In order to understand what causes fibroids, you first need to understand what fibroids are itself. Fibroids are basically an excessive growth of tissue which is usually located in the wall of a woman’s uterus. The fibroid consists of tissue from the muscles of the uterus and other connective tissue. These outgrowths might be referred to as tumor, fibroids are not cancerous. Apart from that, they only develop from after puberty to menopause. A fibroid starts off as a basic muscle cell in the uterus and for reasons that are still unknown it grows and develops till it becomes a tumor like object. There have been many studies conducted o understand what causes fibroids and here are some of the possible factors that they came up with. Now that we have identified what fibroids are, here is what causes fibroids

Puberty:

Fibroids are known to grow and develop as a result of a response to the hormone estrogen. As a result, when a young girl hits puberty and the estrogen levels in her body increase to bring about the changes of puberty of her body, it is highly likely that fibroids develop as a side effect to the increased hormone production.

Hereditary:

Fibroids can also be a hereditary factor with some people being more prone to getting them as opposed to others because of their family history or race. For example, African-American women are about three times more prone to getting fibroids as compared to Caucasian women. Not only that, but African American women tend to get them at earlier ages, develop more quickly and experience more symptoms than other women who suffer from fibroids.

Other factors:

There are other factors that may be slightly insignificant but according to studies, they can be linked with what causes fibroids in women. These factors are:

• Being obese or extremely overweight.
• Nulliparity: this is the condition whereby which a woman has never been pregnant or given birth.
• Occurring of a woman’s period before the age of ten.

No particular factor can be pinpointed in causing fibroids or making them increase or decrease in size. For some women, they stop growing or shrinking after the onset of menopause. There are many options available for the treatment of those women who have fibroids and the idea is that if they are experiencing any of the symptoms, medical attention must be sought so that the treatment of this condition can be started.

Symptoms:

Although fibroids are not supposed to have any life threatening implications, there are a range of symptoms that people suffering from fibroids experience and the diversity of these symptoms is what makes it difficult to understand exactly what causes fibroids. Some of the symptoms include:

• Painful menstrual period and bleeding so heavy that it may result in anemia.
• Constant feeling of being full in the lower stomach area.
• Increment in size of the lower abdomen.
• Constantly needing to urinate.
• Experiencing pain during sexual intercourse.
• Experiencing pain in the lower back region.
• Having problems with conception, pregnancy and labor.
• Although this is very rare, extreme cases of fibroids might lead to the onset of reproductive organs like infertility.