relationships - purpose - resilience - sleep - movement - nutrition
Having had issues with my menstruation myself for the longest time (I had amenorrhea*, meaning my menstruation went mia for a long time), I developed a whole new level of appreciation for menstrual health. In fact, I believe, it is one of the best indicators for a woman's health during the years she is/should menstruating/menstruate, which on average is about 40 years of a woman's life!
Healthy living - meaning rejuvenating sleep, good nutrition, smart exercising (too little and too much can be harmful depending on how sensitive your body is), stress reduction and moments of joy - is super important for having a regular and as "pleasant" as possible period month after month.
If the advice above is too abstract or maybe just not enough to "normalize" a potentially "broken" menstruation, an approach called "cycle syncing" might be worth trying. There is a lot of information around cycle syncing out there (I leave it to the experts to go into the details), but here the gist of how I incorporated it into my life in a very simple way:
First and foremost, you have to know which phase of your cycle you're in at any given time of the months. For some of you, it might be helpful to get an app on your phones (many of them are free) to start tracking and getting a feeling for it, if you have never even thought about it.
Once you know the flow of your cycle and which phase you're in, here how the experts recommend to live:
Follicular Phase (1st day of menstruation through to ovulation, which typically happens some time mid-cycle) | Luteal Phase (after ovulation until day before menstruation) | |
Diet (besides the usual recommendation to focus on protein) | Iron-rich foods during menstruation (red meat) and then lots of fiber and fermented foods | Healthy fats and slow carbs |
Exercise (besides the usual recommendation to focus on strength training) | If you have to, take it easy during menstruation (i.e. restorative or yin yoga) and then do fast paced cardio (i.e. HIIT, sprint intervals, high-impact dance workouts) | Go slower and more calm (i.e. strong yoga or pilates) |
Other | Meet people | Do more introspective stuff |
If you decide to give cycle syncing a try and are not overwhelmed by the recommendations above yet, why not adding in something called "seed cycling" as well right away? This is another alternative medicine practice believed to help balance the reproductive hormones and with this regulate the menstural cycle by eating different hormone boosting seeds depending on which phase of the cycle you're in:
In the Follicular Phase: Estrogen boosting ground flax seeds and pumpkin seeds (1 tbsp each per day)
In the Luteal Phase: Progesterone boosing sunflower seeds and sesame seeds (also 1 tbsp each per day)
Even though there is no good evidence from medical standpoint for neither of the two approaches, there is probably also not much risk in trying them. I've done it myself for a while and I believe that it helped me in many ways, not only physically but -potentially mainly- mentally too. It gave me a sense of ownership for my meanstrual health, it helped me connect with my body and the menstrual phase it was currently in, and it even was kind of fun as it gave my months somthing like a "diversified structure".
And, if -like me back in the days- you don't have a (regular) cycle at this point, it is recommended to simply sync with the phases of the moon (full moon = ovulation).
*Amenorrhea is essentially a woman's body recognizing that it is in survival mode and thus not in a healthy position to get pregnant.
