As if women who suffer from sexual abuse don’t have enough challenges in healing and moving on with their lives, a medical expert from the Mayo Clinic has revealed there are also physical side effects that plague victims sometimes as long as the emotional side effects.

According to Dr. Larry Bergstrom, MD, Director of the Integrative Medicine Program at the Mayo Clinic Scottsdale Arizona the emotional stress of being a victim of sexual abuse may lead to physical illness such as fibromyalgia, chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and even cancer.



“I’ve seen in my referral practice that about 75 percent of my patients who suffer from fibromyalgia have sexual abuse in their past,” Dr. Bergstrom said. “It’s common for victims of sexual abuse to develop problems trusting people in their lives, so they develop perfectionist personalities, which drive them to be compulsive ‘people pleasers’ and make them believe they have to do everything themselves, otherwise it won’t get done right.”



These personality traits take their toll on the patients, because they can’t do it all, and their compulsions drive extreme amounts of stress into their lives. That stress manifests itself in a wide variety of ways, from simple pain to IBS to even cancer.



No one knows this better than Trish Kinney, who was raised in a sexually abusive environment, which she believes led to her developing a cancerous tumor. Kinney, author of Silver Platter Girl, from Seven Locks Press (www.silverplattergirl.com), absolutely knows there was a relationship between her abuse and her cancer. She also knows that both circumstances can be beaten, because she’s done it.



“There is a difference between knowing the truth and telling it,” she said. “It’s crushing to comprehend that a member ...