How to Reduce Period Pain Naturally (Episode 421)

Full Transcript: Episode 421

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Welcome to the Fertility Friday podcast, your source for information about the Fertility Awareness Method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of The Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I teach women’s health professionals how to utilize the menstrual cycle as a vital sign in their practices and I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know I’m a busy girl but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with me today.

I was thinking that it would be a great follow-up to last week’s episode with Stacia where she shared her personal experience with endometriosis and severe period pain and some of the strategies that she successfully used to overcome her pain over the years. I thought it would be a great follow-up to that episode to share an episode all about overcoming period pain. And I think a lot of really interesting pieces came out of last week’s episode. I think one of the things that really even shined through on my part is the tendency that most of us have to minimize our pain. And because of stories like Stacia’s and friends that you know who may experience horrendous period pain that we would rate it a level 10 that’s associated with vomiting and nausea and just the inability to really function during that time, I think it’s really easy for women who still have moderate to severe period pain who don’t fall into that category of over-the-top extreme, we tend to still minimize our pain. So even if we’re doubled over in pain and we can’t function it’s like oh well I didn’t vomit and I know a friend of mine who has it worse than me. And so I would encourage you to try not to do that. Try not to minimize your pain. And remember that if we think of the menstrual cycle as a vital sign then a healthy period, although it’s common for women to experience pain and discomfort, moderate to severe pain is not normal. So it’s common but it’s not normal. And it is a sign of inflammation. It’s a sign that there’s something off. It’s our vital sign trying to tell us something. And I think another takeaway is it is possible to reduce, minimize, or completely eradicate your pain depending on the situation. But most women can find ways to experience at least an improvement or a reduction in their pain, and at best getting to the point where their pain is fully manageable, whether it’s not there at all or really down to that kind of under five out of ten scenario where maybe you’re somewhere between a zero and a two. It is possible and I think that hopefully those are two important takeaways that you’ll take from today’s episode. So without further ado let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode all about overcoming period pain.

Today I have a special episode for you. In today’s episode, I will be focusing entirely on period pain. And so for those of you who’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ll know that in my case and my story and experience I struggled with period pain for a really long time. The topic of period pain is really near and dear to my heart because the message that I want to share with all of you listening, especially if you have experienced period pain at some point or you currently experience period pain every single time you have your period, what the message I want you to take away from today’s podcast is that period pain is really common, a lot of women experience it, but just because something’s common doesn’t make it normal and doesn’t make it optimal. And I really want us to start questioning the way that our culture and society and medical system looks at period pain. Because really and truly, and I’ve said this many times, period pain is the only type of pain that we think of as totally fine and totally normal and acceptable. If you were to ask any man that you know, so think of all the men in your life, if he had intense pain in his penis for several days every month to the point that in some cases he couldn’t go to work or he was on the floor writhing in pain, everyone would understand that that’s not okay. So we really have to question what we’re told about all of these topics that we talked about on the podcast but particularly period pain, because that doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense that there’s any situation where we would consider moderate to severe pain that is debilitating and can prevent you from doing the normal activities that you need to do, how we could even think that that is normal and acceptable and okay. Just because something’s common doesn’t mean that it’s normal. And just because a lot of women experience it doesn’t mean that that’s what we should expect. It’s just really important that we start questioning some of these notions that really just I feel that they devalue women and our position in society overall. We should demand better. We deserve to live a life free of pain and suffering, and we deserve to be believed and heard when we experience debilitating pain or moderate to severe period pain. And we deserve to live in a world where our medical system considers it to be a problem, not just a medical system that considers it to be completely normal and acceptable.

Anyways, so I just wanted to start with those few concepts because even in my practice this really comes from experience. Over the years I have found that so many women experience period pain and so many women have experienced moderate to intense pain their entire lives. So primary dysmenorrhea is what it’s referred to as. So many women have experienced it that often I have to dig for it. I have a detailed intake form. Sometimes it’s not even listed on there. I have to ask about it. And as women we really tend to minimize. So either we minimize because we know somebody that has experienced worse pain. So maybe we have friends or family members who’ve had really bad period pain. Maybe you know somebody whose pain is so bad that they throw up when they have their period or they’ve been hospitalized. And so for you, even though your pain is super intense, you think, well, you know, I know it could be worse, so it’s not that bad. And even if on a scale from zero to ten, zero being no pain you’re sitting on the beach somewhere, ten being somebody stabbing you in the abdomen, even if your pain isn’t a ten, but it’s more like a five or a six, we typically minimize it anyways. So I think as just as women, it’s just what we do. I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe it’s because the stereotype of us being more empathetic and more connected to the emotional side, knowing that there are people that suffer worse than us. And so why should I be complaining? But I’m here to tell you that you deserve to experience life free of moderate to severe pain. And we should not just expect and anticipate that that is all we can get out of life, and really that there’s nothing else that we can do.

So I think that’s just a good place to start and ground this discussion, because I am one of the people in your life, whether it be virtually because you’re listening to the podcast, or if you’re in one of my programs, I’m one of the people in your life who is going to advocate for you, and who’s going to say, wait a minute, we got to talk about this period pain thing, because it is a sign of inflammation. And so that’s where we’ll start with our discussion anyways.

