Welcome to today’s blog! The topic of conversation is going to abnormal periods or menstrual cycles. I really wanted to follow last week’s blog up with this one due to the fact that this is where a lot of young females live with significant pain and functional issues due to symptoms of their periods being extreme and dubbed as “normal”.
If you did not catch last week’s blog over what a normal menstrual cycle looks like, then go check that out right now before you continue reading!
So, now to review more severe and abnormal signs during a period for women. The more usual signs of headaches, uterine cramps, moodiness, and bloating are ones that we are all familiar with. I’m sure either yourself, or a friend of yours has had more severe symptoms such as:
-Having to lay on a heating to pad to get through the cramps
-Bleeding so much they are afraid to leave their house
-Headaches turn into migraines
-Moodiness becomes more severe and they can even have rage or emotional outbursts
-Uncontrollable crying/sadness
-Cramps leading to back or pelvic pain
These symptoms can vary in many different ways ranging from severity to frequency or duration. Now there are some pelvic floor dysfunctions that have names that can cause symptoms like this, however there are also just circumstances that cause some symptoms to become increasingly out of whack.
Some of the pelvic floor dysfunctions that you might be more familiar with are endometriosis, dysmenorrhea, adenomyosis, and polycystic ovarian syndrome.
If you have be diagnosed with one of those above listed syndromes then you at least have a direction for your reasoning and understanding of why the symptoms can be severe during your period or menstrual cycle.
That being said, there is not a lot of answers in regards to these diagnoses because of the underserved research needs for women’s health. The etiology of endometriosis is still unknown, but it affects a significant amount of women across the world!
So what if you have not been diagnosed with any specific disorder? What if you have been to your primary care doctor, or gynecologist and they told you that everything you were feeling is “normal”?
Then first, I apologize for you not getting more clarity from a medical professional. Secondly, there are so many reason why the symptoms can be occurring more severely that you would have to do some self-investigating to find your true reason.
The first areas that I would look at with a client goes something like this:
These are the interviewing questions I typically start with when discussing health history with my clients. Hormones are key drivers in the human body, and our nutrition and stress directly correlate to hormone health. Factors such as birth control, medicine and history of having babies also contributes to changing menstrual cycle symptoms.
Starting with these 5 basic questions- grab a pen and a piece of paper, and/or journal down in your word documents on your phone. Get your answers and if you find a weak point in your questions- then that’s where you should start making micro-adjustments. Only tackle one aspect of your life per cycle, or at a 3 month interval to see if you actually get lasting effects.
If you want to discuss this further, I would absolutely love it if you would email me your answers to ally@belleknoxville.com! Stay tuned next week for discussion on different period products and symptom management!
