A guide to healthy eating during menstruation

Prioritizing respecting the feelings of your own body, avoiding foods that will clearly cause you personal discomfort, and trying to be as nutritionally balanced as possible on this basis is more useful than rigidly applying any standardized guidelines.

I guess the first thing many people want to ask is: Can I touch ice? This question has been debated for more than ten years and there is no unified answer. The essence is that different people's physical tolerances vary greatly. According to the traditional Chinese medicine system, raw and cold food can cause cold coagulation and blood stasis, induce dysmenorrhea, and reduce menstrual flow. ； Modern Western medicine has no relevant taboos and believes that as long as the food you eat is clean and you don’t feel uncomfortable eating it, it’s completely fine. I have seen friends who have lived in the Northeast all year round. In the winter when the temperature is minus 20 degrees, they still eat popsicles. There is nothing wrong with eating smoothies during menstruation. ； I have also seen colleagues who seldom drink water at normal temperature. During menstruation, even a sip of iced milk tea makes them squat in cold sweat at their workstations in pain. There is really no unified standard answer. Your own body reaction is the most accurate yardstick.

Another question that was asked was: Can I eat sweet things if I want to eat them during menstruation? To be honest, two or three days before I come to visit my aunt, all I can think about is milk tea cakes and buns. After checking the relevant information, I found out that this is caused by the decrease in estrogen during the luteal phase and the decrease in serotonin synthesis. The desire to eat sweets is really not because you have poor self-control, but because your body is calling you to add some happiness factors to it. If you don’t have blood sugar problems, and you won’t have acne or breast pain aggravated by eating sweets, you can eat something if you want. There is no need to force it - after all, it is easy to be depressed during pregnancy, and the pleasure brought by a cup of hot milk tea is much more useful than the small impact of refined sugar. Of course, if you have a severe inflammatory reaction and develop acne and bloated breasts the next day after drinking full-sugar milk tea, you can also switch to alternative options, such as sugar-free yogurt mixed with blueberries, or hot taro milk with 30% sugar, which can relieve addiction and reduce the burden.

There are also many people who stock up on red dates, brown sugar, and donkey hide gelatin as soon as they get their period, saying they need to replenish qi and blood. Let’s put the data objectively first: more than 96% of every 100g of brown sugar is sucrose, and the iron content is only 2mg. It is not as practical as eating a small spoonful of pork liver (100g of pork liver contains 22.6mg of iron). If you really want to replenish the iron lost during menstruation, eat two more bites of lean beef, duck blood, spinach, and add an orange to add some vitamin C to promote iron absorption. It is much more effective than drinking ten bowls of brown sugar water. But then again, if you drink a bowl of hot brown sugar ginger tea and your stomach feels warm and the pain is mostly relieved, then drink it. After all, emotional and physical comfort are sometimes more important than nutritional data. As for whether donkey-hide gelatin can be eaten, don’t listen to people’s lies. If you have heavy menstrual flow, eating it during menstruation may indeed increase the amount of bleeding, so avoid it. ； If you have light menstruation, you can eat it regularly without any adverse reactions, and it’s totally fine if you want to eat it.

As for the frequently asked questions about whether you can drink coffee, whether you can eat fruit, and whether you can touch spicy food, the essence is the same logic: it depends on your own tolerance. For example, I usually have a glass of iced Americano every day, and drinking it at room temperature during menstruation is totally fine. It can even relieve migraines and laziness during my period. ； But another friend of mine gets flustered and bloated whenever she touches a little coffee, so she just drinks warm water during her period. You can eat strawberries, apples, and oranges at room temperature. The supplemented vitamins can also help you relieve fatigue. You don’t have to steam them. As long as they are not iced durian or iced watermelon that have just been taken out of the freezer, you will not feel bad after eating them. The same goes for spicy food. If you are from Hunan and Sichuan, you usually eat spicy food all the time, but it doesn't matter if you take a few bites during menstruation. If you are already prone to constipation and acne, then eat less during menstruation to avoid aggravating the discomfort.

I have been paying attention to my menstrual diet for so many years, and my biggest feeling is that there is really no need to put so many shackles on myself. No matter how many guides there are on the Internet, they are not as reliable as your own feelings after eating them: If you feel pain after eating ice, don’t touch it next time ； If you feel comfortable drinking brown sugar water, then drink it every day ； You just want to eat a full-sugar cream cake on your first day in bed with your aunt, so go ahead and eat it. It’s just a few extra calories and it’s better than holding in your emotions and feeling uncomfortable for a long time. After all, menstruation is already stressful enough, and eating something that makes you happy is more important than anything else.