– The reason you get extra hungry before and during your period is because your body is physically burning more calories, sometimes as many as 300 more per day for the duration of your period, with an elevated BMR (base metabolic rate) in the days before it starts. So no, you’re not being weird or gross or undisciplined if you want to eat a bunch of chocolate – your body is just burning the same amount of calories you’d expend in 25 minutes on a crosstrainer to shed your uterine lining.
– This is especially important to remember if you’re already, for whatever reason, eating fewer calories per day than it takes to maintain your current weight, which is about 2000 for an adult, though it can be dangerous to have much less than 1300 per day. Think of it like this: if you’re eating 1600 calories a day out of a potential healthy 2000, and your body suddenly wants an extra 300, you’re not craving 1900, but 2300, which is the difference between wanting a chocolate bar and a slice of toast, and wanting an entire extra meal. So, I say again: DO NOT feel bad about wanting to eat more during your period. Your body is working hard, and needs fuel!
– Paradoxically, despite the rate at which you’re burning calories, you’re also retaining water, which can make you both feel and weigh as heavier. Speaking personally, I’ve noticed my weight fluctuate by as much two kilos (4.5 pounds) before and after a period, rising before and during, then dropping sharply afterwards. So if you’re struggling with body image or weight issues, this is a suboptimal time at which to get on the scales: the result you’ll get will only reflect a temporary reality, not your actual progress, and is therefore unhelpful.
– If, for whatever reason, you’re self-conscious about easing your cramps with a hot water bottle where other people can see it, whether at home or work, consider using a plastic soft drink bottle filled with hot/boiling water. Even if you put it openly on your lap, instead of tucking it under a shirt or into a front hoodie pocket, it will just look like a regular bottle of water, and any relief is better than none!
– No, it’s not weird if you shit more during your period than usual, either. The hormones your body releases that make your uterus to contract and release sometimes end up in the bowel, particularly if you happen to produce a lot of them, which means that bowel contracts and releases, too.
– If anyone tries to make a dumbass sexist joke about your being more [insert stereotypically negative feminine quality here] while on your period, you can tell them that actually, menstruation raises testosterone levels, not oestrogen. (Telling them to go fuck themselves with an angry cactus can also be therapeutic.)
– The cramps and lower back pain often experienced during menstruation, when the uterus expels its contents and your hips shift slightly wider to accommodate it, are a microcosm of what happens during actual labour. So yeah: it can hurt!
– That being said, we’ve culturally accepted the idea of massive period pain as normative to such an extent that many people don’t realise their pain is a sign that something’s wrong. Despite how common they are, a lot of conditions like PCOS and endometriosis are poorly understood in terms of their etiology, which means it can be hard to get an accurate diagnosis. But if your periods regularly have you screaming, vomiting or totally incapacitated, get checked out: you shouldn’t have to just shut up and endure because it’s ‘meant’ to feel like that. It’s not, and there are ways to manage it.
– As well as being a form of birth control, you can take the pill to control or stop your period. When used to prevent menstruation, the pill tricks the body into thinking you’re already pregnant, which stalls your cycle (and stops you from actually getting pregnant). Though some people worry that it’s unnatural not to menstruate for long periods of time, or for your body to ‘feel’ pregnant for so long, it’s also important to remember that, after an actual pregnancy, especially if you breastfeed, your period won’t resume right away. This is called
lactational amenorrhea, which can work as a form (though not, I hasten to add, a 100% reliable form) of natural birth control. Basically, it means your body is focussed on producing milk for an existing child, such that you can’t easily conceive another one until the first child is weaned. While this varies from person to person, the important thing to remember is that there’s ample biological precedent for stopping menstruation for long periods of time whether you’re pregnant or not, and that choosing to do so via the pill doesn’t make you unnatural, nor does it cause your body to do something it otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t.
In conclusion: periods suck, but knowing how and why they work and how best to manage them can make them suck slightly less. So go ye forth, and be educated!
Endometriosis—the struggle is real. Killer cramps are NOT normal. Periods that last longer than 7 days are NOT normal. Heavy bleeding that soaks through a tampon every 2 hours is NOT normal; pain during sex is NOT normal. Bouts of diarrhea and vomiting that accompany every menstrual cycle are NOT normal. No, no, and no! For many people, this reality is just endometriosis at work.
Sad truth: Many of us are taught to downplay these symptoms. Our pain is diminished by parents, siblings, friends and even health care professionals who convince us that everyone goes through this.
Maybe that is why, according to the Endometriosis Foundation of America, it takes 10 years on average to receive an accurate endometriosis diagnosis. That’s a decade, people! That’s 130 periods of agony, 912 days of someone asking you to take Advil and suck it up. That…is not okay.
Endometriosis is pervasive. It affects 1 in 20 Americans of reproductive age and an estimated 176 million people worldwide. It occurs when tissue similar to the endometrium (the lining of the uterus) is found outside the uterus on other parts of the body.
There are lots of symptoms that can vary among patients. Pelvic pain is most common, as well as pain that coincides with menstruation. Other symptoms include heavy cramps, long-lasting bleeding, nausea or vomiting, pain during sex and, unfortunately, infertility. Some people may even experience symptoms throughout their entire cycle—a real drag.
In addition to these physical symptoms, endometriosis takes a toll on someone’s personal and professional life. Chronic pain can severely affect quality of life day-to-day; medical care can be extremely costly. Furthermore, absenteeism can alter relationships in the workplace and at home.
Despite the intense discomfort, many people do not realize they have endometriosis until they try to get pregnant. And because the disease tends to get progressively worse over time, approximately 30-40% of people who have endometriosis experience fertility challenges.
