10 Reasons I Don’t Get Pap Smears

This isn’t medical advice. You can do the annual OB/GYN visit if you want to. But my gut told me, after an “atypical” pap smear years ago, that I didn’t need to be anxious about it, and to research this issue in more detail.

(Googling doesn’t count. Everything Google serves up is pro-pharma; alternative info has been stripped from the search results.)

These are the 10 reasons I don’t do the annual OB/GYN visit:

1. 90% of lesions self-resolve.

(And if those 90% which your body would have managed on its own are "detected early"--they result in surgery. If someone survives the surgery (everyone does), they think they "survived cervical cancer," which is circular logic. Most of the functional medicine doctors I’ve researched will say that several times, in a lifetime, you have detectable cancers, which the body’s immune system breaks down, not causing you a problem.)

2. Cervical surgery makes for terrible sex for a long time. Removal of your cervix is guaranteed painful, awful sex for the rest of your life.

Sure, if it were life threatening, you’d do it. But what if most of those surgeries are “just in case,” and unnecessary?

How would you even know? With anyone who has ever had the surgery telling others that it “saved their life,” assuming that if they hadn’t had the surgery, they’d have died of cervical cancer, which isn’t likely true.

3. The vast majority of "abnormal" test results panic women, and aren't cancer at all.

(I had an "abnormal" test once that was not cancer, and I suspect other women will say they did, too. Ask an OB/GYN, or their nurse, how many “abnormal” pap smears turn out to be nothing of concern. If you didn’t ask, they probably won’t tell you this: but it’s the vast majority.)

4. There's a for-profit industry behind this, where well-women (like well-baby) visits create revenue for OB/GYN's and result in a lot of unnecessary procedures.

5. Virtually no one dies of cervical cancer. (Not all cancer is the same–cervical cancer is treatable, and one of the most survivable cancers.)

If someone dies “of cervical cancer,” it’s because it was growing for many years, maybe even decades, and spread to other organs.

Which means that the person who died had a catastrophic failure of the immune system, that worsened for years and years.

If I had cervical cancer, I have plenty of holistic strategies I’d try first.

6. I live a cancer-preventative GreenSmoothieGirl lifestyle.

Eating whole-foods, plant-based; detoxifying twice a year; getting in my sauna (and sometimes, an ice bath afterward); exercising 6 days a week; getting enough sleep and enough water; and more.

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7. If I had an actual problem, I'd probably know (from pain/sex/bleeding).

8. I don't have multiple sexual partners, making me low-risk.

9. The only thing being screened for is the actual tiny number of cells scraped from your cervix, which may not be representative of what's half an inch away.

(Many cervical cancers are missed, in screenings. Luckily, people with an active immune system can self-resolve most incipient cancerous clusters.)

10. The scraping procedure is painful and can cause complications.

So, someone will be reacting to this, having not read it, and is probably writing that I'm "dangerous" or something.

To be clear, this is not medical advice; this is simply why I personally do not get pap smears.

(P.S. I also have never gotten a mammogram and don't intend to. A different but similar post, watch for that coming soon.)

I support your right to get all the pap smears you want. In fact, you can have mine, for DOUBLE the feeling of being “safe and protected!” ;-)

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