaging the woman’s immune system because you have an active infection that could become very serious. So chlamydia is one of the things that we don’t really fool around with. We treat it with antibiotics; and we recheck it to make sure it’s gone.”
Crawford has looked into herbal treatments for chlamydia. One is the antiinflammatory herb calendula, or marigold—not the garden variety but the medicinal single-flower kind. Demulcents such as plantain are also useful and are often combined with herbs that help normalize the hormones. As she puts it, “Sometimes a hormonal imbalance will have led to a change in the reproductive tissues, so these rectifying herbs are needed to make it possible to clear up this infection.”
Herbal douches can also be of some help with reproductive infections, though, according to Crawford, they really can’t get to the source of the problem. While the douche is rinsing out the infectious agent, it is also rinsing away the helpful bacteria, which is why you should be cautious about using herbal douches with any kind of infection. Still, the antimicrobial herbs used in the douches can help reduce the infectious organisms. “What we normally do,” Crawford explains, “is follow each douche with a rest period, because these douches can dry out the tissue, making the irritated vaginal walls more susceptible to other infections. Even plain water douches will have that effect.”
Crawford describes a douche formula that uses 2 ounces of organic grape root, also know as barberry bark root, and 1 ounce of calendula flower. Steep 1 ounce of this mixture in a pint of boiling water for about forty-five minutes. Strain it and let the tea cool to a comfortable temperature for vaginal use. To this mixture add about 7 drops of essential oil of tea tree. You can use a wire whisk to help mix them together. Make sure all the containers used are sterilized. Use this as a douche twice a week for up to three weeks. It’s not necessary to rinse the herbs out of the vaginal canal afterward, but Crawford says that it feels very comforting to get rid of some of the bad-smelling discharge from chlamydia.
Dr. Page uses vaginal ointments to treat chlamydia. She suggests a combination of berberine-compound herbs: goldenseal, barberry, and Oregon grape. Mix this with vitamin A oil and apply directly to the cervix via a tampon.
Pelvic inflammatory disease generally originates from an infection, such as chlamydia, that spreads out of control. Dalton says that chlamydia is the primary cause of PID. Because PID can be a “silent” infection, someone can have it for years without knowing she is infected. “So, it’s easily transmitted. It can fester in the cervical canal, and then, when the immune system is low, can creep up into the other pelvic organs and cause a major infection.”
She adds that it was a shift in birth control methods that played a big part in the rise of PID. “We really saw a lot of this disease when IUDs became popular, particularly when the Dalkon Shield was still being used. The Dalkon Shield had a multifilament string; there were multiple threads within this string, and bacteria could climb up the threads more easily, and into the uterus. The problems with the Dalkon Shield brought about a greater understanding of PID: how to develop cultures for it, how to study it, and what treatment to use knowledge of the damage that PID could do.”
PID symptoms vary; some women have very severe symptoms, other women have symptoms so mild that they are unaware they are infected. The most common symptom is pain, which ranges from a dull ache to pain so debilitating that walking is impossible. Other symptoms are bleeding, a foul discharge, cramps, swelling in the abdominal area, fever, and chills.
In addition to damaging the internal organs, PID can also result in scarring, particularly of the fallopian tubes. As Dalton explains, “This is how PID causes infertility. Even after you have cleared the infection, even if it hasn’t blocked the tubes completely with scarring, the wavelike, hairlike projections that sweep the sperm through the fallopian tube to the egg and that sweep the egg up into the fallopian tube to meet with the sperm are often damaged and flattened. So that even though you may have a good, clear tube, the system isn’t working properly. When this happens, it’s a very serious problem, particularly for young, fertile women. It’s probably one of the major causes of infertility. That’s why we have to be really aggressive in testing for chlamydia and in treating it. We can clear the infection. We can give women antibiotics, but if we don’t catch it soon enough, it can do all of this damage and may result in infertility.”