There is no simple diagnostic test for endometriosis—no blood, urine, or saliva testing can confirm the condition. The only way to verify endometriosis is to undergo a diagnostic laparoscopy with pathology confirmation of biopsy specimens.
On the bright side, many endometriosis symptoms— including infertility—can be addressed after diagnosis. The gold standard for endometriosis treatment is laparoscopic excision surgery. This involves a careful removal of the entire endometrial lesion from wherever it grows.
The first step to getting there is recognizing that your pain is not normal and seeking timely intervention. The earlier endometriosis is detected and treated, the better the results. Tracking your symptoms will make you better informed for your next doctor’s visit, and set you on a path to better (and less painful!) menstrual health.
Can’t stress enough the early diagnosis part. My mum recently had to have a hysterectomy due to endometriosis and the doctors were like “well, if we’d known about this sooner, a much smaller operation would have been fine and we could have kept the uterus”. Get this shit checked early, guys
important info, I didn’t know my symptoms where anything but normal until an OBG asked about my periods.
The medical community on literally every female specific health issue ever: “very common condition” “no known cause” “no known cure” :))))))
What the fuck is tumblr? Like honestly what is this? Do you guys pull shit out of the inner most depths of your rectum and then just throw it on your keyboard and have it turn into a post???? This site is something else what the fuck is wrong with you people????!?!?
Endemetriosis
Vaginal Thrush
Menorrhagia
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
Fibroids
Very common conditions, causes are unknown or only speculated, long term cures have not been found. Most can cause chronic pain or discomfort, all can seriously impact your quality of life.
Men are so damn privileged they can’t even imagine female bodies have different healthcare needs than theirs and that our healthcare needs are important even if they can’t be affected by one of these conditions.
Endometriosis causes excruciating pain and is a leading cause of infertility. Thrush is extremely
uncomfortable, and expensive to treat repeatedly; over-the-counter preparations rarely completely eradicate it. Menorrhagia, which I
have, makes you anæmic. PCOS causes hormonal symptoms that are socially
difficult (facial hair, acne, hair loss, weight gain). Fibroids are so common, and are often treated with a hysterectomy.
Add in fibromylgia, which affects 8x as many women as men, as well as lupus (and almost any other autoimmune condition), systemic exertion intolerance disorder (SEID), iron deficiency anæmia (all of which affect more women than men), and you have well over 25% of childbearing-age women globally living with chronic pain and tiredness.
Basically, this is a huge problem, and also one of the reasons I have been considering medical school.
Don’t forget that most pharmaceuticals go to market without ever having been tested on people with a uterus, lest someone get pregnant… seriously that is the whole rationale behind not testing >50% of the population. This has been legislated against in some countries, but still persists in the of majority drug development because of other regulations, and traditions and laziness. The use of a drug is of course monitored in the population after release, but the people “trying” it in this capacity get none of the insurance, close and regular medical examination or monetary benefit of essentially being in a late stage drug trial. Drugs that are pulled from market after release are sometimes done so on the basis that the dosage is just too high for females/afab people and this is, of course, after they’ve experienced the adverse affects.
This is why if you get pregnant your doctor will take you off basically any and all medication you’re taking (including mental health medication, can’t imagine any implications/dire consequences there), not because they know it will have an adverse affect on the foetus but because they have no idea. How wonderfully kind of them to prioritise the health and life of an unborn foetus over that of a living person, let’s just hope they don’t become ill whilst pregnant. How charmingly logical it is that they wouldn’t even bother to test drugs in people with a uterus because it’s all too difficult and gosh, darn what an ethical conundrum we’ve been faced with, let’s just not! Which is so in the spirit of capital S, Science!
Indeed, the issue is so severe that, in many cases, folks with uteruses are routinely told that their diseases and disorders are not, in fact, disorders at all, and are just a normal part of having a uterus.
Take menstrual cramps, for example. Everybody knows that cramps are a normal part of menstruation, and that virtually all people who menstruate experience them throughout their lives, right?
Except that’s not right at all.
Yes, it’s true that about two-thirds of individuals who menstruate begin to experience menstrual pain during adolescence, but it’s basically a side effect of puberty, and normally subsides by your late teens. Only about 20-40% of menstruating adults experience menstrual pain on a regular basis – and according to some estimates, as much as 80% of that figure is due to undiagnosed endometriosis or some other underlying medical condition.
Yeah, roll those numbers around in your head: if you’re an adult who experiences menstrual cramps, it’s overwhelmingly likely that your pain is a symptom of some potentially serious medical condition.
And yet we tell folks it’s just a normal thing that everybody has to deal with.
Happens with things that are just more common in women. Auto-immune disorders effect women more than men. Are very common. There’s speculation on causes but why certain people get them and what causes flare ups is unknown. And, of course, no cures.
I found this with anemia. I have been desperately, seriously anemic for decades, but my doctors always waved a hand at it like, “Oh, well, you’re a girl. You’re going to be anemic.” I have heart palpitations. I’ve had blackouts, breathing problems, bowel problems and most days I am so tired I can barely stay awake at work in the afternoon–and the iron pills aren’t having any impact. And, for the first time in my life, I am now on meds for anxiety. All of these symptoms, I have now discovered thanks to a doctor who actually gives a fuck (and he’s male), can be directly traced to anemia. How many women are walking around with this shit, on meds for symptoms of something doctors refuse to treat because it’s “normal?” I am finally being sent for an iron infusion. My doc also sent me to a women’s clinic because he didn’t think the “heavy periods” explanation previous docs have always given for the anemia was good enough. He doesn’t think women should suffer periods like that–at least not without making sure it is not a symptom of something more serious. I cannot tell you what a revelation this is.