So in today’s episode, what you can expect is just a real honest discussion. And I want to talk about what a normal period should look like. I want to talk about the normal process of menstruation, what is actually happening in the body. And that can help us to understand what happens when it goes wrong. Essentially, when you understand the process that’s going on in the body, then we can start to understand, okay, because not all women have pain. There are many women who are listening to this podcast who either experience mild discomfort when they have their periods, so on that scale of zero to ten they might be placing their pain from anywhere from a zero to a two, or just nothing, or they may never have had a lot of pain at all. So for us to say that it’s normal then I would expect every single woman to have pain but it’s just not the case. So then we really have to start asking, well, why do some women have pain? Why do some women not? Why do some women have mild pain when some women have severe pain? And I think if you are in that moderate to severe pain area, then one of the important questions that you should be asking, or at least you should consider asking, is what about the women who have experienced severe pain, moderate to severe pain, or did experience moderate to severe pain for years and no longer experience it?

I think that for a lot of us women who have regularly experienced pain, where we kind of — a period is synonymous with discomfort and, you know, taking pain-killing medications and things like that — I think that we can get to the point where we just have to accept it because it’s just part of life. So we feel like it’s just how it is and you kind of just stop trying to address it because it’s just a part of your life. It’s just a regular part of your life. You’ve found a way to manage it. You’re just kind of going about doing your thing. And I think we get to a point where we just assume that it’ll always be this way. I’ve tried everything, there’s nothing that I can do. And so I think that it’s really important just to point out that there are women who have experienced really bad pain and they find ways to address it. And there are women who have been able to reduce or eliminate their pain and no longer have to be on hormonal contraceptives or no longer have to take painkillers, or even if they have to take painkillers occasionally they don’t just take it every single period. And so if anything, I want you to know that there’s hope and it is possible.

And so I was one of those people who basically would have told you to shut up, right? Like, shut the front door. This is just how it is. My pain is so bad that, you know, nothing has ever touched it. I’ve tried everything. I was there too. So I feel like I can speak to this from a place of personal experience as well as a professional place, because this is one of the areas where I support my clients to reduce or eliminate their pain in the work that we do together.

So I just want to talk a little bit about what a normal period looks like. So I have an entire episode on this topic, a couple actually, so I’ll link them in the show notes. But quite briefly, a normal period basically starts out moderate to heavy typically. It lasts anywhere from about three to seven days. And it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So the flow pattern typically starts moderate to heavy, as I mentioned. You know, what the research tells us and what the lived experience of women tells us is that you typically lose the vast majority of your blood, of your menstrual bleeding, during the first two to three days of your cycle. So in one study that I quoted in The Fifth Vital Sign, the women studied lost 70 percent of their total blood by day two of their cycle and 90 percent by day three. So any menstruating woman, you’re probably nodding your head, because typically the first two to three days are the heaviest and then your period starts tapering off. And this is assuming that your periods are of normal length. And for many women, if they’re going to experience pain, it’s typically just on say one or two days, maybe three days, but typically there’s those days where you’re actively bleeding and you have quite a heavy to moderate flow. And typically, if you’re going to experience pain, it’s in the early part of your cycle, not necessarily every day. So every woman’s experience is different. I’m not saying that every woman has the same experience, but just giving an overall viewpoint of what a typical cycle would look like.

And so what is not normal for a period is for it to go on and on. So for it to be longer than seven days, for there to be several days of spotting before your period and several days of spotting after, and bleeding in between periods. So it’s very common again for women to have a couple days of spotting prior to menstruation, but it’s not optimal, and that typically is giving us information about your progesterone levels and often your stress levels, because that’s one of the ways that stress can impact your cycle — having a shorter luteal phase and also having spotting before your period consistently cycle after cycle.

So if you do experience bleeding throughout your cycle — so meaning that you have a period and maybe the bleeding lightens up or stops and then it starts again, and you’re having actual bleeding in the middle of your cycle, maybe a couple days of bleeding, or some women report that they have bleeding like all the time — it’s really important to know what’s normal and what’s not normal. So in terms of the bleeding, your bleeding should be happening when you have your period. And it should be like a sentence, right — beginning, middle, and end, and then it’s over, and then it stops. And so if you find that you are bleeding quite a bit throughout your actual menstrual cycle, so the days between periods, then certainly consider going to your doctor and asking, demanding, requesting an ultrasound and just a full checkup — checks for, you know, infections, just do the whole thing.

Because it’s really important — even in The Fifth Vital Sign, I shared a story where a woman had experienced bleeding, she was basically bleeding almost every day, she went to her doctors, they were telling her it’s fine, right, go on the pill, blah blah blah, and it turned out that she had uterine cancer, and she really had to push for those tests to get that done. And so it’s really important for us to be advocates for ourselves and to really think of this menstrual cycle and our periods as a sign of health, as a vital sign, because often, in some cases, it’s really just your periods that are giving you this additional information.