Dalton explains that once a woman is at the point where PID has really taken hold, there is severe swelling and inflammation in the entire pelvic area. To heal properly, the woman has to rest her body completely, which means bed rest. “Because whenever we are standing or walking, just because of gravity and the weight of the body, the pelvic area is impinged upon and there is a lot of pressure. So we encourage a woman to go to bed and rest while she is being treated. We get a much better response, much better healing, quicker healing, and less recurrence when this is followed.
“The other thing we advise patients to do is to use diet and supplements to encourage healing. We use zinc and vitamins C and E to encourage good oxygenation and tissue repair. We have to remember that the antibiotic just kills the bacteria, it does not cause healing to take place. Those tissues have to heal on their own, and if you give them a little extra encouragement with extra nutrients they are going to do that in a quicker and better fashion.”
According to a 2015 fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the US, affecting nearly all sexually active people at some point in their lives. In 90 percent of cases, it resolves on its own without causing any health concerns. However, persistent infection can cause problems ranging from genital warts to cancer.Among the cancers that may be associated with HPV are cancer of the cervix, vulva, vagina, penis, anus, tonsils, and tongue.
HPV is particularly hazardous, says Carol Dalton, because it often goes undetected. “People often have no idea that they have it because it’s microscopic, so it’s easily transmitted during sexual intercourse. One study showed that 75 percent of a group of women and men who were tested were positive for HPV, and most of them did not realize they were infected.” HPV is diagnosed in women most frequently by a Pap smear. The Pap smear results come back as “atypical, suspicious of HPV” or “dysplasia, suspicious of HPV,” Dalton explains. She also underlines the possible consequences of getting HPV. “It’s the primary cause of dysplasia. Probably over 90 percent of the time, dysplasia of the cervix or, eventually, cervical cancer, is caused by HPV. That’s why it’s so important to get a proper diagnosis.”
The condition of the immune system is related to the health of a woman’s vaginal and cervical cells. “Clearly, a woman can be infected with this, and we know it is in her system, but she is not having any problems. It’s not invading the cells and growing and changing them into abnormal ones. Whether or not a woman will develop HPV depends on the response of the immune system.
“Once a woman develops abnormal cells, we diagnose it by doing a colposcopy and biopsy of any abnormal cells. A colposcope is an instrument we use to look at the cervix, vagina, and labia. It magnifies these areas so that we can actually see the cells to identify the areas where abnormal cells are present. After we have identified the abnormal cells, we do small biopsies—pinhead size or smaller. The biopsies are sent to a pathology lab where they section them and examine them under a microscope to identify the cells and see what is going on there.”
Although HPV cannot be cured, the cell changes that arise from infection can be treated. “The typical treatment can be to do nothing and watch for a while to see if the body can heal itself and reverse the process,” Dalton says. “Cryotherapy, freezing of the cells, may be used, as well as laser therapy or a procedure called LEEP (loop excisional electrosurgical procedure), which uses an electrical wire to cut out abnormal tissue. All of these destroy the abnormal cells.
“The fortunate thing,” Dalton continues, “is that the vagina and cervix produce a new surface of cells about every six to eight weeks. So if we can remove the cells that are abnormal, new, healthy cells will hopefully grow in. One reason it is important to remove the abnormal cells is that new cells tend to be like the cells next to them, so if abnormal cells remain in the body, the new cells will grow into abnormal cells too.”
Unfortunately, just removing these abnormal cells often does not end the problem. As Dalton notes, “You can’t kill off the virus completely, since it is in the surrounding tissue. You can’t cauterize or remove the whole lining of the vagina. We only remove the cells that have become abnormal. There is a very high recurrence rate, with HPV causing the same abnormal cell growth all over again, unless you improve the woman’s immune system and strengthen those normal cells.”
