IUD Discomfort & Complications

By Dr Houston Anderson

“IUD Discomfort & Complications

I recently had a female patient with a 4 year history of severe abdominal pain, shoulder pain and hip pain.  Over the last few years she was able to see multiple practitioners with varied success, but the abdominal pain always returned.  In order to get any relief she was eating a Paleo diet with multiple FODMAPs restrictions.  If you don’t know what FODMAPs are, it means she pretty much couldn’t eat fruit either.

Her diet was very limited to simple things like rice and chicken without fruit and even many vegetables were out of the question.  In the first 30 minutes of the first visit I identified one problem that no other physician had addressed.  This is not to say I was smarter, I just identified something that nobody else had told her.

Due to her extremely poor reaction to traditional “pill” form birth control she had switched to an IUD about 4 years prior.  She noted that all her symptoms did begin around the time that it was inserted, but was pretty determined to keep it due to her poor response to other forms of birth control.

To be honest, after 2 visits with me she had to relocate and would no longer be able to see me, so she decided to get an ultrasound on her gallbladder.  The doctors prescribed her linzess to improve her bowel motility and told her she needed to have her gallbladder removed due to it being inflamed and having gallstones.  Being a very wise patient, she decided that rather than just cut out the gallbladder (one of the most important organs in the body) she would get her IUD removed as a final resort.

She later emailed me and in her own words reported, “the following day I was pain free (which hasn’t happened in at least a year).”

Not If, but When

For now I won’t discuss the dangers of IUDs such as puncturing the uterus, but I want to focus more on lesser known symptoms that may not seem related.

With IUDs there are 2 major types of problems that can occur.  The first is that the IUD causes mechanical (aka tissue) changes in the pelvic floor and surrounding musculature.  The second is that whether copper or hormonal, all IUDs create chemical imbalances in the body.  You will likely have symptoms of one or the other and some people get lucky enough to experience them all.

The question isn’t usually if you will have a problem with your IUD, but when will it happen and even more intriguing, what random symptom will you experience that appears unrelated.

Conclusion

“If you are thinking about getting your IUD removed (and you should) but you aren’t sure if it is important or not, please head on over to my colleague Dr. Stephen Gangemi’s  website and read the HUNDREDS of comments on IUDs from other women.  (scroll to the bottom and click show more comments).

IUDs can be an underlying root cause to nearly any and all symptoms related to your health.”

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