by Dr. Colette Cseszko

It isn’t uncommon for people to have organs removed because they are not working properly. It is vital to understand that you are an ecosystem, not a malfunctioning machine. For females, a hysterectomy is a common procedure. It could be a partial removal or a total removal due to growth of fibroid tumors, excessive menstrual flow or just because other medical situations require it. Whatever the reason, we need to consider that the female organs are part of the hormonal system. What is generally unknown is that the female organs are the backups for the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands help a woman deal with the day-to-day stress in her life. Once the female organs are gone or partially gone, a woman will go through changes which ultimately compromise her ability to manage stress.

Some of the common changes include waking up at 4 a.m. and not being able to fall back asleep for several hours; lightheadedness when standing up; sugar cravings in the middle of the afternoon; and a marked decrease of energy at the end of the day. Other common issues are weight gain and loss of libido. There are also structural changes that can occur such as dropping of the bladder (bladder prolapse).

These are the women that you see at Starbucks at 1:30 in the afternoon; they MUST have their caramel macchiato to push themselves through to the end of the day. They cannot manage stressful situations easily and often will have exaggerated emotional reactions to stressful circumstances. You may know such a person—they are overwhelmed by life in general and if one more person puts anything on their overflowing plate— they will freak out! Their family is well aware of their inability to cope and they tippy-toe around their loved one in hopes that they don’t set them off. Perhaps you, yourself, are such a person.

If you have undergone a hysterectomy, there are proactive things you can do to ward off these consequences or at least reduce the symptoms caused by the newly created imbalances. Removing organs of any kind can create problems.

According to Asian medicine, each organ in the body has a corresponding married partner. Let’s consider this example: If the gallbladder is removed, its married partner (which is the liver) has to work extra hard in its absence.

Each organ has its own function and they work in harmony with each other to protect and preserve overall health of the body. Imagine a tug of war: One side has ten guys equal size and weight; the opposing side has nine guys same size and weight. Who would win the game? The ten guy side, right? Because the load is managed by one extra guy!

In the gallbladder example, this is the organ that breaks down fatty foods. There are times when a person has gallstones, causing pain, so they have the gallbladder removed. It is never really considered what caused the gallstones to grow there in the first place. Usually it is just taken out in an emergency situation. Now, the body is missing the organ that breaks down fat. If that person now eats fatty foods, incomplete digestion takes place and the fat which can no longer be broken down starts to accumulate in the blood.

The liver is like the air filter in your house. It filters the blood and gets rid of toxins and other chemicals your body doesn’t need. If large amounts of fat are circulating in the blood because of the absence of the gallbladder, the liver becomes overburdened and gummed up with sludge, just like the dirty air filter. What happens after that is the person will start to experience strange symptoms. They will wake up during the night between the hours of 1 and 3 a.m. They will start to have muscle cramps, tightness in the joints and generalized aching and pain.

Let’s imagine that you accumulate trash in your kitchen. The trash bags pile up and you never take out the trash. Eventually you would smell it in the bedroom! It’s the same concept with the body. If the liver cannot rid the body of toxins because the filter is clogged with fat, then it has no choice but to store the toxins within the body cavity itself. How it accomplishes this is the liver surrounds the toxins in a fat molecule (to get it out of the blood circulation) and ships it off to other places in the body, usually the abdomen and gut region. The liver does this to protect the vital organs in the rib cage area from undue exposure to the toxic elements. The results of this are toxins in the joints and muscles which cause irritation and generalized pain. It also results in stubborn belly fat.

Many people are eventually diagnosed with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue or autoimmune problems and it all started with the removal of one organ. Consider that your body is an ecosystem, not a chemistry experiment. Organs malfunction because of a specific situation and that needs to be identified and remedied rather than removed. The consequences of removal are vast and often the removal isn’t necessary.

If you have had a hysterectomy or any other organ removed, you need to know what you can do now to support the married partner of the organ you are missing. This will be very valuable for the rest of the body. You can avoid having a downward spiral of medications and more surgeries if you take the time to investigate what caused the organ malfunction in the first place. Even if you are missing an organ, you can still do something about it. Finding out what went wrong in the first place is a huge investment in your overall health moving forward.