Oral supplements of zinc, vitamin C, beta-carotene, folic acid, and general Bcomplex, along with a multivitamin-mineral, may aid in this process. Dalton says, “We recommend larger than usual doses of these because we have found that the new cell growth responds well to these nutrients. Moreover, many of these are antiviral nutrients. They help the woman’s body fight the virus more readily and more systematically.
“We also use vitamin A suppositories. There’s been a fair amount of work done on how cervical dysplasia can be treated with topical vitamin A. There are also suppositories we use called papillo suppositories that are made to fight the HPV virus topically. With these, we are treating the whole vaginal area and not just the cells that have become abnormal. We also use something called formula W, for wart virus, that contains herbs that help fight the HPV virus.”
Her clinic uses both oral and topical treatments. They also examine patients’ stress levels, their diet, and their lifestyle issues. This seems to be a successful approach, since, she maintains, “We have about a 1 to 2 percent recurrence rate with HPV, while the national average, when conventional methods are used exclusively, is 10 to 15 percent recurrence. So we feel that treating the whole person has made a huge difference in our ability to prevent recurrence, which is really the issue. HPV is not so hard to treat initially, but it’s keeping it from coming back that is really the problem. I would encourage women who have this problem to look at the whole person.”
HIV and AIDS have created a further difficulty in treatment. “We’ve had to be very careful about screening for HIV and AIDS and treating those patients,” Dalton points out, “because the immune system with HIV is so compromised that if a woman with HIV does contract HPV, it seems to grow at a very rapid rate. The cells can turn into cancerous cells much more easily on the vulva, labia, cervix, and vagina. Practitioners treating patients who have HIV and AIDS need to be extremely cautious in doing colposcopies and biopsies. Even more than with the average patient, be aggressive with treatment and in building the immune system. Because having these other problems will greatly increase the risk factor of the abnormal cells turning into cancerous cells.”
Every parent desires only the best for their children, which is why most insist that their children, primarily girls but now also boys, receive the three-shot series of HPV vaccines. Parents do this because there is the unchallenged assumption that vaccine public mandates and physician recommendations are founded upon sound scientific and medical principles of safety and efficacy. This is not only true for the HPV vaccines—Merck’s Gardasil and Glaxo’s Cervarix—but for all childhood vaccines.
When we investigate the vaccines rationally and objectively what is discovered should shake the pro-vaccine paradigm to its very foundations. What we find is a trail of permanent injury, neurological disorders, and death. And behind that we discover political and private obfuscation, cover-ups, lies, distortions, and no apologies from either government or the pharmaceutical industry. There is no desire by any government agency, corporation, or leading medical institution to seek the truth. In an article posted on my blog (http://blog.garynull.com), I shed considerable light on this topic. Here I will briefly summarize.
Relying upon the data from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), the vaccine watch organization Sanevax determined that, since Gardasil’s launch in 2006 until November 2012, the HPV vaccine was linked to 121 deaths and over 27, 485 medical injuries of young girls, some as young as eleven years old. Unfortunately, only a fraction of vaccine adverse events reported by pediatricians, physicians, medical clinics, and hospitals make their way into the VAERS database. Few parents even know such a reporting system exists.
From the start, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus was completely unnecessary. Aside from the unreasonable health risks that come with this vaccine, Gardasil is also the most expensive recommended vaccine on the market at $120 – $150 per injection and three required doses. If this vaccine becomes mandated for school attendance, how are underprivileged people and the uninsured to come up with the money? And as funding for government programs dries up, does it make any sense to allocate state health care dollars to vaccinate Medicaideligible girls with Gardasil instead of using the money for something that actually might be of benefit?
In the US and the UK, the health agencies are ruled and dictated by the drug makers. Merck, Pfizer and a handful of other pharmaceutical firms are the CDC and FDA and vice versa. If we wish to find more accurate official views and policies regarding the HPV vaccines, we must look at other nations that care more about the public health of their populations rather than the revenues of private corporations. Today there is a growing concern among many nations’ health ministries and physicians about the serious health risks associated with these vaccines.
