To Bleed or Not to Bleed – a Rebuttal to The Guardian Newspaper
This article is a rebuttal to the piece in the Guardian article written by @NicolaKSDavies on 18th July.
The article made me mad. Is this where women are meant to get their reproductive education from?
If you haven’t read it you should here. It’s about how women are choosing to ‘liberate themselves from the horrendous period’, choosing not to bleed by taking hormonal contraceptives. Woo! Let’s burn our period panties and tampons! We are liberated from “god’s great design joke’ as she puts it. How empowering!
Is a choice based on 50% of the available information still choice? No.This is the age of equality and freedom of choice – particularly when it comes to women’s bodies.
I whole-heartedly support that. I don’t support one-sided opinionated and uneducated information on the matter – there is already too much of that out there. I am not ‘a new age feminine author’ referred to in the article. I am a degree-qualified health professional. As clinical naturopath who works in the field of women’s health and fertility I am at the front line. I see real people - day in and day out. They tell me their stories. They have been given a health solution based on, well – no information. This is not informed choice. This is damaging, not empowering.
If you are happy with your contraception choice, if you are have no side effects from it, if you have never had any period issues or if you are not wanting to have a baby – this article is not for you. I’m talking to you if you:
– Don’t want to be on birth control for the rest of your reproductive years.
– Had period issues before your contraception, and want to one day have a baby.
Seriously. This article is not to bash hormonal contraceptives, it’s about adding a vital piece of information to the conversation of contraception choice. I am pro contraception and pro choice most definitely. The Guardian article is about how more and more women are choosing not to have a period bleed for an array of reasons by using hormonal contraceptives. This is a choice made by many women - and rightly so. I wish the author stopped there.
However to demonise the menstrual bleed, to make women a victim of their menstrual cycle is too much. Let me be clear: If there is something wrong with your menstrual cycle you have a health problem.
If you are someone who suffers from a hormonal condition – heavy bleeds, painful bleeds, premenstrual syndrome like cyclical mood changes, depression, anxiety, or perhaps you have acne, unwanted hair, or your period has gone missing, you have an underlying health problem not a design flaw. Further more:
If you have chosen hormonal contraception because you have issues with your period, those period issues will continue once you decide to come off your contraception – this is usually right before you wish to conceive.
In fact the author of the article herself writes:
“Experts also stress that stopping periods won’t affect future fertility. When you stop taking the hormones, they get flushed out of your system very quickly, and your periods will return to what they were before you started taking the pill,” says Connolly.”
That’s exactly right. So if you are on hormonal contraception to sort out your period – the Issue will still be there when you want to come off in order to conceive. Your contraception does not fix your hormones; it shuts down your natural hormone production and signalling pathways and replaces it with synthetic hormones. Expecting your body to start working properly after years of being shut down is unfortunately unrealistic, especially if you had period issues to start with. You have still not gotten to the root cause of the problem in the first place.
In the article ‘Jaime Kendall, 25 form Exetor had very heavy periods and bled for 8 weeks, and now she is taking the mini-pill she says not having a period is a blessing’. Sounds like a miracle right? But the reality probably is that no one has asked why Jamie was having an 8-week bleed in the first place. Just whack her on the pill. Well – Jamie only 25 years old, I do hope you were told the truth that this will not help you have a child one day.
Too many times I have sat across the consult table and heard how my patient’s have been on contraception for years to ‘regulate’ their cycle,’ and now they want to get pregnant. The only thing is – they have never had a normal cycle. For these patients it can take years to normalise a cycle. Sometimes never. Let me be clear again – this is not the fault of the menstrual cycle or the contraception method, the issue is that the root cause of the hormonal issue has not been addressed in the first place.
Knowing your menstrual cycle, its ups and downs, ebbs and flows, what the signs and symptoms of a dysregulated cycle are - as well as what to do about it is empowering. The menstrual cycle is not the butt of a cruel evolutionary joke or ‘god’s design flaw’ as her article put it (have we not moved on from that by now!?). In fact, when our hormones are in range they actually benefit our mood, skin, hair, metabolism, libido and sleep.