Okay, so we talked about then how the flow pattern should go. In a typical healthy cycle, you would expect to have anywhere from about 25 to 80 milliliters of bleeding in total. So if you’re using menstrual cups, a minimum of one full cup — typically a cup is about an ounce or so — throughout the whole, all of the days of your period. So if you added up all the bleeding, you’d expect to fill about one cup. If you use tampons or pads, you’d expect to fill anywhere from four to five pads throughout the course of your whole cycle. And then on the heavier end, 80 milliliters, that’s about five or six cups give or take. And 80 milliliters, that would be filling maybe four to five pads a day for at least like three days of your cycle, three to five days of your cycle. So just to give you a general idea of what that would look like.

And so there’s no perfect ideal scenario. There’s women who typically bleed on the lighter side and always have — their periods have always been a bit on the lighter side and they’re healthy and their periods and menstrual cycles are falling into normal parameters. There are women who have always tended towards the heavier side. And I think it’s just important to remember, our uterus is, you know, an organ, and we’re all not the same size. Some of us are petite, some of us are tall. So we wouldn’t all have the same size of uterus and it would make sense that there’s going to be differences in our flow patterns and our bleeding. But if you’re — I think it’s important just to know that there is such a thing as too light. So if you’re barely bleeding at all, if your periods last one day and it’s very light and you don’t even fill up a tampon or two the whole time that you have your period, that’s really light. And there’s also such a thing as too heavy, which we’re more familiar with. So if you’re using a cup and you’re filling five, six cups the first day, then just know that that is heavier than normal.

And again, same idea — if your bleeding pattern is too light or too heavy, it’s a good idea to have a conversation with your doctor. Just get checked out. Heavy bleeding is associated with iron deficiency anemia, because if your iron is really low you may end up bleeding more, but also if you bleed a lot you could be losing more iron. So it’s an interesting relationship there. And heavy bleeding may be associated with fibroids. It can be associated with, you know, uterine polyps, estrogen dominance, endometriosis, and adenomyosis. So there’s certain conditions that it can be associated with. So it’s just helpful to just know that, wait a minute, there is such a thing as a normal period volume. And if it’s outside of that we should be getting that looked at. And this is basic stuff — it would be really nice if this was just routinely checked when you went for your annual physical.

So in addition to that — so we covered, you know, flow pattern, length, volume — and so I’ve said this already but in a normal, healthy period we would expect to have fairly minimal, if no pain. So mild to no pain would be what I would consider to be optimal and normal, meaning that it’s not like you don’t feel anything, but it’s not actually painful. You don’t have to take medication. Just that would be optimal, you know, normal, healthy. And moderate to severe pain that requires you to take medication — that’s something where it’s very, very common and a lot of women experience it, but it’s not optimal and it’s not what we would actually consider normal or healthy. And remember, in any other scenario, pain is considered to be a problem.

Just to give you that overview of what a healthy period looks like, just so that you have an idea, just so that there’s — you’ve heard somebody say, okay, common but not normal.

I think what’s also helpful is to get into a bit of what is actually happening when you have your period. And so when I was researching for The Fifth Vital Sign, and also just in my work in general, when I’m working with clients and we’re talking about period pain and what we can do to improve it and kind of, you know, looking to see what could be contributing to the issue, it’s really helpful to have a sense of what’s actually happening from a biological perspective when you have a bleed, when you have your period.

And so if you think about the process of bleeding outside of menstruation, bleeding is associated with inflammation and tissue damage. So if you were to cut your finger and you were to start bleeding, we have a pretty good sense that there’s some tissue damage there, and there’s also some inflammation — you can see and feel the throbbing, you’d be able to see the skin kind of puff and raised. And that’s part of the natural healing process. And so when you have your period, it’s interesting because menstruation is a natural inflammatory process. And there’s a number of reproductive processes that are also, you know, natural inflammatory processes. So ovulation is a good example of that, because in the process of ovulation there is inflammation — the ovary literally bursts open to release the egg. So there is some degree of inflammation, some degree of tissue damage, and your body then reinstates the healing process.

And so with menstruation, in order for menstruation to happen normally — again, because it’s a normal inflammatory process — our body produces lipids called prostaglandins that are involved in muscle contraction. So these smooth muscle contractions help our body to, you know, eliminate the bleeding and to really shed the lining, and the tissue in the lining, in the process of menstruation. The lining is being shed because the lining goes through a process where it actually dies and then we release it. And it’s through this inflammatory process that we shed the uterine lining so that it’s gone, the functional layer is shed. And then once your period is over, your ovaries start producing estrogen as you approach ovulation, and that’s what triggers the lining to develop again.

When you understand what’s happening in the process of menstruation — that your uterine lining is shedding through this natural inflammatory process and it does involve tissue damage, it does involve inflammation, but it’s normal — then we can start to understand that if we have too much inflammation in our bodies, or if the process is going awry, then that is going to contribute to more pain. And when you look at what the research has to say, when they examine the blood of women — so when they do tests on women who experience moderate to severe period pain — what they find is that these women have upwards of four times the levels of prostaglandins in their bloodstream. And so prostaglandins are obviously a marker of inflammation. They’re part of this normal natural inflammatory process. But women who experience pain have way more. And having excess prostaglandins is then what can — one of the factors that can contribute to excessive pain. Because when you’re having more of these lipids that are associated with smooth muscle contractions, then it can cause stronger contractions and a lot more pain. And just again, the process is going awry.

