What Does Your Period Say About You by Lauren Curtain
Did you know that your period and menstrual cycle can reveal deep insight and information into the workings of your overall health? It’s true! Our menstrual cycle is not only vital for creating babies, but for whole body health.
In our previous blog we discussed the nitty gritty functioning of the menstrual cycle covering the four phases (menstrual, follicular, ovulation & luteal), what happens hormonally during each phase and what exactly it all means.
Today we’re going to explore what an optimal menstrual cycle looks like, how to tell if yours needs more support, what “normal” really is and how to start reading this part of your body.
Through a Chinese medicine lens, this what constitutes a healthy, optimal period & menstrual cycle:
- Period lasts 4-5 days
- Period starts with full fresh flow
- There are no clumpy or stringy blood clots
- The blood is a fresh, rich, deep red colour
- The period starts and ends clearly (no stop/start bleeding)
- There is no pain before, during or after the period
- There is no recurring life interrupting PMS symptoms
- The menstrual cycle is 28-35 days in length
- There is healthy ovulation accompanied with easy to observe cervical mucus and a
clear temperature shift if you’re tracking basal body temperature (BBT).
- The luteal phase of the cycle (the phase after ovulation) is 12-16 days.
So, how does your cycle measure up? For some you may easily tick every box here, and for others this may seem like a far away dream that you’ve never experienced! However, this is our blueprint for our menstrual health, what we *should* expect for our cycles and can be achieved for most women with the right support.
When menstrual health ticks these boxes, it means the body as a whole is healthy and working optimally. When we deviate from this, something deeper is driving these changes, causing symptoms to arise.
What does it look like if your menstrual health needs some support?
- Your period is lasting consistently less than 3 days or longer then 7 days
- Your experience spotting before or after your period
- You experience mid cycle spotting
- You see clumpy or stringy clotted blood in your period
- You see pink, orange, brown, purple or black coloured blood
- You period stops for a couple of days and then returns for a few more days
- You experience recurring menstrual pain
- You experience recurring PMS symptoms that interrupt your life like mood changes, nausea/vomiting, breast tenderness and swelling, acne, sleep changes, hot flushes, bloating, diarrhoea, constipation, fatigue, flu like symptoms and headaches/migraines
- Your menstrual cycle is less than 27 days or longer then 35 days
- Your ovulation is unpredictable
- You don’t notice cervical mucus changes throughout your cycle
- If you’re tracking your basal body temperature (BBT), your temperatures are erratic,
you find it hard to confirm ovulation, your temperatures are below 36.0 degrees celsius during your follicular phase, below 36.5 degrees celsius in your luteal phase and your luteal phases are consistently less than 12 days.
- You are currently trying to conceive your baby and are experiencing challenges
- Your experience vulvo/vaginal symptoms through your menstrual cycle such as
thrush and bacterial vaginosis
- You have amenorrhoea (no period for 3+ months), PCOS, endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts
Do you resonate with any of the above? If you do - that is okay! It is very common to experience symptomatic periods and menstrual cycles. Think of your menstrual health as like the canary in the coal mine. If there is something going on internally or externally in your environment that is impacting your health, your period will be the first to let you know.
What can impact menstrual health?
The good and bad thing is that SO many different factors can influence menstrual health. Bad because there can be a lot to keep tabs on or address, but good because it means we have so many different opportunities to support our menstrual health and create change.
Some things that can influence menstrual health include:
- Nutrition and nutrient deficiencies
- Blood sugar regulation
- Digestive health
- Gut microbiome
- Vaginal microbiome
- Liver health
- Nervous system regulation
- Stress levels
- Sleep
- Circadian rhythm
- Environment (eg. living in a house with mould)
- Endocrine disrupting chemicals found in bathroom and beauty products and food
- Exercise & movement
Just to name a few! As you can see, so many differing factors can have an influence over the functioning and health of the reproductive system, AND it means we have all these different opportunities to create change.
To get started in supporting your menstrual health, the first thing to do is start tracking your specific menstrual health data. Start noticing and observing the quality of your period, how many days it lasts for, if you see clotting in the blood, what symptoms you experience with your period. When do the symptoms start and stop? What makes them better? Worse? Start observing and noting it all using the lists above as a guide.
This is vital and valuable information you can use to guide you when you begin making changes in your life, to see if these parameters shift. This is also valuable information to share with a women’s health focused practitioner should you choose to work with one - all of this information is gold to us! This helps us to deeply understand the inner workings of your health and how to best support you as an individual.
Did you learn something new here? Are you surprised to learn just how good your period and menstrual cycle has the capacity to be?
Wherever you are on your journey with supporting your menstrual health and/or fertility, remember your menstrual cycle is always working for you, not against you, and that every symptom you experience has the capacity to change.
Lauren Curtain is a degree qualified, registered Chinese medicine practitioner, women's health focused acupuncturist and herbalist. She centres her practice around supporting women to navigate their hormones, menstrual cycles and fertility using a combination of education (all the womens health info you didn't get in high school), acupuncture, herbal medicine, nutrition and lifestyle support. Lauren believes every woman has the right to know how her body works, and what she can do to optimise not only reproductive health, but whole body health. Lauren has seen firsthand with her patients the dramatic improvements that can be made to reproductive health through simple, inexpensive, non-invasive techniques and firmly believes symptomatic periods and menstrual cycles can be a thing of the past and we can embody a thriving fertile life. Lauren works with people 1:1 worldwide, you can find more women's health tips on her instagram @laurencurtain and find her website here.