There are foods you should choose and specific foods you should avoid to help your body clear high-risk HPV and prevent abnormal cells on a pap smear. Here are the seven most common foods that I recommend you stop eating immediately (don’t worry, I’ll give you some ideas of what to eat instead!).

When you go to your gynecologist’s office and get a pap smear and HPV test, and maybe the test results came back positive, now you’re searching wondering what to do about it. Your doctor is not likely to tell you that it has anything to do with your diet or your food choices. In fact, they’ll probably just tell you to come back in a few months to get retested, or they might tell you that you need a procedure to address abnormal cells. But the standard of care really does not include information about how to help your body fend off high-risk HPV virus and prevent abnormal cells.

It’s very clear in the research and in my clinical practice that it’s possible to clear HPV completely. As a human, our immune system has the ability to clear high-risk HPV virus to negative, and also to remember it even if you are exposed in the future, and prevent it from becoming positive again, as well as prevent it from causing abnormal cells and cancer. We just need to figure out why your body isn’t being able to do that for you right now, and what I find is that one of the key factors is diet.

I’m a naturopathic doctor, women’s health expert, midwife, and clinical nutritionist. I’ve been helping women address high-risk HPV and reverse abnormal cells for over 25 years, helping thousands of women from around the world. 

When I meet with women day in and day out, there are foods that they tell me they’ve been eating, and lo and behold, we figure out that those foods have been making them susceptible to high-risk HPV. Once I teach them to avoid those foods and replace them with healthier options, their body already starts doing a better job of protecting them from high-risk HPV virus.

Foods to Avoid

1. Ice Cream

The first food I want to highlight is ice cream. Believe me, I have been an ice cream lover in my life. It’s so delicious. Many times it’s something we think of as a treat, a reward, something we enjoy, especially if you’re feeling down, emotional, sad, angry, or anxious. We reach for ice cream to help us feel better in the moment. 

However, there are several reasons ice cream is a problem. Ice cream is made from dairy, which is made from cow milk. Cow milk is an issue because it contains lactose as well as the dairy proteins, casein and whey. Dairy proteins are the most likely foods to trigger an inflammatory response in the body, including in the vagina, making you susceptible to HPV.

Now you can find ice creams that are made from other kinds of milk like coconut milk or almond milk or oat milk. But I would argue still that even the ice creams made from other types of milk are still an issue. I would say you’re going to be much better off if you just decide to no longer purchase ice cream when you go to the store. All kinds of ice cream often contain eggs and sugar. These are ingredients that lower your immune system and make you more susceptible to high-risk HPV virus.

Refined sugar, like anything that says cane sugar, is going to lower your immune function. Even one little teaspoon of cane sugar will lower your immune function for eight hours. So if you think about it, if you have a couple spoonfuls of ice cream, now you’re already dropping your immune system based on the sugar and you’re increasing inflammation based on the dairy. It’s really working against you.

2. Cereal

The next food I want to bring your attention to is cereal. So many people choose cereal for breakfast. You go to the store, you pick out a cereal, maybe you have your favorites, and it’s easy to get a bowl, put the cereal in, and add milk of some sort. Now once again, we have a dairy product—milk—in there with the cereal.

The cereal could be various different grains. Oftentimes it’s going to have wheat in there. Even if you get a gluten-free cereal, maybe it’s going to have rice or corn, but these are highly processed, highly refined grains that really pretty much just raise your blood sugar level. They’re not healthy for you. Even if they say they’re high in fiber, it’s not the best source of fiber.

I recommend that you say goodbye to the cereal, even if it’s an organic, natural cereal. It’s still refined, processed grains that are only going to raise your blood sugar level. What happens is when our blood sugar fluctuates—our blood sugar goes up and then comes back down, and the blood sugar goes back up again and comes back down—it’s like a roller coaster. That roller coaster of blood sugar only makes you more susceptible to high-risk HPV, let alone other health issues including weight gain, yeast and bacteria overgrowth, bloating, gas, constipation, acne, skin rashes, anxiety, depression, and so much more.

3. Milk

I also want to mention milk that goes with the cereal and any other way that you might be using milk. Some people put milk in their coffee or drink it straight. I would say no, it’s not worth it. It’s not worth the calories to be drinking cow milk. Much better to be drinking water or tea—that’s a much better source of hydration than milk.

Most times when we hear about dairy, we think about lactose. Lactose is the sugar in dairy, and yes, that is a consideration in terms of if someone’s not digesting lactose well, that can cause bloating. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not just about lactose in dairy products.

Anything made from cow milk, except for butter, there’s also proteins. The proteins, which are called casein and whey, those are the proteins in dairy. It’s the proteins in dairy that trigger the immune system. When you consume cow milk, now casein and whey is coming through your intestines, it leaks through, and your immune system gets triggered. It starts trying to protect you from the milk.