So I think understanding what’s happening in the natural process of getting your period — which is, we’re taught about our periods but we’re not taught about our periods, right — in order to understand what happens when it goes wrong, or to even have that understanding that, okay, wow, this isn’t normal, like it’s really common, but pain is something that happens when the process is actually not working optimally, we have to be able to understand what’s happening. And that’s just how my brain works, and that’s how I approach everything. I refer to myself as a nerd all the time because I spend a lot of time with my nose in scientific studies and textbooks. But really and truly, this is what it is. And so understanding that can be really helpful because what that means is that there’s something that we could do.

Now the pain might not only be related to this one factor, but this one factor is typically involved when you’re experiencing excessive pain. One thing just to keep in mind as well is that for many women, pain is one of those signs that they may have endometriosis — a condition that’s classified by immune system dysregulation and, again, inflammation, and the development of endometrial tissue outside of where it’s supposed to be. And so many women experience pain and it can be related to this condition, which can be truly debilitating. It increases your risk of experiencing fertility challenges. And so again, if we look at the menstrual cycle as a vital sign, and we think of pain as being a sign that something is wrong, then we can really start to appreciate, okay, well, so if you experience extreme pain with your periods, it can actually be a sign that you actually have this condition — endometriosis. And so instead of just looking at it as normal and something that we just have to deal with, at some point we should at least ask the question, maybe we should be looking at the root cause. Maybe we should first acknowledge that it’s not a normal state of the female body to just be in constant pain and anguish.

And so I recently released a post where I put it out there that the pill doesn’t fix or cure period problems. And the response to that post was very interesting and very fiery. And the women who were most upset by the post tended to be women who did experience a high degree of period pain. And so I just want to put out there that I get it. Now, when I say that the pill doesn’t fix or cure, what I’m saying is that it’s not addressing the underlying factor. So it’s helping to manage the symptoms, which is extremely important given how debilitating the pain can be. It is extremely important for us to find ways to manage the symptoms so that we can live our lives and take care of our families and do everything that we need to do. But I think that as women we should demand better.

So I look at things in terms of — I’ve always looked at things like when you’re having an issue, you want to do the best that you can do right now based on what information you know. But I always had the sense in my own life where, okay, I’m going to do what I know right now because it’s working and I need to function. But ultimately, my goal is to increase my knowledge base so that I can actually address this issue in better and better ways.

So what I mean by that is, when you are experiencing extreme period pain, I just don’t believe anyone should have to go through that type of pain. I’ve talked about it many times on the podcast, but when I experienced period pain, I classified my pain as like a nine or a ten on the pain scale. It was so painful that I couldn’t function. The pain was blinding. If the pain were a color, it would be blinding light — you wouldn’t be able to see. If I were to describe the pain, at times it would feel like someone reached into my anus and squeezed so tightly. It just felt horrible. And even as a young woman, I always thought to myself, I just wondered if labor was worse, to be honest, because I would often feel like I was going through labor with no baby at the end. And when I did eventually go through labor — now that I have two children — I didn’t even know I was in labor with my eldest son, because I kept thinking to myself, this can’t be labor. My period pain hurts more than this.

I say this with a lot of empathy and compassion because I really have been there in terms of severe period pain so bad that I couldn’t function. And so when you’re experiencing pain like that, obviously in those situations what you need to do is not be in pain. So step one is to get out of the pain. And so whether that is ibuprofen, whether that is a special pill from your doctor that’s even stronger, whether that is birth control to manage it, you just got to do what you got to do. Because that’s an emergency, a very acute situation where the pain can be so severe that you can’t function. And so I get that. And so when I say the pill doesn’t fix it, I don’t mean that it doesn’t help you to function or it doesn’t help you to manage the symptoms. But what I mean is that there’s a difference between getting rid of the pain so that you can function, and then, when the pain is now managed for the most part, you can start to devote that extra energy and brain power you have back to looking at the underlying factors.

So not all women necessarily are going to want to go on this journey to figure out the underlying factors. But I find that at some point many of us do. So whether that’s because at some point in your life you’re going to want to have children and that would mean you’d have to come off the pill and how are you going to manage the pain, or whether you just get to a point where you’re living a healthy lifestyle, you’re eating good, you’re exercising, and it just feels incongruent to be taking medication. All these years working in this field, I haven’t met any women whose goal is to be on the pill for their whole lives. A lot of women eventually get to the point where they just want to be in their bodies. A lot of women have negative side effects on the pill. And so if you experience period pain and you’re using it to manage, it’s important just to have that conversation, because a lot of women do have side effects.

