What To Do When You Have A Particularly Painful Period

The world is full of health misinformation. You probably already know this. What you likely don’t know is how much this misinformation harms women. Common knowledge regarding birth control, menstruation, and hormonal health is often factually inaccurate and damaging to women’s health. The following will focus on one area of women’s health specifically: periods. In particular, what to do when you have a particularly painful period.

Obligations And Life

First and foremost, a whole bunch of health information (which is coming up next) isn’t going to help you now at this moment you’re in if you don’t press pause. When your body is sending you the message of pain, it needs you to stop. This can be incredibly hard for women as we tend to take on a lot of important and valuable tasks. It’s not easy to put down something that is worthwhile. Remind yourself that you can pick things back up once you’re feeling better and that you’ll do a better job with them once you’ve taken care of yourself.

When it comes to obligations, ask for help. Ask a roommate or partner to tackle dinner. Ask a family member to take the kids to the movies. Seek out ways of getting the things you need without further draining yourself, like finding free pharmaceutical deliveries or ordering groceries to the front step. Do what you can to empty your to-do list without sacrificing things that absolutely must be dealt with.

Myth #1: Periods Are Supposed To Be Painful

Once you’ve given yourself a moment to breathe, it’s time to combat the first big horrible myth tied to periods. People will say painful menstruation is normal. It’s not. It’s common, as in, lots of women experience pain during their period, but it is not normal. Period pain is a sign that your hormones are imbalanced. It is something that can be cured with proper hormonal care. 

Myth #2: Hormonal Birth Control Fixes Hormone Imbalances

Hormonal birth control does not fix hormone imbalances. It makes them worse. Read that again. The birth control pill adds tons of estrogen and progesterone into your system; an abundance of estrogen is one of the most common causes of hormonal problems seeing as our world is increasingly full of estrogen-mimicking compounds.

Birth control makes you feel like your hormones are doing better because it completely stops your period from happening. The bleeding you experience on your “off” days on a 21-day hormonal contraceptive is not actually a period.

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SHOP NOW

SHOP NOW

Your period, like your skin and your mood, is how your body tells you whether things are alright or whether changes need to be made. If you stop having a period, your body can’t express hormonal issues as clear to you. That doesn’t mean those issues are not still occurring. When you go back off the pill in the future, you will likely find that the problem is not improved. Almost always, it’s worse.

You might also want to know that hormonal birth control is a type one carcinogen. It’s linked to depression and suicide attempts, and your decision to go on birth control doesn’t just affect you. When you urinate while on the pill, the hormones are released into the water system. At the moment, there is a large-scale

Hormone Balancing 101 

If you have painful periods, you need to be making hormonal changes. Firstly, that involves removing things that disrupt your hormone cycle from your life and diet. This is the scariest part of this conversation because the modern era is stuffed with hormone damagers. Some of the biggest sources of endocrine disruptions or estrogen-mimicking compounds include: 

• Conventional meat and dairy products—farm animals are stuffed with hormones to help them get as fat as possible as quickly as possible; when you eat these animals or their milk, you are also eating these hormones and being affected by them. Yes, this also impacts how much weight you gain. Game meat or organic, pasture-raised, grass-finished animal products are completely fine in this regard.
• Fragranced products
• Soy products
• Conventional beauty and hygiene products
• Eating or drinking out of plastic, especially if the plastic has been heated (think water bottle in a hot car) or cooled (think frozen fruit bags kept in the freezer)
• Consistent stress across several days—think about demanding work projects, toxic environments, or regularly working out super hard; (yes, working out too hard can mess up your hormones. This is because cortisol is a hormone)
• Pesticides

Hormone Balancing 102

Now that you know what to avoid, you can think about incorporating things that help your body naturally find optimal hormone levels:

• Healthy fats like organic nuts and seeds (peanuts are not actually nuts and don’t count), coconut oil, avocados
• Getting enough sleep
• Getting enough sunlight/vitamin D
• Adaptogenic herbs like Panax ginseng, holy basil, ashwagandha, astragalus root, licorice root, Rhodiola, cordyceps mushrooms, Schisandra berry, and turmeric

The above information should help you embark on a hormone healing journey and get to a healthy place where your period is comfortable and painless. Additional benefits to balanced hormones include healthy libido, healthy weight, high-quality sleep, high energy levels, comfortable mood regulation, positively influenced relationships due to lower rates of irritability, improved work performance, and more balanced decision making, including wiser food choices and financial choices.

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NannoPad®  is a must-have for a healthier period. Super thin and absorbent, NannoPad is developed to help with your menstrual discomfort in a holistic and effective way. See reviews here. Incontinence version NannoDry® is available too!

NOTE: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Nannocare. Nannocare is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with the author of this article, or any of its subsidiaries or its affiliates.