Dairy protein is the most common food sensitivity that I find. Remember, I’ve been doing thousands of food sensitivity panels over 25 years. The most common food sensitivity I see is to dairy proteins like casein and whey.

You can get your protein, you can get your calcium from other sources too, because some people say, “Well, what about calcium?” You can get calcium from so many other foods. Nuts contain calcium, vegetables contain calcium, so there are many ways we can get calcium besides from milk.

4. Eggs

Sometimes people will switch from cereal with milk and they will then turn to having eggs. I can’t tell you how many women I talk to who say, “I’m eating eggs every day,” and maybe that sounds familiar to you too. The thing is that eggs are easy. We can boil them, we can scramble them, we can fry them, we can make an omelet, and we’re thinking we’re getting some protein. But the truth is that there’s only six grams of protein in a single egg. So if you really want to get to 20 to 30 grams of protein, you’re going to have to eat a lot of eggs.

What I find is that it’s very, very common for women who have high-risk HPV and abnormal pap smear to also have leaky gut. Leaky gut is a situation where the intestinal cells aren’t as healthy as they should be. What causes leaky gut? Stress, which we all have, also pesticides from non-organic foods, alcohol, caffeine like coffee, as well as gluten from anything that’s made with wheat, barley, rye, or spelt. Very likely you’re exposed to all five of those things. So quite likely you have at least mild leaky gut, if not moderate to severe leaky gut.

You might not realize you have leaky gut because in 50% of cases it doesn’t even cause digestive symptoms. If you’re testing positive for high-risk HPV virus, it’s quite probable that you have at least moderate to severe leaky gut because they go hand in hand.

What happens is when the intestinal lining is not healthy and we have leaky gut, the foods we eat over and over every day, like eggs, end up not being digested well and they leak right through between the intestinal cells. If the egg leaks through, then it’s going to trigger your immune system. Your immune system is so busy trying to protect you from eggs, then it can’t protect you from HPV because it’s so distracted with the leaky gut and the egg exposure.

When you start to look at it, eggs are sneaking in a lot of ways. Even if you’re not eating a hard-boiled egg or omelet every day, egg comes in a lot of times in bread and cookies and other baked items like muffins.

5. Bread

A lot of times the other thing people have for breakfast is bread. Sometimes you have the egg with bread or toast, or sometimes you’re just going to have toast with something else on it like avocado toast or peanut butter. Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but bread is another food that I recommend avoiding. Believe me, I understand it can be a difficult choice. I was addicted to bread earlier in my life, until I realized it was making me sick.

When you eat bread, again, it’s raising your blood sugar levels because it’s carbs. Even one slice of bread gives you more carbs than you really need in a single meal. If you eat a piece of bread, then you can’t even eat any other carbs in that meal because you’ve already overdone the number of carbs that we really should consume at a single sitting.

Most bread is made from highly refined gluten or other grains. Even if you get a gluten-free bread, it’s likely rice, potato, corn. Sometimes you can get a millet bread, which if you really, really, really want to have bread, you could have a millet bread. But you need to have millet bread that’s gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, sugar-free, and yeast-free.

I’d much rather get carbohydrates and fiber from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, not bread.

What I recommend instead of having a sandwich is have a salad. It could be arugula, it could be mixed greens—of course, organic. Then you can add your favorites—avocado, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds. You can add chicken or turkey, again free-range, hormone-free. So now you’re getting protein from chicken or turkey, you’re getting healthy fats from olive oil and from avocados and from nuts and seeds, and you’re getting fiber from the vegetables and the greens.

Most bread is made from wheat, barley, rye, or spelt, which all contain gluten. Gluten causes leaky gut, and gluten also triggers inflammation in the body, including in the vagina. When you eat a food that’s inflammatory, it spreads through your whole body to your skin, to your sinuses, to your digestion, and to your vagina as well. When there’s inflammation in the vagina, that’s what’s going to make you more susceptible to HPV and abnormal cells caused by HPV.

6. Cheese

On the sandwich and on the salad, one of the most common things we add that I’m going to recommend you avoid is cheese. So many times, even if it’s a breakfast sandwich, we’re going to have bread and eggs and cheese. I’m saying avoid the bread, and I would avoid the egg, and I would avoid the cheese. Because again, with cheese we’re back to cow milk exposure and cow dairy.

It’s the proteins in dairy that trigger the immune system. Remember the leaky gut and how the eggs leaked through and the egg white triggers the immune system? It’s the same thing with dairy proteins. When you consume cheese, now casein and whey is coming through your intestines, it leaks through, and your immune system gets triggered. It starts trying to protect you from the cheese.

