If you are a woman and you are reading these lines, you surely know what it is to feel intense period pain. Although it is true that there are women who do not hurt practically anything and have been lucky not to have experienced any, there are those who the period is a big problem.
Some pains are stronger than others, but when those punctures attack you, they may prevent you from moving and leading a normal life, right? For this reason, it is important that you know that the period does not hurt, and why intense menstrual pain is not normal, as well as its possible consequences. Do you want to find out? Let’s start!
When should you worry about your period pain?
- Before we begin, we must do some calculations: think of a woman who has her first menstruation around the age of 13, and spends approximately 35 years with a period every 28 days. If she suffers one or two painful periods a year during this period, it won’t be too worrying, but what if all the periods became unbearable?
- Unfortunately, this is the reality of many women who suffer the pain of dysmenorrhea (very intense period pain) every month. A taboo subject that is not talked about as much as it should be and to which an attempt has been made to give voice in recent years.
- The problem with period pain is that you don’t have a meter to know what is intense or what is normal. No one tells you where the average is, and more importantly, each person has a completely different way of dealing with pain. But when it becomes so intense that it prevents you from doing your normal life, what should you do?
- The first thing is to be aware that it is not normal. You usually feel swelling, pressure in the area, punctures and small contractions that are what help menstruation to come out. When these ailments are passed with a regular anti-inflammatory, it falls within normality. But when even with the option of medication it does not pass, we must know that it is out of the ordinary and you must start looking for the causes.
Reasons why period pain is not normal
- As we have already told you, guessing if the pain you are feeling is normal or not is quite complicated. However, you can look at some symptom that warns you. For example, we are talking about severe pelvic pain, the onset of fever, intense pain even when you are not on your period, or punctures that prevent us from even walking normally.
- But why does the pain occur? When your period is about to drop, the body produces prostaglandins, substances responsible for the small contractions that occur in the uterus and, in turn, for pain. But, as Irene Aterido, author of the blog ‘My period hurts’, told us, “if we have too many prostaglandins, if we have an unbalanced diet or a lot of emotional stress, we will be more swollen, we will have more fluid retention and the sensation will be like discomfort or pain”.
- In other words, the problem of intense period pain has a lot to do with the lifestyle that a woman leads. If she does not exercise at all, if she eats a diet that is not entirely healthy, or even if she does not sleep the hours she needs, she can trigger excessive period pain. Hence the importance of taking care of the body 365 days a year, and not putting a medical solution only on the days of menstruation. However, period pain can trigger other consequences, such as suffering from endometriosis.
- The problem, ultimately, is that we have generalized that the rule has to hurt. “The existence of pain normally indicates health, hormonal or even lifestyle imbalances. But in any case it is not normal, although it seems to us that it is frequent,” says Irene Aterido. For this reason, it is essential to be aware and recognize the warning signs to go to the doctor and that he or she be the one to carry out an examination, tests or necessary procedures.