But on the flip side, I recognize that for many women, the pill and painkillers have been the only things that have ever brought relief. Maybe you’ve tried different things and it never worked. So I completely understand that. So step one — the most important thing is to not have the pain. And so while you’re trying to manage that, just whatever you need to do is whatever you need to do and it’s completely okay.

And so for women whose pain is really severe, I think it’s important to just keep in mind — I call it my boardroom analogy — but it’s not only your medical doctor that is the only person on earth that can support you. We all need to have doctors. But when you’re experiencing an issue, especially an issue as a woman with regards to your menstrual cycle, your period, your reproductive system, it’s really important to start taking a look at your team. Because your doctor can help you with their tools, which is drugs, hormones, painkillers, surgery. But often in order to get the lasting healing and to identify the root causes and get to the bottom of what’s actually happening, we need to look at other modalities. And that’s something that’s really important to remember.

So when your pain is really severe, it is important to push for testing, to make sure that you’re getting checked out. If it’s really severe, ask your doctor about options for confirming if you have endometriosis or not. Can we do a laparoscopy to get a diagnosis? So looking at all of those options from a medical perspective, but also recognizing that there are other modalities that look at what’s happening from a functional perspective — like, what is actually causing the pain? It’s not normal to just be in pain all the time.

From that perspective, then, what many women opt to do — and something that’s really important to consider — is whatever option that you’ve used to manage the pain: if you’re using birth control to manage the pain, you can start addressing some of those underlying issues while you’re still on the birth control, and work towards eventually transitioning off if that is something that you wish to do. And the reason why I think that is important, again, is if we look at the menstrual cycle as a vital sign, if we understand that pain is associated with increased levels of inflammation, if we understand that extreme pain can be associated with debilitating conditions such as endometriosis, which is also characterized by adhesions — and surgeries can cause scar tissue and all those types of things — then it is helpful to just start thinking about what it could mean for overall health and how we could eventually go about addressing the underlying factors as well.

So at this point, I just wanted to go through a few strategies that are really important to consider when looking to reduce your overall period pain. And when speaking as a woman who did experience pain for a really long time, you know, when I was in my early 20s, I tried all kinds of stuff and I read books, lots of books, and often I would get to parts about period pain and I would read these stories about women who had period pain, and the books would make it seem like it was really emotional. You know, like they would go through and work with a counselor, work through some of their past trauma, have a good cry, and then they would never have pain again or something like that. And I always felt like it really minimized what I experienced.

And so I just want to share that because for many women who’ve experienced pain, you’ve tried different things — of course you have, we’re very resourceful. And you know, a lot of these different treatments and things people talk about don’t necessarily have any type of lasting impact for you, because potentially in your case they’re not addressing the root factors, the root cause. And so I think that it’s just really important to acknowledge and honor that. So especially for those of you who’ve like, I’ve tried everything and I feel like nothing has worked — it’s helpful just to have that sense of, okay, if you’re going to approach addressing inflammation, addressing period pain, addressing the physical aspects of it, if you potentially have adhesions and endometriotic lesions or things like that, it’s not something where you’re going to do something for two weeks and everything’s going to be okay. For many women, it is a process that takes quite a while. But when you’re on the right track, you should start to see some improvements as you go about it.

So I’ll just go through some of the strategies for reducing period pain. The first thing that I’ll mention is — really consider, if you do experience moderate to severe period pain on a regular basis, really look at your dairy consumption. So I’m definitely not anti-dairy. I’ve talked about dairy here and there on the podcast and I go through a full description of dairy products and the different issues with dairy in The Fifth Vital Sign in chapter 12. But processed dairy products can be a huge problem for a lot of women. So commercially processed dairy products are typically coming from A1 cows. So cows, for instance, like Holstein cows are the most common, and they produce milk that contains a protein, A1 beta-casein. And this protein is known — it’s associated with all kinds of inflammatory conditions and immune problems. And there’s so much research. So if you’re a professional listening to this podcast, just take a look at the research on A1 beta-casein and its connection to a number of different diseases and issues and inflammatory conditions, et cetera.

So the type of milk can certainly aggravate a certain condition and contribute to inflammatory issues. And also the way that commercial dairy is processed. So commercially processed dairy, depending on where you live in the world, often contains growth hormones. So often the farmers of commercially processed dairy — again, it’s not legal in every country — but depending on where you live, they’ll give the cows growth hormones so that they make more milk. And they’re feeding the cows grains, so like corn, maybe soy, sometimes genetically modified. So the milk itself then would contain a higher level of pesticides. And feeding cows grain products in general leaves the milk to be much more inflammatory. So a favorable fatty acid profile would contain approximately as many omega-3s as omega-6 fatty acids. So when you’re feeding cows grains, the research is clear — when they test the milk and they test the meat, it contains a much greater percentage of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3, which contributes to inflammation. So you’re getting it on multiple fronts — higher level of artificial hormones, higher level of omega-6 fatty acids which is inflammatory, and also the A1 protein. Those three things are not what you need when you’re trying to reduce inflammation.

