Why You Need Your Period
Why You Need Your Period: Every. Single. Month.
Wait, seriously?
“I could totally do without my period and feel just fine about it. It’s annoying, messy, and sometimes painful. It slows me down, and I’d just rather not deal with it.”
I’ve heard this over and over...
But, what if you couldn’t breathe or you had a fever hovering around 102 degrees, would you dismiss it as nothing? Of course not. Those are emergent issues which require immediate attention. Breathing and maintaining a balanced temperature are so vital to our overall health that they have been identified as “vital signs.” Of course, the other two commonly recognized vital signs are blood pressure and heart rate.
These four vital signs are biomarkers for whole systems in your body, and they signify when something is out of balance with your system and needs to be addressed urgently. When they are out of the regular range, you are not okay and something needs to change. These four vital signs give us valuable information about our overall health, and that’s why we have them assessed at every doctor’s visit.
Your Period is Your Fifth Vital Sign
Well, in 2015 the American College of Gynecology (ACOG) pronounced menstruation as a fifth vital sign for young girls and women in their article “Menstruation for Girls and Adolescents: Using the Menstrual Cycle as a Vital Sign.” With approval from the American Academy of Pediatrics, they published this statement: “By including an evaluation of the menstrual cycle as an additional vital sign, clinicians reinforce its importance in assessing overall health status for patients and caretakers.”
The menstrual cycle can be likened to an orchestra playing a piece of classical music. It has various sections which contribute their unique notes to create the music. If one section of instruments was removed, it would be a different song.
The same concept goes for our menstrual cycle. Our hormonal system is similar to an orchestra, each hormonal messenger has their message to contribute to the cycle, and if it doesn’t deliver its message, ovulation may be disrupted and menstruation will reveal it.
To use another analogy, menstruation is like the report card of ovulation, you can see how ovulation went from how your bleed shows up. Therefore, your period is a reliable vital sign to determine the health of your endocrine and hormonal systems, and consequently, your overall health.
However, your menstrual cycle doesn’t only impact your endocrine or hormone system, it plays a part in strengthening your brain, building your bones, and keeping your breasts and heart healthy. It impacts every system in our body, so let’s take a look at just how it works.
Why Your Brain, Bones, Breasts, and Heart Need Your Period
Do you actually need to bleed? The short answer is no.
BUT, you do need the estrogen and progesterone (and other hormones) that are produced as a result of cycling through ovulation and menstruation.
You might think that having your period is the main event of your menstrual cycle because it’s the most tangible and visible, however, your bleed is simply the report card of how your ovulation went a few weeks prior. Ovulation is the main event of your cycle, not your period. But you can’t see ovulation happen (some women can feel it), so you can look at your period to assess it.
You have two opposing poles to your cycle. The pole of ovulation and the pole of menstruation. At each of these poles, a crucial part of your cycle occurs. At ovulation, you release an egg, at menstruation, you bleed. Moving through this cycle requires the symphony of hormones to work together in order to play the ovulation song. If one section of the orchestra is absent or does not play their part, the song will not sound the same. It’s the same with ovulation. Each hormone delivers a specific message that triggers the next step in the process. If one hormone is out of balance and fails to deliver their message, ovulation will be disturbed and the results will show up in your next bleed.
When a young girl first gets her period (menarche), the first year of bleeding or so, the cycles may be anovulatory. This means that ovulation did not occur. Estrogen is brand new to her system and it takes some time for it to find its regular routes in the body, and the same goes for progesterone to find its balance with estrogen. Just as you mature through your teenage years, your hormonal system and cycle matures as well. Once your hormones and cycle find their groove, every ovulatory cycle puts money in the bank to strengthen cell and organ function for your overall health, now and later.
Every ovulatory cycle improves cognitive function, bone density, breast, and heart health, and reduces risk for mood disorders, osteoporosis, bone fractures, breast cancer and heart disease. It’s money in the bank for your brain, bones, breasts and heart.
Hormonal contraceptives, diet plans, eating disorders, over-exercising, under-eating, sleep disturbances, coffee, alcohol, surgery, and other outside influences interfere with ovulation. This equates to trouble because estrogen and progesterone are not produced in adequate balancing amounts without ovulation, and you don’t receive the health benefits now or for the future.
After years of ovulatory cycling, ideally, you have a whole bank of health to draw on after menopause when your hormones no longer cycle and make deposits.
Let’s talk more specifically about why your body needs YOUR estrogen and progesterone that you make in a balanced, cyclical way during the process of ovulation.
Estrogen and progesterone are vital for your brain, bones, breasts, and heart.
Why Your Brain Needs Estrogen and Progesterone
Estrogen promotes brain plasticity and improves cognitive function while progesterone promotes mood stabilization. Estrogen and progesterone are like peanut butter and jelly: they each function in their own way, but go together to balance each other out. We need both sides of this metaphorical sandwich in balanced amounts for each to truly do their job. NaturalWomanhood.org wrote, “If the effects of these hormones are not experienced in a balanced and cyclical way, the neuroprotective factors they are supposed to provide vanish.” In short, women who ovulate and menstruate naturally are smarter for longer during their lives. Their brains function at a higher level of cognition because they’ve had the support to develop fully and maintain their neuroplasticity. That’s kind of a big deal.
