Menstrual health management

Do not forcefully fight against body rhythms, and do not ignore abnormal warning signs**. All requirements that put aside individual differences and talk about "standard menstrual periods" are essentially counter-intuitive.

I just received a consultation from a post-00s generation last week. He strictly followed the "Menstrual Health Guide" in a certain book. On the first day, he had to drink three large cups of warm brown sugar water. The ice was so spicy that he dared not touch it. However, the pain still caused him vomiting and diarrhea and he asked for leave. After a checkup, I found out that she had primary dysmenorrhea + posterior uterine position. Her prostaglandin level was already higher than ordinary people. High sugar intake would aggravate the inflammatory reaction. The more she drank brown sugar water, the worse the pain became.

Having said this, someone will definitely ask, which of the menstrual taboos posted on the Internet are true?

The most controversial thing is definitely "whether you can eat ice". The view of Western medicine has always been clear: after ice food enters the digestive tract, it is covered to close to body temperature and will not directly contact the uterus. As long as you don't feel uncomfortable after eating it, there is no need to eat it. However, the traditional Chinese medicine system has always emphasized that raw and cold food can cause cold coagulation and blood stasis. I once met a girl who was born and raised in Guangdong. She rarely touched ice cream when she was a child. She ate two ice creams in the summer and stopped menstruating for two months. It took half a year of conditioning to return to normal. ； I have also seen girls from the Northeast still nibbling popsicles when visiting their aunt in winter, and nothing happened. I really want to say, don’t worry about right or wrong, just eat if you feel comfortable, and don’t touch if it hurts. Your own body is more reliable than any school of thought.

Another hotly debated topic is whether exercise is allowed during menstruation. Those who support resting are mostly patients with adenomyosis and endometriosis. If they take more than two steps in the first two days, they will be so painful that they break into a cold sweat. Forced exercise will only aggravate bleeding. ； The view from the kinesiology community is that low-intensity yoga and slow walking can promote blood circulation in the pelvic floor, but can relieve the swelling sensation of primary dysmenorrhea. My own feeling is that if the amount is small that day and there is only a dull falling sensation, walking around the neighborhood for 20 minutes is indeed more comfortable than curling up on the sofa for a day. However, during the period of ovulation bleeding last month, the bleeding increased significantly after walking for 10 minutes, so I immediately went home and lay down. There is really no need to work hard for "self-discipline", and there is no need to lie down and do nothing as soon as the aunt comes.

As for whether people can take painkillers, the clinical consensus is that it is perfectly fine to take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (such as ibuprofen) as needed for primary dysmenorrhea. Many obstetricians and gynecologists around me take painkillers directly when they feel pain. On the contrary, many girls endure the pain until they vomit, which causes stress gastrointestinal discomfort. Of course, if you have basic diseases such as gastric ulcer or asthma, you must first ask your doctor before taking it, and don't buy it blindly.

In fact, it is not difficult at all to understand these controversies. You just need to spend two or three months to figure out your own body patterns. There is no need to buy any complicated recording APP. Just jot down two notes on your mobile phone: the time of each visit, the days when the amount is heavy, the degree of dysmenorrhea, whether you can go to work normally or have to lie flat, whether you have any accompanying symptoms of headache and diarrhea, and also write down whether you stayed up late, were stressed, or ate too much ice in the previous week. Memorize it twice and you will figure out the pattern. For example, as long as I stayed up two late nights in the previous week, I would definitely postpone it for two days. I would have a migraine on the first day. Going to bed early two days in advance can relieve most of it. It is more effective than any health secret recipe.

Really, I have seen too many girls follow the "standard menstrual period" on the Internet, and nothing happens. But when they see that their cycle is not exactly 28 days, and the amount is not too much or too little, they start to worry about whether there is something wrong with their body. Instead, they endocrine disorders.

Of course, not all discomfort can be solved by "adjusting habits". Some signals really cannot be delayed. For example, if your menstrual flow suddenly doubles as usual, if your period lasts for 10 days, it is not clean, if you have unexplained bleeding outside of menstrual periods, or if you suddenly experience increasingly severe menstrual cramps after the age of 35, don’t believe in the old saying that “just get married and have children.” Get an ultrasound as soon as possible to rule out problems such as polyps and adenomyosis. If you delay for a long time, you will suffer.

After all, menstruation is a perfectly normal physiological phenomenon. There is no need to treat it as if it is an "illness", and there is no need to run marathons or drink iced drinks despite discomfort just to prove that "girls can do anything." Your own physical feelings are always the most accurate criterion.