So again, I’m not anti-dairy, but if you are experiencing period pain and you do consume dairy products regularly, it is worth considering eliminating commercially processed dairy for a period of time. So I typically recommend doing things from cycle to cycle. So consider a cycle, do an experiment, do a test for yourself — cut it out for a full cycle or two full cycles, and then add it back and see what happens. Or consider just getting better quality. So just like when you’re looking to improve what you’re eating, you look at better quality meat. Okay, can I find meat that is locally raised from cows that are able to graze on pasture? Can I get meat that doesn’t have artificial hormones in it? So same idea with the milk. Do you have the ability to switch to organic? Do you have the ability to switch to grass-fed so that you’re getting dairy from cows that are eating grass? A2 versus A1 — that debate and question is becoming more and more widely known, so it’s getting easier to look for A2 milk. And also switching to goat’s milk — goat’s milk is naturally A2. So it’s just a different breed of animal that produces milk that has a different protein. So instead of the A1 protein, they have an A2 protein, which for many people is enough just switching the type for them to not really experience the same type of inflammatory issues. So just like you’ve heard of children who have an issue with cow’s dairy but they do completely fine on goat’s dairy, it’s the same idea. So just play with that, play around with that. But that would be the first thing that I would suggest for you to look at, because for a lot of women getting rid of the commercially processed dairy really helps them in terms of their period pain.

So that’s something to keep in mind. So along the same lines, looking at inflammatory foods. So just, again, same exact thing I was talking about with the cows eating grains versus eating grass — local cows that are grazing on pasture have a much more favorable fatty acid profile, contain a much more favorable balance of omega-3 to omega-6. So highly inflammatory, the commercially processed meat and dairy products. Also, in terms of inflammatory foods, you just want to look at other foods that contribute to inflammation. So sugary foods, high carbohydrate foods, foods that just contribute to inflammation in the body. So really just looking at those types of foods — processed foods, high sugar foods, and simple grains that can really raise blood sugar and contribute to inflammation in the body.

So in addition to that, we want to look at sources of chemicals and xenoestrogens. So chemicals that mimic estrogen — they’re everywhere. As women, all of the products that are marketed to us contain them. I’ll link an episode that I did talking about xenoestrogens. But just briefly, you want to look at your beauty products, you want to look at anything that you put on your skin, you want to look at the products used to clean your house, to wash your clothes — laundry detergent, scented everything, plug-ins in the house for the scent, so the plug-ins that have the smells so that your house smells like whatever it’s smelling. But just all of those products that can really make your indoor air quality terrible. Menstrual products — what you’re putting inside of your vagina. If you’re using tampons and pads that have been bleached, often there are studies that show that many of the commercially processed menstrual products that you buy at the store contain dioxins and all kinds of chemicals. So just really — there’s a huge component of endometriosis that is related to toxin exposure, whether it’s in utero and then it causes us to develop differently, or throughout our lives. So just really looking at the amount of toxins that you’re exposing yourself to.

So every woman is different. Some women might cut out dairy products and find that their periods improve. Some women might reduce their consumption of inflammatory foods and things like that and see a big difference. Some women find that switching their menstrual products or reducing their use of xenoestrogenic chemicals can really improve their periods. It’s not always that simple, but these are things that you would do over a period of time. So this is kind of like a lifestyle shift that for many women — you got to give yourself like three to six months to kind of fully go through your house and start, you know, every time you run out of something, you go and replace it with something that is non-scented, or you take your time to find products that actually work that also don’t contain the xenoestrogenic chemicals. So by doing these things, you’re supporting your natural hormones, and you’re overall reducing the inflammatory processes that are going on, reducing the load on your liver because all of these chemicals that you’re consuming and using on your body — your liver has to get rid of them, your body has to detoxify them. So you’re reducing the overall load of toxins in your body by just being mindful of some of these things.

So these are lifestyle changes that are really important to consider if you’ve experienced period pain. And even if you’ve been managing and everything has been going pretty smoothly, these are things that you can start incorporating over time while you’re still doing whatever you were doing to cope. And so it’s a good idea to just consider gradually reducing these exposures. And like I said, if your period pain was extreme, these are things you can do for several months on hormonal birth control before you even consider going off.

So in addition to these things that you can do on your own, you might want to start considering incorporating other modalities that are known to reduce inflammation and are known to support women who have experienced period pain, fertility challenges, endometriosis, and other types of conditions in that way. So for example, acupuncture has been studied — so there’s quite a bit of research showing the link between acupuncture, reducing pain, reducing inflammation — and many women report that acupuncture significantly improves their periods overall, their period pain. And so that is something to consider. Absolutely working with practitioners who have experience working with women to reduce or eliminate period pain through alternative modalities. And so that’s something where you can look to see what’s available where you live, and have a conversation with a practitioner before you embark on a relationship together and find out, do you regularly work with women that have period pain? What has your success rate been? What are some of the things that you do? What works? What doesn’t work? And you can have those conversations before you enter into that relationship.