Why Your Bones Need Estrogen and Progesterone
You need estrogen and progesterone to build adequate bone density and prevent osteoporosis and fractures. To keep your bones strong, old bone must be removed (by cells called osteoclasts) and replaced with new bone (created by cells called osteoblasts). Estrogen slows the action of osteoclasts and thus prevents bone loss. Progesterone directly stimulates osteoblasts to make new bone. The bulk of your progesterone is produced after ovulation by the corpus luteum, the place from where the egg is released. If no egg is released, there is no corpus luteum and no progesterone production to deposit more bone. Every ovulatory cycle deposits money in the bank of your bones, literally.
Why Your Breasts Need Estrogen and Progesterone
Estrogen stimulates cell growth while progesterone promotes cell maturity and differentiation. See how they complement each other so well? Our bodies are amazing. With unbalanced estrogen, cell growth in the breasts can lead to soreness, lumpiness, and breast cancer risk. Dr. Jerilynn Prior and her colleagues have shown in their research that progesterone is necessary for breasts to mature, and that progesterone can stop the excessive cell growth caused by estrogen and “...the latest evidence from a large prospective observational study is that progesterone (but not progestins) with estrogen decreases the risk for breast cancer caused by the estrogen alone.”
Why Your Heart Needs Estrogen and Progesterone
As stated by Prior, the research around women’s heart disease is “under an unscientific cloud of myths and disadvantages in clinical care.” However, Dr. Jerilynn Prior and her colleagues have conducted many studies around women’s ovulation patterns and corresponding heart health. They found that progesterone has a positive impact on lowering heart disease risk factors like blood pressure, inflammation, and heart attacks later in life. Since normal ovulation produces progesterone, a regular cycle proves to be an important process to live longer and keep our heart working well. And that, “...ovulation and normal progesterone levels with normal estrogen may be protective for heart disease in women.”
To reiterate, Dr. Jerilynn Prior has said, “I’ll say again what I believe, and what we are making progress in proving: Regular menstrual cycles with consistently normal ovulation during the pre-menopausal years will prevent osteoporosis, breast cancer and heart disease in women.”
Your Period is Your Power Center
As you can see, your period means a lot more than we give it credit for. Those annoying 3-7 bleed days signify your health as a woman, but they also represent so much more.
There is a secret about the menstrual cycle that we rarely talk about in our culture, and that is the fact that your menstrual cycle is the heart of your power as a woman.
Let me explain.
Your cycle is not separated into bleed time and non-bleed time. It has four phases that mimic the four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. In each phase or season, your hormones are at different levels which impact your brain, emotions, social preferences, libido, sleep needs, exercise energy, and food cravings. Your hormones are constantly cycling throughout the month which means you are constantly changing throughout the month.
Do you wonder why some days…
It feels good to call all your friends
It feels good to stay in and curl up with a book
You totally crush it at the gym
You are dragging yourself out of bed
You’re on top of your game at work
One conversation throws you into a tailspin of self doubt
You go crazy in the bedroom
You want your partner to STAY AWAY
This is because your hormones are shifting with your cycle, and so are you. Your brain changes about 25% throughout your cycle, so you are literally wired for different kinds of activities during each phase/season.
This is an advantage because you have strengths that show up in amplified measure during each phase of your cycle, and if you learn to channel that raw capacity within each phase and go with it, that’s when you transform into a powerhouse.
Your menstrual cycle is your power center because it holds the blueprint for you to be the most powerful version of yourself all month long.
Key strengths associated with each phase of your cycle:
Spring (Follicular Phase):
Brainstorming ideas
Starting new projects
Try something new
Summer (Ovulatory Phase):
Having difficult conversations
Collaborating with others
Giving presentations
Fall (Luteal Phase):
Getting things done
Focusing on detail oriented tasks
Wrapping up projects
Winter (Menstrual Phase):
Evaluating what’s next for you
Reflecting on what happened last month and what needs to change
Connecting with The Divine for inspiration
Just like the earth gets everything it needs by cycling through each season, you will get everything you need and transform into a powerhouse when you guide your energy to flow with each season of your cycle. This is the magic of the menstrual cycle and the power it holds for you.
To wrap up, I will emphasize again how important your period is, not only your period but also your monthly menstrual cycle as a whole. Your period is the most visible evidence of your overall health, your report card and reliable vital sign that showcases how things are going internally. Your cycle impacts just about every system in your body, and with each cycle, you deposit or withdraw health now and for the future. Lastly, and I believe most importantly, your menstrual cycle is your power center as a woman. As you channel your natural energy during each season of your cycle, you transform into the powerhouse you are designed to be.
Download your FREE cycle syncing map and start cycle syncing today!
www.meredithashton.com/cyclemap
Resources
Steroid Hormones and Their Actions in Women’s Brains: The Importance of Hormonal Balance
Reasons Women Need Periods: The Role of the Menstrual Cycle in Brain Health and Development