While most women have fibroids, most of them do not usually need treatment.
Statistics show that it is possible for women to live with fibroid tumors without experiencing any symptoms.
This is because in most cases, they are usually too small to interfere with the normal functioning of a woman's body.
In such cases, simple changes in a person's lifestyle are enough to shrink fibroids further and sometimes even eliminate them.
One of the most important areas for one to observe to ensure that the fibroids in the uterus do not grow is one's diet.
However, given the lifestyle that the average woman in the modern world lives, uterine fibroids usually grow.
There slow but steady growth usually enables them to reach sizes that start affecting the normal functioning of the body.
It is at this point that one starts to experience the common symptoms associated with fibroids.
Some of these symptoms include excessive bleeding, uterine pain, bloating of the lower abdomen and sometimes anemia.
When you start experiencing the symptoms of fibroids, then you need treatment.
Where they are mild, it may be possible to reduce their effects by taking pain relievers and oral contraceptives.
However, it should be noted that these only treat the symptoms and not the fibroids themselves.
Natural treatments of shrinking fibroids are also a viable alternative.
These alternatives usually focus on the lifestyles of women with fibroids and thus seek to limit the amount of estrogen in the blood and thereby shrinking fibroids.
However, there are times when even natural treatments cannot treat fibroids.
This is mainly because immediate medical attention may be needed something which natural treatments do not offer.
This is because they usually take a lot of time to start having effect on the growths.
In such circumstances, surgery may be the only viable alternative.
Hysterectomy and myomectomy are the most common surgery procedures that women go for.
Myomectomy involves the removal of the fibroids without affecting your uterus.
The only problem with myomectomy is that there are chances of the fibroids growing back.
Where one has repeated myomectomy procedures, there is also the risk of her uterus sticking together because of the excessive scarring that results from the procedure.
Unlike myomectomy which only focuses on the removal of the fibroids, hysterectomy involves the removal of the uterus.
It is usually an option when one experiences severe symptoms of fibroids.
Given that it involves the removal of the uterus, this is a permanent solution to fibroids.
However, the normal risks of surgery come with this procedure.
There is also the fact that you may never get pregnant.
For these reasons, it is usually advised that it be considered as the last alternative.
Embolization as a method of eliminating fibroids is fast becoming the treatment of choice.
This is because it is less intrusive than the surgical options as it only involves the introduction of particles which cut the blood supply to the fibroids and thus causing them to shrink over time.
Embolization is also preferred because of the fact that the pelvic pain and heavy bleeding that is usually experienced as a result of fibroids, usually stops almost immediately.