So in addition to acupuncture, looking at abdominal therapy modalities. And so for those of you who’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ve noticed that that’s one of the areas that I frequently talk about. I frequently interview practitioners of various abdominal therapy modalities, including arvigo therapy, mercier therapy, fertility massage therapy, and others. And so these abdominal therapy modalities address the very physical nature of the body. So sometimes when you’re experiencing pain, it can be related to a combination of inflammation as well as adhesion. So tissues — and what an adhesion is, is when you have two something that is stuck together, essentially. That’s like the non-scientific way to say that. But your uterus is a dynamic organ, and throughout your menstrual cycle, in response to your estrogen and progesterone levels rising in your pre and post-ovulatory phase, your uterus ideally has free range of motion.

When we think of our uterus, we don’t think of a dynamic organ that’s actually moving around our pelvic cavity. But when you understand the menstrual cycle — and I mean, one of the things I teach is how to check cervical position, and I teach my clients that the whole uterus moves and is in a different point of your menstrual cycle. And so in order for that to happen, your uterus has to have freedom of motion. So for example, many women who suffer with endometriosis develop lesions, and that can cause these adhesions. So it can cause tissue to actually stick together so that you don’t have the ideal optimal range of motion. And it can cause problems — it can cause digestive issues. It can be associated with these adhesions because they can form in the pelvic cavity.

And so with abdominal therapy modalities, often they involve — it’s not exactly a massage like you think of a relaxing massage, but a lot of these modalities will go deeply into your pelvic cavity and just work the muscles. So if you imagine your uterus and your pelvic cavity, these are muscles and ligaments. So working the muscles and ligaments, ensuring that your uterus is aligned properly, ensuring that you have proper blood flow, and ensuring that adhesions can be gently removed. So in terms of removing adhesions, you can have a surgery where the surgeon goes in and actually removes them physically. But you can also break up adhesions through the process of massage therapy. And so many women report — even if they’re going in for other issues, some women go and seek abdominal therapy modalities because they’re struggling with digestive issues — and they find that having the actual therapy in their abdominal cavity can help improve digestion. But many women find that going through these types of modalities can improve their pain because it’s physically addressing some of those issues.

So again, another modality to consider, especially if you’re at a place where you’re wanting at some point to — whether you actually want to have children at some point and you’re concerned about coming off the pill and how you’re going to manage the pain while you’re trying to conceive, or whether you just are at the point where you’re questioning hormonal birth control use and you’re wondering, okay, what else can I do.

So it’s really important, again, to consider a team approach when it comes to your healthcare. So working — of course we all need doctors — working with our doctors and being able to identify any serious conditions, having access to adequate testing and proper medical care, but also looking at alternative modalities that are addressing these issues in a different way. So if you had a knot in your back, you would go to a massage therapist. You could take medication if it was causing you pain, but the medication wouldn’t get out the knot, right? So when you think of your body in a physical way, it does make sense to consider other modalities that would address the physical aspect of it. And especially when it comes to having better periods, as women it’s time that we demand better healthcare. I believe that as women we deserve better than just being put on medication for the rest of our lives with the message that there’s just something wrong with our bodies, as opposed to seeking medical care that’s actually addressing the root cause — medical care that acknowledges, wait a minute, being in a constant state of pain is not a normal state for the female body, and we should really be working towards helping the body restore that optimal state of health.

Many women find that vaginal steaming improves their periods. And what I found in my practice firsthand, working with women, is that when I’m working with a woman who experiences periods that they’re just not comfortable with — so periods that look kind of like molasses, that are a very dark brown color that looks like the blood has been oxidized, women who are experiencing a lot of spotting before their periods and after, and it just kind of looks concerning — I think any woman who’s had a period knows, like, you expect your period to flow, the blood to be red, some variant of red. And when you’re experiencing bleeding that looks like brown or black with a lot of clots, it just doesn’t look the way that we would expect it to look. And so if you’re experiencing those types of things where the bleeding is dark in color, it looks oxidized, you’re experiencing some spotting overall, or the molasses where maybe you’re using a menstrual cup and it literally doesn’t even look liquid — so many women find that vaginal steaming is a practice that over the course of several cycles can improve the bleeding, so that when you have your period the bleeding just looks healthier and feels better. And can be part of a modality. I would say that for women who are experiencing period pain, it’s going to take more than vaginal steaming to get rid of the pain. But if you also have concerns about your bleeding, as I mentioned, then it’s something just to consider if it’s something that you’re comfortable with and it’s something that you’re thinking about. So I’ll include links to previous episodes.

And the reason that I’m comfortable talking about vaginal steaming is because time and time again, I’ve just seen it where women have dark brown bleeding, clotty bleeding, and after several months of doing steaming prior to your periods — if you’re not trying to conceive, in the luteal phase, several days prior to when your period is expected to come — that that really helps with the actual quality of the bleeding, the quality of the blood that you see.

So just to kind of clarify, I just wanted to touch on actual steaming real quick. And the last thing that I’ll mention is supplementation. And so if you go back and have a listen to the episode, The Magnesium Miracle with Dr. Carolyn Dean — what we talked about in that episode is really helpful. We talked a little bit about inflammation and magnesium deficiency and how it’s so common, and how for many women, if they start taking magnesium for another purpose, so many women take magnesium, for example, to help them relax and to help them sleep a little bit better. So it’s known that magnesium, it does have a calming effect on the body. And for many women who are having trouble sleeping, if they take some magnesium, it can actually help them to sleep better, have a more restful sleep. And so sometimes what happens is that women begin taking magnesium for a completely different reason — so they start taking it for something else — and they find that their periods improve.

