What's a Castor Oil Pack?

A castor oil pack is a piece of cloth soaked in castor oil that you heat up and place on your belly then cover it with a piece of plastic and then put a heating pad or hot water bottle on top of that. You usually do it for 15-20 minutes once a day, at night before bed most typically. It is supposed to improve blood circulation and increase the white blood cell count locally.

What it definately will do is get you to slow down and relax. Disadvantages are that you end up with an oily belly right before bed and heating it up if you don't have a microwave (which I don't) can be a pain.

My naturopath had me do castor oil packs for a while. I found them to be a pain and they didn't seem to change anything -- my fibroid didn't get smaller, my cycles didn't get more normal, my basel temps stayed where they were -- I'm skeptical.

The book Sex, Lies and the Truth About Uterine Fibroids mentions castor oil packs, and that there aren't any studies showing that they work. There are studies showing they increase white blood cells in the skin area that is treated but nothing more than that. Evidently it is a traditional treatment used in many cultures.

My acu asked me to do them this Spring and I wasn't into it -- I just would use my hot water bottle to apply heat directly to my lower abdomen to keep the blood flow active in the area and left it at that.

So had to be mad about something

When I was brushing my teeth this morning I remembered that my acupuncturist last week had asked me to do castor oil packs on my belly. Oh well, forgot about that for a good number of days. But then I was thinking about it and got all annoyed. I don't like doing castor oil packs. Castor oil packs don't do anything. When has a study ever shown that castor oil packs help shrink fibroids? Wouldn't a hot water bottle do the same thing? And so on.

I did do castor oil pack a few years ago when I first started working with a naturopathic doctor, the routine left a lot to be desired -- heat up a cloth soaked in castor oil in the oven for 15 minutes and carry it upstairs. Place it carefully on my belly and then lay a sheet of plastic over it and a towel over that and then top the whole affair with a hot water bottle. Sit like that for 25-30 minutes every day. Then after that you had to wash your belly off with a baking soda solution though I usually just used a washcloth with soap and water. Hoo boo was that a lot of work. I did it too for about a month but after that I just shrugged it off. It's too much work. Taking a bath every single night would be less work.

But really, I don't mind sitting with a hot water bottle on my belly but what's up with the castor oil really. Where did this tradition start and why do they keep pushing it? Grumble, grumble.

My breasts did start getting sore right after I last posted about how they weren't. Nice isn't it? So that's about mid-LP, just as my hormones peak, I start getting sore this month and it will stay that way until AF (due on Monday). Well, that's better than last month. I'm going to go back through my Ovusoft notes in the new 2.0 version of the software and see about any patterns for breast pain that I can pick out.

What I've learned so far

I thought I would share some of what I've learned over the past year from various doctors including a naturopath. This may differ from what you've been told and I'm just a regular old person so you should definately talk to your doctor about any treatments options you might like to pursue.

Fibroids are spongy tissue that change size with the levels of your hormones in your cycle. They respond particularly much to estrogen, they aren't as sure about progesterone. Un-opposed estrogen in your body, that is estrogen that is not matched with a comparable level of progesterone, is believed to be a factor. Pain is caused partially by prostaglandins which fluctuate during the month as well; ibuprofen may be taken preventatively to help manage prostaglandin production but it isn't good for your liver.

Your liver is a key organ in balancing your hormones. This organ filters out excess hormones from your system and packs them up for excretion through the bowels. Constipation and sluggish bowel movements mean that your body isn't able to efficiently expel waste from the system; you should be having a bowel movement at least once a day otherwise this is you. What is worse is that in your intestines the body will reabsorb the excess hormones back into the system causing a build-up and making your liver work double-time. Many women have problems with constipation and progesterone during the second half of our cycle (post ovulation) is partially to blame.

Small dietary changes can really help your liver out; I tried these things suggested by my naturopathic doctor and my fibroid did not grow at all during the next 8 months.

* Drink at least 6 glasses of water each day
* Increase your consumption of foods that help detoxify your liver:
green leafy vegetable (chard, collard greens, spinach, etc.), garlic,
onions, artichokes, lemons
* Decrease your consumption of refined sugars (this can increase your body's production of stress hormones which might be linked)
* Eat organic foods only
* Decrease your consumption of meat
* Increase your consumption of fish to 2-3 times a week

I was taking vitamins and herbal supplements and used castor oil packs for about a month (they are a pain but they sure help you slow down and take a break before bed. I also greatly reduced the amount of stress in my life and increased the amount of exercise I was doing. I read about progesterone supplementation but my naturopath said that doing that would actually compromise my body's ability to produce progesterone on its own; instead she wanted to help coax my body back into balance. After about 6 months of treatment my cycle had changed. I no longer have PMS for 2 weeks out of every month and even my allergies have subsided. I'm amazed.

I have a 6cm intramural fibroid and the doctors have told me that you can't have a fibroid as large as I do without a major distortion of the uterus (an x-ray in June revealed that my uterus is wrapped around the fibroid to the right). Women who have one large fibroid tend to not get addition fibroids, women with multiple fibroids tend to get re-growth. I'm scheduled for an abdominal myomectomy at the beginning of October.

My younger sister just had an abdominal myomectomy this past March for multiple fibroids, she even had one pressing on a major artery at the back to the abdomen that doctors shrugged off for year as pain "in her head" without doing any diagnostics on her. She was on birth control pills (BCP) for the past 10 years at least, on "continuous cycling". I was never on BCP and I only have one fibroid. We've learned that our mother had a fibroid when she was in her 40s but was able to wait it out until menopause and our great grandmother had one the size of a "cantaloupe" and needed emergency surgery.

I hope this is helpful for you.