The truth is that the underlying cause of majority of your period issues (that I see clinically) are mainly a result of poor diet, passed trauma, stress, or lack of sleep. It could be impaired oestrogen metabolism, the fact that you are not ovulating properly (ovulation is how we produce beneficial hormone progesterone), chemical toxicities like endocrine-dysrupting hormones found in plastics and organophosphates and heavy metals now ubiquitous in our food and environment. As you can see none of these can be addressed by taking a pill (I wish it were that easy). Find an experienced integrated or functional health professional that uses conventional and complimentary methods to help you get to the root cause of your period issues. Do not be a victim to your menstrual cycle, you can overcome your hormonal issues. It may take some changes that can be challenging to implement like diet and exercise, but if you are ready and willing to do the work you too can have a trouble-free period.
In closing, I wish to further reiterate that some women are just going to be better on hormonal contraceptives, and they are truly needed in some cases. I am not disputing that fact and for some women this is a godsend. Just as long as you have made this choice out of informed consent, and this this means you know all the risks and benefits and options before making a choice.
There I said my piece – The rest of this article is an answer to some of the more absurd and simply incorrect statements in the article if you feel like reading. (Author’s writing in italics).
Karen x
“Menstruation can exacerbate incapacitating physical or mental health problems including endometriosis and depression.”
Yes – spot on. However this only happens if there is an underlying hormonal problem. Most commonly, women get these issues when there is an oestrogen metabolism issue or they have not ovulated that month. Ovulation is how we produce progesterone which actually has a calming effect of the nervous system.
In balance – our hormones actually improve our mental health and help to alleviate anxiety and depression. Hormones are not the devil. Dysregulated and out of balance hormones cause issues. Oestrogen is so beneficial for sleep, mood, connective tissue, blood sugar, metabolic rate and libido. Our main oestrogen (oestradiol) sensitises the brain to feel good neurotransmitters oxytocin and dopamine, and triggers the release of serotonin. Too little can cause depression and severe insomnia. Progesterone balances out oestrogen. Oestrogen naturally drops before your period causing PMS, dryness and mood issues, and this is when progesterone levels are meant to rise from the corpus luteum, calming and balancing your mood by acting like GABA in your brain. But – no ovulation means no corpus luteum and no progesterone. You get grumpy, emotional and sore boobs.
“Menstruation is the process by which the body sheds the lining of the uterus and unfertilised egg, triggered by fluctuating levels of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone. Not having periods does not create a “backlog”, nor are they necessary to “cleanse the body”.
WTF is she on about here? I’m not even going into that. I’m not sure where she has got these quotes or ideas from, and she doesn’t say.
“According to a recent survey of 7,500 women by Public Health England, half those aged 16-64 reported menstrual issues in the last year, rising to 75% of those aged 16-24.”
I agree – this is an issue. In Australia 1 in 10 women have endometriosis. This is a public health issue – why are we experiencing more menstrual issues than ever? And do you think that by shutting off your hormones that will solve the issue? Lets look deeper into the cause. The issue is that treatment for hormonal issues takes a multifaceted approach. You may ask why mainstream medicine isn't doing more. The truth is that female hormonal issues are challenging, complex and need more than just pharmaceutical interventions. This is where natural medicine shines, in conjunction with conventional medicine.
“Judith Stephenson, the Margaret Pyke professor of sexual and reproductive health at University College London, says the same. “In some ways, it seems like one of God’s great design faults … It is not helpful to have these periods – in fact, if you don’t have them, one of the biggest benefits would be reducing iron deficiency anaemia.”
Uuhh – again – asking why the person is bleeding so heavily would be a better place to start rather than blaming God.
“The benefits can be myriad, from saving money to mitigating health problems, including polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), in which there is a risk of problematic cells building up in the lining of the womb.”
This is simply not even true. PCOS is not a problem of cells building up in the endometrium. Perhaps she may be referring to adenomysosis/endometriosis here? @Guardian – I am surprised at this level of misinformation. Furthermore – PCOS is a complex syndrome characterised by an excess of male hormones (androgens) resulting in anovulatory cycles, acne and facial hair. There are many causes of PCOS and in fact in some women a driver of their PCOS is due to them coming off the pill (post pill PCOS).