Instead of cheese, my favorite way to sort of replace the cheese and make myself think I’m eating cheese is to use avocado. You can use avocado on your salad, you can use avocado in many different ways, and it gives you a similar texture and mouth feel as cheese.

Also, hummus is a great way to replace cheese. Hummus is a Middle Eastern spread made from chickpeas and tahini, and you can oftentimes find it in a health food store.

I think one of the most addictive foods besides sugar is cheese. When I’m eating cheese, I feel worse, more inflamed. My joints hurt, my head hurts, and then it makes the HPV more likely. A lot of times what I find is the best way to avoid cheese is to use garlic, use onion, use rosemary, use Italian herbs. When you put these different flavors from plants in your food, you’re not even going to miss the cheese.

7. Yogurt

A lot of people will say, “What about yogurt, Dr. Doni? Because I keep hearing that yogurt is good for me, and I really like the Greek yogurt.” But I want to come back and remind you: First of all, Greek yogurt most times is made from dairy, made from cow milk. Next, most yogurt still have sugar in them of some sort or some sort of sweetener. Even if they have a little bit of protein, they’re not going to have an adequate amount of protein.

People think, “Oh, yogurt is going to be fermented. It’s giving me some support for my microbiome.” Now yes, having a little bit of fermented foods can be beneficial to our microbiome. But I want to warn you that when it comes to fermented foods, we only need a teeny little bit. It’s just as important to not overfeed your gut bacteria.

I can’t tell you how many people are having so much yogurt, so much kombucha, so much fermented foods, and then they end up having bloating and gas. If you want to have fermented foods, have a spoonful of kimchi or sauerkraut. Maybe you have a little bit of fermented foods even just a couple times a week.

If you occasionally want yogurt, choose coconut yogurt, oat milk yogurt, or potentially goat milk yogurt. Have a small amount, like one or two spoonfuls, and then combine it with something healthy like some fresh or frozen berries. You can add some protein powder to it to get your protein content up.

If you really need to replace good bacteria, it’s much better to get a high-quality probiotic capsule because this way we can really control exactly which bacteria you’re swallowing. I recommend a Women’s Probiotic to help fend off HPV.

What Foods to Eat Instead: Building a Healing Diet

I’m here to remind you that there are so many more food options for us out there. While it is much easier nowadays to find alternatives to dairy, such as coconut and nut milks, and gluten, I encourage you to not just settle for replacement foods. Our goal should be to diversify our diet and expand our options to a variety of foods.

When we eat, it’s not just for us. We’re eating for our microbiome—we’re eating for our gut microbiome and our vaginal microbiome. The vaginal microbiome helps protect you from high-risk HPV as well as other infections like BV and yeast. We need to be thinking about how to increase the variety in your diet.

At the same time, we need to be thinking about how to increase your protein. Most people I find are really not consuming enough protein. There’s not very much protein in dairy products, and there’s almost no protein in cereals and breads, and there’s only a little bit in eggs.

One of the things that I do and recommend in the morning is I tend to go straight to a protein shake. Don’t use a whey shake. And don’t use a shake that has sugar in it. Instead, what I recommend doing is going to a protein shake that is either pea protein-based or what would be referred to as a bone broth shake, which is from a beef source. This way you’re getting protein from sources that are way less triggering to the immune system and still contain at least 18 or 20 grams of protein in a serving.

What I recommend doing is setting aside what we conceive as an American breakfast of breads and eggs and cereal. Breakfast could be a protein shake or smoothie. Breakfast could be even leftovers from dinner. You can have salmon for breakfast. You can even have chicken or turkey for breakfast. There’s turkey bacon, there’s chicken sausages. You can have berries, either fresh berries—organic—or frozen berries, or other kinds of fruit along with your protein.

For lunch, my favorite is to do a salad. My favorite’s arugula, but you can also choose other organic greens along with a protein like chicken, turkey, salmon. Or if you’re eating plant-based, you can choose a plant-based protein to go with your salad, including sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds. Then you can add avocado and/or olives. These have healthy fats in them and give you more fiber as well.

For dinner, choose the protein first—20 to 30 grams of protein. It can be free-range beef, chicken, turkey, wild salmon, or other fish that you prefer. Then you’re going to combine it with organic vegetables—maybe broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, greens, kale, bok choy, vegetables that you enjoy. You can combine that with a small amount of whole grains that might be quinoa, might be brown rice, might be a different grain if you like, or not.

You can have fruit because fruit doesn’t have as much sugar in it. It’s a fructose type of sugar, and it has all the nutrients along with it. So having berries is way different than having a spoonful of sugar. I don’t recommend overdoing the fruit either, but you can have half a cup at a time, and you can have it in a balanced meal.