So why hasn’t the FDA, the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, or Merck itself responded to the VAERS reports that Gardasil is not a safe vaccine? The argument, which is the same defense used by all the drug companies and government agencies against any adverse reaction to any vaccine, is that since the VAERS system uses voluntary, passive reporting, it does not prove that a sudden health problem—or even death—occurring after vaccination was in fact caused by the vaccine.
The only causal relationships acceptable to the powers that be are those that result from scientific studies. But these are often unacceptable to the rest of us since the majority of these studies are funded by the pharmaceutical companies themselves. So the fix is in. What can any injured child or concerned parent do in the face of this hard line—should they be required to set up their own scientific study? Obviously, neither Merck nor our government willing to spend money to prove that Gardasil is dangerous—it is much simpler and infinitely more lucrative to just ignore the allegations and try to portray the victims as conspiratorial whiners.
The CDC and the FDA maintain that Gardasil is an important cervical cancer prevention tool that could protect the health of millions of women. But the facts show that the opposite is true. In point of fact, Gardasil vaccination is not justified by the health “benefits” nor is it even economically feasible. Nevertheless, the lure of huge profits appears to cloud the thinking of everyone in a position to say no to the promotion of Gardasil. It is up to us, the victims, the parents, and the concerned friends and neighbors to get the message out to as many people as we can. We must flood our legislators with notice that this vaccine is dangerous, should not be given to anyone, and at the very least, should not be mandated for school attendance.
Genital warts are caused by HPV. Symptoms of genital warts can take as little as three weeks and as long as eight months to develop after exposure to the virus. Genital warts are contagious, even before they become symptomatic.
Dr. Page treats genital warts successfully with vitamin C therapy. “Up to 10, 000 milligrams daily is used to enhance white blood cell activity and boost immune interferon. We use a mix of carotenes up to 200, 000 IU daily.” She also uses aloe vera gel as a topical application for genital warts. She particularly recommends an aloe vera/garlic mixture. “You steep garlic cloves in the aloe vera gel, so you have a very high sulfur mix. We ask patients to drink two glasses of aloe vera juice daily. We also use a ‘vag-pack’ for genital warts, which includes goldenseal, burdock, chaparral, and sarsaparilla. Blend the herbs and put them on a tampon and insert into the vagina. This is an internal poultice to draw out the infection. It is very effective, especially when you add B-complex with extra folic acid. Both these supplements help normalize those abnormal cells.”
She adds, “This is a virus, so you would want to take antiviral herbs. The ones I use regularly are lomatium, St. John’s wort, and bupleurum. Occasionally, I also use myrrh. Any combination of these works. It’s best to use them in an extract if you want antiviral activity.”
Dr. Warshowsky notes that genital warts should be treated creatively and holistically. “When a woman is willing to do an entire body-balancing protocol, where she is looking at what is going on in her life that is making her susceptible to infection, balancing out her gut bacteria, eating a nutrient-rich diet, and employing some of these beneficial herbs and supplements, I think there is good success in restoring order, restoring balance, and getting rid of infection.”
Following is a sample of recent peer-reviewed scientific studies on sexually transmitted diseases.
A 2011 study in Gynecologic Oncology found that twice weekly intravaginal infu-sions of zinc citrate solution containing CIZAR (zinc chloride and citric acid anhydrous), administered for twelve weeks, resulted in elimination of high-risk HPV in nearly 64 percent of patients tested. A 2014 article on the GreenMedInfo website called more attention to the safety of the Gardasil vaccine, following recent studies showing its link to nervous and immune system disorders. Two cases of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), a rare autonomic nervous system disorder, are described in 2014 reports in the Journal of Investigative Medicine High Impact Case Reports and the European Journal of Neurology. “Both studies raise questions about the safety of the HPV vaccine,” the author says. “But more significantly they point to a body of recent evidence that links vaccination not just to POTS but to a much wider range of autoimmune sicknesses including multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis.”