Tag: treating fibroid symtoms

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Fibroids

Holiday Season and Fibroids

Cheers to Living Free of Fibroids in the New Year!

The holiday season can be a time full of laughter and joy. It can be time spent with family and friends, sharing presents and good food and fun. It can be a wonderful celebration for all, however, for women with uterine fibroids, this time of year isn’t always as carefree and joyful as it could be. In fact, it can be downright stressful.

For a woman with uterine fibroids, all the social activities of the holiday season can be extra stressful and can take a lot of extra preparation.

This could mean packing enough feminine products for a month or stocking up on pain relievers that may relieve the pain, but also cause other obnoxious issues such as constipation. It can also mean feeling uncomfortable getting dressed up due to fibroid-related bloating and pelvic pressure and pain.

So what can be done?

It turns out, there is a lot.

Therefore this holiday season, if you are a woman suffering from the painful and life-interrupting symptoms of uterine fibroids, it’s time to take action. And gift yourself and your body, a new year without uterine fibroids.

Life without fibroids? Is this possible?

Absolutely.

However, unfortunately, many women choose to forgo treatment because, in the past, the only options were invasive surgeries that came with a long recovery period such as a hysterectomy or a myomectomy,  or medications that came with a slew of unwanted side effects.

Fortunately, now there is a minimally invasive option that is completely safe, and one that has become the gold standard when it comes to non-surgical fibroid treatment. And that is Uterine Fibroid Embolization or UFE.

Uterine Fibroid Embolization is helping women to overcome their fibroid symptoms enabling them to live happier, healthier, fibroid-free lives.

Taking the action to treat fibroids with a procedure such as UFE, can not only prevent fibroids from growing and becoming worse, but it can also relieve painful fibroid symptoms.

Imagine a holiday season without:

Heavy periods
Pelvic pain or pressure
Back or leg pain
Constipation and diarrhea
Weight gain
Difficulty urinating or urinary frequency
Bloating and swelling

Therefore, treat yourself to a new year without the pain and discomfort of uterine fibroids by taking action. In fact, you can call us today to learn more about UFE and to even set up your initial consultation.

Together we can have you living fibroid symptom-free in the New Year and beyond.

Categories
Fibroids

Tranexamic Acid for Fibroids

Control heavy bleeding from fibroids, with oral contraceptives or GnRH agonists. Another option is the use of tranexamic acid.

Heavy menstrual bleeding from fibroids is often accompanied by heavy cramping, both of which leave those inflicted, fatigued, and sometimes unable to work and fully participate in their lives.

In the earlier stages of fibroids, some physicians will try to control the common symptoms of heavy bleeding with oral contraceptives or GnRH agonists and will treat pain and discomfort with anti-inflammatory drugs. However, if this isn’t working, another option your doctor may try is the use of tranexamic acid.

For several decades the medical field has relied on tranexamic acid to help blood clot in order to reduce blood loss during surgery, or as a result of trauma, childbirth, and more. Belonging to a category of drugs called antifibrinolytics, tranexamic acid works by preventing the breakdown of a protein called fibrin, which is the main protein in a blood clot.

The history of using tranexamic acid in the treatment of heavy bleeding caused by menstruation, trauma, and childbirth, is a rather interesting one. It all started in Japan in the 1950s, at a time when postpartum hemorrhage was a leading cause of maternal death.

Utako and Shosuke Okamoto, a Japanese husband, and wife, both biochemists in Tokyo, had been working diligently to identify a drug that could reduce the risk of postpartum hemorrhaging and save more women. The couple knew that there was an enzyme in the blood that breaks down blood clots, and sought to discover a medicine that would inhibit this action. What they discovered was the bleeding reduction effect of tranexamic acid.

In 1962, Utako and Shosuke Okamoto, published their findings in The Keio Journal of Medicine. Though at first, practitioners were slow to start using tranexamic acid, eventually it caught on as a useful treatment to control bleeding during routine procedures such as tooth extractions.

Following a few years of further research regarding the effectiveness of tranexamic acid, the medical field finally began to utilize this form of treatment. As a result, tranexamic acid is now used to treat bleeding-related issues in everything from that of trauma patients, pregnant women, hemophiliacs, and women experiencing too much blood loss during menstruation due to fibroid-related heavy bleeding, as well as other uterine conditions.

Though tranexamic acid is effective in controlling blood loss during surgery or as a result of trauma, the only FDA-approved usage of tranexamic acid is for heavy menstrual bleeding ( caused by fibroids or other conditions) and hemophiliacs.

Tranexamic acid comes in a tablet form and is usually taken with or without food three times a day for up to 5 days during monthly menstruation, starting on the first day of a period. These tablets need to be taken at around the same time every day of a menstrual period.

Though it is effective at reducing menstrual bleeding, tranexamic acid isn’t without its problems.

For starters, it’s expensive.

Sold under the brand name Lysteda, tranexamic acid can cost around $170 for 30 tablets of 650 mg. Not only is it a little pricey, but it can also have the following side effects:

abdominal or stomach pain, discomfort, or tenderness
fever or chills
difficulty with moving
headache, severe and throbbing
joint or back pain
muscle aching or cramping
muscle pains or stiffness
stuffy or runny nose
fatigue

Tranexamic acid also has many drug interactions that are not safe, and it can not be taken with any of the following medications:

estrogens
birth control pills, patches, injections, rings or other devices that contain both estrogen and a progestin
certain medicines used to help your blood clot
tretinoin (taken by mouth)

The Bottom Line:

Tranexamic acid is a nonhormonal option that reduces menstrual blood loss in patients with heavy menstrual bleeding due to uterine fibroids. Though it is more expensive than oral contraceptives, anti-inflammatory drugs, and hormone therapies- it is an option when those treatments are not recommended or desired. That being said, tranexamic acid may reduce fibroid-related heavy bleeding, however, it does not affect or address the underlying cause- The fibroids themselves.

In order to truly eliminate fibroid symptoms, fibroids need to be treated directly. In our next article, we will begin to look at surgeries and non-invasive procedures that can shrink and/or eliminate uterine fibroids.