Making the Transition: Practical Tips for Long-Term Success

You’re probably going to need to go to a different grocery store. If you go to more of a health food store, you’re going to be much more likely to find these different options, including much more selection in terms of organic, much more selection in terms of whole foods and dairy-free, sugar-free options. But even when you go to the health food store, you still have to turn the product around and look at the ingredients and double-check.

I encourage you to to be mindful at the store – don’t just grab things off the shelf. Pick it up, turn it around, and read the ingredients and see what is in this product. Sometimes it doesn’t say sugar. Sometimes it says cane juice or even organic cane juice or sugar cane.

I don’t recommend that you try to do all of this overnight. I really encourage you to take notes, look in your kitchen, strategize. Maybe you start with one meal think: “How am I going to replace my breakfast? Now how am I going to replace my lunch? Now how am I going to replace my dinner?” You can go step by step.

I usually tell patients give yourself at least four weeks to gradually shift over your diet to be avoiding these foods, because then you’re more likely to be successful. I want you to still be eating. I want you to still be getting enough protein, carbs, and fat. I want you to be gentle with yourself and not stressing about this. Use it as an opportunity for learning. Be curious and even have fun with it.

Little by little, you’re going to have to try a few things—a few different recipes, a few different products, a few different stores. Sometimes we get into such a routine, we don’t even realize that we just keep going to the same store, buying the same thing, eating the same thing all the time.

Most women within two weeks of making these changes start to say to me, “My reflux went away. My bloating is gone. My headaches are gone. My skin is clearer.” Little by little, this then leads you to getting HPV to negative, to heal your cervix and get a normal pap smear, and keep it that way.

Sometimes you have to say to yourself, “What’s more important here? Eating foods that taste good that I’m used to eating that I crave, or is it more important to improve my health and longevity, and protect myself from something like HPV-related cancer? I’m going to choose differently. I’m going to, when I go to the store, buy different food, and I’m going to figure out how to make it for myself, and I’m going to make it taste good, and I’m going to love it because it’s healthy for me and it’s improving my health and improving my future.”

Conclusion and Next Steps

I know we covered a lot. I’m excited for you to have this information. This is absolutely going to make a difference. I see it every day with the women who I’m helping. They report back to me that they are so glad that they took these foods out of their diet. As afraid as they were to begin with, they did it, and they feel proud and empowered and so happy that they were able to get HPV to negative and heal their cervix and prevent it from causing issues. What a relief.

If you’re wanting to know exactly which foods you’re reacting to and whether you have leaky gut, then just reach out to my office and I can give you access to a food sensitivity panel for IgA and IgG antibodies. I offer this test through my office and I offer this test in my Say Goodbye to HPV program. It’s a finger poke test you could do from home. We’re measuring 96 foods in total.

If you’d like more help with dealing with an abnormal pap and high-risk HPV, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I welcome you to join me for more information about what you can do to increase your chances of clearing HPV and preventing HPV-related cancer, as well as improving your overall health. Remember that what you eat each day can truly be your medicine, helping you not only to clear HPV but to achieve optimal health in all aspects of your life.

I offer online group programs specifically to address high-risk HPV, and I work with patients one-on-one as well. I hear from women from around the world who are dealing with HPV and am happy to help wherever you are because I consider HPV and cervical cancer to be preventable.

You can start learning more about my approach and initial steps you can take by watching the Secret to Clear HPV Masterclass – it’s 90-minutes long and available right away. Or you can sign up for the upcoming How to Get Rid of HPV FREE online workshop where I share all the information you need to get this virus out of your life for good.

From there, you might choose to join the Heal HPV Kickstart Program, for the initial steps of my protocol, including diet changes and supplements, over the next 30 days. Find the top 5 supplements I recommend in the HPV Supplement Bundle here (it is not for during pregnancy).

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Or you can begin with the comprehensive Say Goodbye to HPV Program, which is 3 months and supports you to implement my full protocol and address all 8 susceptibilities to HPV with live, group support, and access to testing and vaginal suppositories.

If you’ve been struggling, feeling fearful, or even paralyzed by fear, thinking either that healing isn’t possible or looking for a magic pill, I encourage you to stand back and consider whether that’s really what’s going to help you be successful. Connect with your real intention, which is to get HPV to negative and prevent cancer. 

Visit my website at clearhpvnow.com to see testimonials – video after video and story after story of women who have healed from HPV – to help you know that it is possible for you too. You can also schedule a FREE Get to Know You call to review your case with my team here.

My team can also help coordinate supplement shipping worldwide, and we can work within your budget to find the right starting point. You don’t have to figure it out on your own. My team and I are here to help guide you step by step. 

Thank you so much for joining me for this video on helping you support your body to clear HPV. I’d love to hear from you – please like, comment, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t already. I look forward to having you join me for the next episode of How Humans Heal.

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