So again, we talked about menstruation as a normal inflammatory process, and magnesium is a potent anti-inflammatory. In The Fifth Vital Sign, I share some research about certain anti-inflammatory compounds that do have research behind them. And so I mentioned earlier that women who experience moderate to severe period pain have been shown to have a higher level of inflammatory markers — prostaglandins in particular — and anti-inflammatory agents such as magnesium and zinc and even fish oil have been shown to reduce the prostaglandin levels in women, thus reducing the overall inflammation.

The reason that I talk about supplementation at the very end is because if you’re really looking for a lasting change in your period pain, you really want to jump on this issue of inflammation from all fronts. So you really want to look at the sources of inflammation and the sources of hormonal imbalance that can be contributing to this issue. You really want to look at the possible physical aspect of it, as in the case of endometriosis. And then you also want to look to different types of supplementation that can help to reduce inflammation. And so I think it’s really important not to just think that it’s going to just be as simple as taking, you know, a magnesium every day. For some women that might make a huge difference, and for others it might take more than that, especially for women that experience more pain more on the severe side. But it’s really important just to note that.

So in addition to magnesium, zinc has been shown to significantly reduce the prostaglandin levels in women who experience period pain, as well as fish oil. And some of the studies show that depending on the amounts taken, they work better than ibuprofen in some cases. So for most women, ibuprofen — so falling in the category of NSAIDs — ibuprofen is a better option to take compared to Tylenol, compared to acetaminophen, for the reason that ibuprofen actually does target the inflammation. And for many women, they find that when they take ibuprofen it reduces the amount of bleeding. So if you have to take a painkiller, that’s usually the one that’s going to work better. But with that said, there is a percentage of women for whom it doesn’t work. And so some of these studies, which is really interesting, are done because it’s almost like the drug companies are wanting to find a way to capture everybody. So if you add some zinc to ibuprofen, it might be more effective. So you get the sense that some of these researchers are really looking for that aspect of how could we improve the effectiveness of these medications for period pain.

But it’s really helpful just to know that, again, period pain is very common but it’s not normal. And there are things that you can do over time that can dramatically reduce your pain. So even if, for example, I mean, I have never met a woman who experienced really, really painful periods who wouldn’t be thrilled to be able to cut that in half. So if her period pain is typically at a nine or a ten, to be able to cut that to a four or a five or a three or a two, or over time get it to a two or a one. For many women who are listening, I’ve been there as well, where I didn’t even believe that it was possible to have a period without pain. I didn’t experience a period without pain for years — it just was elusive. I just didn’t think it was possible. And so now, when I’m experiencing my periods, I don’t have pain and I don’t have to take ibuprofen. It is possible to experience periods without pain. But it’s really important to identify those sources of inflammation, reduce them, gradually figure this out, and work with somebody — find somebody who specializes in women’s health and who’s knowledgeable about supporting women to reduce period pain. And that team approach is key.

Because currently, western medicine — the tools that are available are hormones and painkillers, which are very important to get rid of the acute pain. We need that, we need those options. But they’re not necessarily helping us on the long-term aspect. So giving us the ability to get rid of the pain now, but not helping us to get rid of the pain eventually forever.

So I hope that you found this episode to be informative and encouraging, because what I want you to know is that it is possible to reduce and/or eliminate your pain. It’s not always an easy road, and I’m really not sugarcoating it and saying that it’s going to be easy. But the first step is understanding the underlying factors that can contribute. And of course I didn’t address every single possible underlying factor, just the most common — and really setting you up to begin your journey to getting pain-free periods, getting to the point where you can just live your life and have a period come and you don’t even know it’s there.

And I can’t tell you how many women I’ve worked with who say — they’ll say, like, I had no idea. My period usually comes with all kinds of pain, and I was just sitting there and I didn’t even know it was there. I went to the bathroom and I saw blood and I had no idea that it was there. And I didn’t know that was possible. Or women who start using these strategies and then go from an eight or a nine to a three or a four, or they go from having to take ibuprofen for two days to having to take one or two. So again, I have not met any women who wouldn’t be thrilled to have significant reduction in their pain, if not a complete elimination of it.

So yes, I hope this episode is encouraging for you. I hope it’s provided you with some concrete strategies. For more information about reducing and eliminating period pain, make sure to grab a copy of The Fifth Vital Sign. Everything that we talked about in this episode and much, much more in much, much more detail, along with all the studies, is covered there. In The Fifth Vital Sign, I talked specifically about what we talked about today — being the normal inflammatory process — and so if you’re keen to learn more about periods and how they function and how they work, how ibuprofen and other NSAIDs work as the drug category, as well as the different strategies to reduce or eliminate period pain, then you’ll really appreciate the period chapters in The Fifth Vital Sign. Thank you for listening.