Your Healthy Menstrual Cycle

A Healthy Menstrual Cycle Is a Woman’s Best Sign of Good Health!

Your menstrual cycle, when it is healthy, regular and predictable, is the best sign of your overall health! When something is off with your cycles (pain, changes to your flow, PMS, acne, mood changes, diminished fertility) all of these are signals to you that there is something off with your health and your body. But conventional and cultural approaches continue to define a woman’s normal monthly bleeding as something to be done with, to suppress with birth control, or surgically remove. “Don’t have a period and you won’t have period problem” is not a solution.

The “Prime Directive of Nature” and of our biology is to reproduce. This is simply a fact. It doesn’t mean you ever have to, but to understand this as the core of our physiologic functioning is to begin to turn toward your perfectly designed body with a regular monthly bleed as something to be informed by and not to be turned away from.

For many women, their periods have meant many years of suffering through pain, heavy bleeding, perhaps embarrassment and shame too. Our culture, and the predominant medical paradigm, says to suppress your periods, to take them away with an IUD or birth control pill or have surgery. And while these responses may provide short term relief and the perception of “healing”, for many women the long-term effects of suppression on their natural, rhythmic hormonal fluctuations can be detrimental to their best health.

If you experience PCOS, fertility challenges, irregular cycles with pain and/or heavy bleeding, endometriosis, PMS, acne, or weight gain, chances are there is something off with the way your body produces and manages your hormones. Underlying causes can include things such as: poor diet and lifestyle choices, gut microbiome disturbances, exposure to environmental toxins, nutrient deficiencies, blood sugar dysregulation, insulin resistance, and others. Learning more about the foundations of your health, how your hormones metabolize and detox from your body, and understanding what your own natural rhythms are, can help you heal and restore your cycle health!

A Note On Birth Control

As a firm believer in our right to manage our own fertility, I also acknowledge that it is a difficult process to stop birth control without some repercussions to your best health. While not true for all women, many women cannot maintain good health in the presence of synthetic, non-bioidentical hormones to suppress ovulation in order to prevent pregnancy. This is, and must always remain, a free choice for women, and for those who prefer a more natural approach, I recommend you learn to normalize your cycles, understand your fertility and how it ebbs and flows through the month, so you know when you are more or less likely to conceive. Use barrier methods and/or copper IUD’s if appropriate for contraception, explore vasectomy with your male partners if childbearing is no longer a consideration, and do your best to know your own body.