Times article on menstrual health

[StandUpStraight]

Apologies if this has been posted already - I looked but couldn’t see it. A Times article on menstrual health that firmly centres women and girls. (There are I think 5 related articles also published today but I haven’t read through them yet.)

“Right now, 800 million women and girls are having their period”.

It’s time to talk about periods

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/43123bc2-191f-11eb-b786-829b87c62921?shareToken=898ef3b14770b1ff22a519c94b424492

That opening paragraph is a sight for sore eyes. Thanks OP.

Ah right - he's redistilling, rather than distilling from scratch. I'd somehow missed that, I'd somehow got the impression it was just an infusion process.

Ok, I don't know how that happened.... one moment I was on The Archers thread, then somehow my post ended up here. Consider it an eccentric bump.

@ErrolTheDragon

Ok, I don't know how that happened.... one moment I was on The Archers thread, then somehow my post ended up here. Consider it an eccentric bump.

thanks for the lols

I always find these stats enraging.

Errol 😂

No clearer example Imnobody of what women are expected to endure in silence, when we know if men experienced periods the world would revolve around their bloody cycles.

Imnobody I agree. And as someone who is essentially housebound for the first two days of each period, I am very pleased that the Times is putting some emphasis on these issues.

Excellent article thank you...I will encourage the men in my life to read.

That's great, I suffer so badly with PMT. Not pain or heavy flows, but absolute exhaustion and a feeling that everything in my life is ruined and can never be repaired. I'm a SAHM who is also studying and it's debilitating at times. I lose my temper with the kids constantly, can't focus on my work, and just want to lie in bed for hours crying (which I obviously can't!) My symptoms start up to a week before my period, and my period lasts a week, so the whole thing takes up 50% of my life. I didnt have periods for about 4 years thanks to pregnancy and extended breastfeeding and I've never felt better. My periods started again about 6 months ago and it's awful. It's crazy that no one gives a shit. One other thing that always used to piss me off though was hearing feminists arguing that PMT was a myth. I feel like I used to hear this all the time. I think it was to stop men saying we were "too hormonal" and dismissing our feelings as "just that time of the month" so the effect of PMT on women became something you couldn't talk about or had to minimise in case you risked being stereotyped. But it used to bother me because I knew it wasn't true, I knew that PMT really messed up my month. I'm in a group on fb for female entrepreneurs and a lot of them track their cycles and plan their work around it. They do stuff that needs focus at x time and stuff that needs creativity at y time and so on. They say they're much more productive when they work with their cycle rather than trying to power through it. I'm rambling now, but its really something I hope feminism can focus more on in the future. I feel like the rad fem movement which is based around understanding the ways that women are different to men, and understanding the reality of biology on our lives, is going to be so powerful in doing this. We aren't just small or defective men and we need to stop trying to shove ourselves into the men shaped gaps which they permit us to make in their world. Periods is definitely part of this.

Bygrab 💐

That's tough ByGrabthars I sympathise. My PMT has become much worse in recent years, it's probably because I'm perimenopausal. I know those feelings of rage, I have to keep reminding myself that this is happening because it is a certain point in my cycle and that I don't actually want to set fire to the entire godforsaken planet. I had very heavy and painful periods with large clots that often made me feel like I was about to pass out, I dreaded them. Fortunately the coil has taken care of that side of things, but hasn't done anything for my PMT! We absolutely should recognise the impact of periods on women's lives and be unashamed about it. It's great to see such a frank article in a broadsheet.

I had symptoms which I never realised were part of my period till the Mirena coil stopped them. This is a brilliant article, thanks for sharing OP. Just wish I’d read it decades ago!!

We aren't just small or defective men and we need to stop trying to shove ourselves into the men shaped gaps which they permit us to make in their world.

This.

@Imnobody4

I always find these stats enraging.

It's almost as if there are more UK women suffering every month than there are members of a certain pastel-coloured flag-bearing group.

And yet, we are told we don't know what suffering is. Or that sex is real. Weird that.

@Imnobody4 that is truly enraging.

Most of my period having life I didn't get period pain nor pms. Only post children, though pain now gone after number 2. And I got hypothyroidism a couple of years after my very late periods started (most likely a link) though none of the period issues often associated.

I used to feel very apologetic, never mentioned it and even slightly "wrong." Now I know that I was as it 'should' be (how I miss those days!) aand medicine is inherently extremely sexist.

Thanks for sharing that op
Im seeing a gynaecologist today for awful pms and heavy bleeding - poss adenomyosis. I'm totally fed up of my menstrual cycle. Think i have about 6 days out of a 23 day cycle where I'm ok - the rest of the time its mood swings, migraine, constipation, insomnia, bloating, heavy bleeding etc. And the docs just push mirena as the miracle cure. Or antodepressants.

Its scandalous that women are expected to just put up with it. Or worse, be gas lit and told its not that bad and to put upwith it (as many friends with endometriosis have experienced)

For the last couple of years I've been getting what I now know are migraines around the time my period is due. Not really painful or debilitating thankfully, just a dull ache behind my eyes and what I can only describe as fuzzy eyes.

It was being taken seriously by my GP until we worked out it was related to my menstrual cycle. Now its just a symptom of perimenopause and something to be endured.

Now its just a symptom of perimenopause and something to be endured.

No I don't think it is! I'm sorry to hear about your symptoms.

Definitely do some reading around; Lara Briden's website has many suggestions that are easily done through supplements. Her book is really good. The basic easiest one is magnesium glycinate and taurine.

I've been quite astonished at how well seed cycling has helped me. Plus making sure bloods are good eg ferritin (often middle aged women are better when it's over 70/80) Vit d etc.

Really fantastic fb group linked to this website.

The woman who runs it is amazing and has been lobbying parliament, working on films for bbc news etc.

menopausesupport.co.uk/

Thanks neuro, I take a magnesium supplement anyone, but not a full dose so I will look into that further

it's debilitating at times. I lose my temper with the kids constantly, can't focus on my work, and just want to lie in bed for hours crying (which I obviously can't!) My symptoms start up to a week before my period, and my period lasts a week, so the whole thing takes up 50% of my life.

I totally recognise this. Vitamin B6 saved my sanity. To find out the correct dose I took one more pill every day (so 1 on 1st day, 2 on 2nd day etc) until my urine started smelling of B6. Thereafter I would start on that dose 7-10 days before my period was due, and keep on it until a couple of days after I started. Total lifesaver.

Briden recommends B6 too.

It's definitely worth also seeing a Gp or being referred to a menopause clinic.

Thank you for that article.

Errol, that was very confusing. I could have sworn I wasn't in the Archers thread...

The article was great (and there were some supplementary articles as well). Needless to say, in the comments there were a number of complaints from men about how they didn't need to be reading this over breakfast and a few from both men and women saying that menstruation just is one of those those things, suck it up etc etc. So bloody tedious.

The stats drive me absolutely crazy. From memory, in Invisible Women CCP talks about original research on viagra that also flagged it could be extremely helpful for period pain.... but they went down the erectile dysfunction route instead. And as she points out incredulously, in light of the size of the global female population vs the population of men with erectile dysfunction, never mind anything else, you'd think the economic benefits of a drug that could help so many more people would be obvious. Sigh.