PERIOD HEATH - TRACKING

Period health can be a really confusing space, which is a mad concept considering half of us experience this for most of our lives! But actually, effectively tracking our cycle can give us so much insight. Here is a little run down on how to track your cycle.

Cycle or Period Health can be a very overwhelming thing. If you start trying to look for info on the internet or Instagram, you can easily be told “use your BBT to track your follicular and luteal stages” with the letters GnRH , FSH and LH flying about.

Well, what the hell is that? And if I don’t want a baby, now or maybe ever, why do I even care?

So, we are coming back to basics, and this resource hopes to make period health more accessible, and explain why period health is important.

To start with, how do you start tracking your period and why period health is for everybody, not just those trying to conceive. All the things I mention under tracking your period are things I will ask you about in our consultation - even if you’re not in for anything cycle related.

For the easiest way to get started, try our Free Download - How to track your cycle

Tracking

If you want to start paying more attention to your period health, tracking your period is the first thing you need to do, and not just the dates.

The Numbers

• First day of bleeding every cycle

Day one = first day of bleed.

This is something people can often get confused over, but Day 1 of your cycle is your first day of full bleeding, not spotting. Spotting is the light, sometimes erratic bleeding that can occur at any point in your cycle but frequently just before and after the main flow of your period.

Your cycle length is many days as it takes to bleed again.

We often here that our cycle should be 28 days long. However the majority of menstruating people do not have a 28 day cycle. Anywhere from 26-35 days can be considered normal.

The Bleed

• Days of bleeding

• Flow of the bleed

• Colour and clots of the bleed

Knowing how many days we bleed for is important, but there are other things we should be observing and recording with the bleed.

How heavy the bleeding is and how does this change over the days. How often do you have to change your sanitary product? This is something I often ask patients as a way of deducing the flow of blood. Does the flow feel manageable or do you struggle to contain and manage your bleed?

What is the colour like? Period blood can vary in colour from very pale pink to a very dark brown or black and everything in between. The colour may also change across the bleed, so just have a little look and see.

Now, when I ask about the clots in the blood, I almost always get a funny look. But it really does matter. Some people will have none, others can have pretty large clots that can be painful to pass.

Ovulation

• Days of cervical mucus

Ovulation is one that I think confuses a lot of people. It is also something many non-fertility patients I see just don’t know about. Ovulation usually occurs mid-cycle (usually around 2 weeks before your period). This is when we are most fertile, and why those trying to conceive often track ovulation. But even when not wanting to conceive, knowing roughly when we ovulate can be very helpful.

Ovulation can be tricky to notice, as for most people the symptoms are subtle or even not there. But if you know what they are, you have a much better chance of spotting it.

-Increased vaginal discharge, it will be watery, and stretchy, a bit like raw egg whites. (This is probably the most universal and obvious symptom)

-Pain on one or both sides of the lower abdomen

-Increase in sex drive

-Breast tenderness

-change in mood or energy

Pain

• Days and type of pain experienced

The first thing to say about period pains - they are NOT normal! We are taught that period pains are a part of life, and something women must simply endure each month, nice and quietly. Wrong. In Chinese Medicine, any pain of any kind cannot be normal.

So, things to note about the pain you experience:

-When. What days of the cycle do you experience pain, whether that is before, during or after the bleed?

-How much. How bad is the pain on each day. A little rating out of 10 will do the trick.

-Where. Where abouts do you feel the pain? Lower abdomen, lower back, thighs?

PMS - premenstrual syndrome

PMS is a very broad term; it can refer to anything from headaches to bloating to irritability to crying. Basically, PMS is any symptom you get just before the period that lets you know, your bleed is coming. Note what symptoms, but also the severity. PMS, similarly to pain, is not something normal, especially for those women for whom this is very severe.

Other symptoms

There are other symptoms you might not think relate to the cycle, but really they do. I’ll name a few but anything that happens cyclically, in a similar time frame to the cycle, is most likely linked.

-Appetite. This can change drastically up and down throughout the cycle

- Energy levels. Some patients can experience mild to severe fatigue in relation to their bleed

- Mood.

-Headaches

-Digestion. This covers everything from bloating to bowel movements

Why does period health matter?

1.    Ok, so let’s start with the obvious - babies! The better our period health, the higher our chances of conceiving a baby naturally. In Chinese Medicine, we also believe that we should conceive a baby when at optimum health, to ensure the healthiest foetus possible. Therefore, the advice given is that before we start trying to conceive, we regulate and improve our cycle. This can take a while to do, so if you are not thinking about pregnancy yet, but think you will in the future, get ahead of the game. Then when you decide you want a baby, you can start trying right away.

2.    But it’s not all about babies! Not all of us want to carry a child but that doesn’t mean we should ignore our period health. What happens with our period is a great insight into the working of the body. It is a resource we can use to see imbalances occurring within the body. By working with the period to improve it, this will have a knock-on effect to the whole body. If we manage to cause changes to the cycle, we are causing changes to our internal energies.

3.    Last but not least, because all women deserve to have pain free, predictable cycles that don’t cause dread. If you’re in pain, or have an erratic bleed, or a super heavy bleed, or no bleed, or PMS the chances are, you’d rather that wasn’t the case, or further still you long for it to be different. Well, it can! And the first step towards that is tracking your period and learning what is happening to your body.

Other posts will be talk about how we can improve our period health, and a bit more of the meanings behind tracking and hopefully continuing to answer some of your questions about the topic. If you have any questions, or want to discuss your period health, then just drop me an email.