Endometriosis and Menstrual Health

Happy New Year readers! I am back, and I am so thrilled to be able to educate you again. You know what we talk about here; Endometriosis.

But this year I want to try switch it up a little, so I hope that you will enjoy the articles for the next few weeks.

This week we will focus on menstrual health as a whole, before we delve into endometriosis. What is menstrual health? Is it important? If so, how important is it?

The term “menstrual health” is broader than menstrual hygiene. It encompasses both the menstrual hygiene management practices and the broader systemic factors that link menstruation with health, education, equity and human rights, in particular the human right to water and sanitation (Keith B 2016).

Menstrual health is extremely important because it can affect a plethora of things in a woman’s life. Not only can compromised menstrual health have physical effects on women, but it can affect the overall well-being of a woman, as well as her overall livelihood.

As a society, we have been conditioned to not think about menstrual health, or even have dialogue about lady parts and well, period blood.

And that’s been our greatest downfall because so many women suffer in silence. So many women are living with pain and infertility and really live in isolation because people do not believe their pain or blame them for their infertility.

When should we seek help? When do we know that our periods are unhealthy?

A lot of the time we don’t have answers for this because we simply do not have the information. I have had endometriosis for next to 11 years but for the first few years I suffered with extremely painful periods and abnormal bleeding with no answers.

I was told to just get on birth control or to just get used to it because “pain is normal”. It is not. I saw countless doctors who again told me the pain was in my head, and that all girls get period pain. But sometimes the pain can really take over and begin to ruin your life.

Menstrual periods that disrupt your life, stop you from doing normal activity like going to work or school is not normal. I repeat; it is not normal!

There are explanations for some of these symptoms; sometimes a woman may have a cyst or fibroid. Sometimes a woman may even have polycystic ovarian syndrome (pcos), endometriosis or even adenomyosis. She could even have a type of womb cancer. But most times you only find out when things have become really bad and that’s when doctors and people begin to believe you. It doesn’t have to get to this. There are treatments out there. There are reasons for these abnormalities and pain. I will stop here for now, but will continue with explaining these conditions next week.

Have an amazing and blessed week, remember to spread love and kindness. Ta!