menstrual health

The core standard for judging menstrual health has never been the unified "28-day cycle, bright red, no blood clots" template on the Internet. As long as your menstrual status does not fluctuate much compared with your long-term baseline, and there is no discomfort that affects normal work and life, it falls into the category of health. There is no need to forcefully adjust for the so-called standard value.

To be honest, I have seen too many people become anxious due to standardized strategies on the Internet. I met a 21-year-old junior girl a while ago. Her cycle has been stable at 32-34 days since menarche. She came across a short video saying, "The normal cycle must be 28 days. If you come late, you will be ovulated." "Premature ovary senility", I drank a blood-activating folk prescription for a month, but my period didn't go away for 10 days that month, and I even had a face full of shut-up. I went to the outpatient clinic to check that all six hormones were normal, but I drank the folk prescription and the endometrium peeled off a little abnormally. It took two months to get it back.

If you really want to find a reference frame, you can. There are indeed differences in the judgment logic of Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. No one is right or wrong, but the entry point is different.

The judgment of Western medicine is more biased towards objective indicators. On the premise of excluding organic diseases, a cycle of 21-35 days, menstrual duration of 3-7 days, and menstrual volume in the range of 5-80ml are considered normal. There is no saying that "28 days is required". Oh, I can mention here that many people don’t know how to calculate menstrual flow. 5ml is about 1/3 of the amount of a daily sanitary napkin wetted, and 80ml is almost the amount of 2 super-long-night sanitary napkins. As long as you are in this range, even if you only use panty liners or safety pants every time, it is not abnormal. As for the blood clots that everyone is struggling with, it seems from Western medicine that the endometrium is shedding a little too quickly. If the coagulation function is normal, it is not a problem at all.

But in the context of traditional Chinese medicine, the judgment dimension will be more biased towards your subjective feelings: for example, one week before menstruation, will your breasts be so swollen that you can't touch it, will your waist feel as heavy as a stone when it comes, whether you will sweat cold pain even though you haven't eaten cold food, and whether there are so many blood clots that you will fall out in large chunks every time you go to the toilet. Even if you have a B-ultrasound and your hormones are all normal, Chinese medicine will consider these to be signs of liver stagnation, palace cold, or insufficient qi and blood, and you need to adjust your living habits or intervene with medication.

Speaking of which, I have to mention some of the most quarrelsome "taboos" during menstruation. In fact, there is no absolute right or wrong, it all depends on your own body's reaction. For example, can brown sugar water cure dysmenorrhea? Western medicine seems to just add some sugar and calories. If you feel comfortable drinking a cup of heat when you are in pain, then you can drink it. There is no need to expect it to "remove blood stasis and detoxify". After all, menstruation is not a "detoxification" at all, it is normal shedding of the endometrium. But from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, if you have a cold constitution, and your hands and feet are usually cold, dark in color, and so painful that you have to hold a hot water bottle to feel comfortable, then drinking warm brown sugar water with ginger can indeed relieve it.

There is also the question of whether you can exercise during menstruation. I have a friend who runs a marathon. Except for the first two days of menstruation, he does not run long distances. Jogging normally during the rest of the period is fine. On the contrary, it can relieve backache.； But there are also people who feel dizzy after taking even two steps, so just lie down honestly and don't insist on "self-discipline". Your feelings are always more important than the so-called strategy.

In fact, you can roughly judge your menstrual health at home, without having to use such a complicated scale: just look at three points. First, whether the time of this period is different from your usual pattern by more than 7 days, second, whether the pain is so severe that you need to take painkillers to go to school and work normally, and third, whether you will feel weak, dizzy, and unmotivated for several days after your period is gone. If you don't hit these three points, just relax, eat and drink when you should, and don't wonder whether you are unhealthy.

During the six months I worked as a helper in a gynecological clinic, I saw too many people who were fine but worried about their irregular menstrual periods every day. Instead, they stayed up late checking strategies and took random supplements, which completely messed up their cycles. There was a girl who was preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination. She was so stressed that she didn't have her period for two months in a row. She was scared to death. As a result, she came back the next day after the examination. She didn't take any medicine. It was just because of her emotions. To be honest, menstruation is a barometer of your body. Its fluctuations are related to your mood, sleep, stress and even what you eat during the month. There is really no need to be nervous if it happens once in a while. If something goes wrong for two or three months in a row, it is not too late to check again. After all, there is never a unified standard answer to health. Your own comfort is the best standard.