Painless Periods and Symptom-free Menopause
Did you know you don’t have to suffer through a week of torture every single month?? When the body is in harmony you won’t get cramps, excessive bleeding, irritability, angry or sad outbursts, headaches, breast tenderness, or irregular bleeding.
A healthy period should be moderate flow for approximately 4-7 days. After those couple of days, the body should begin the next part of the cycle and there should be no more spotting during the cycle. If you do notice spotting or a very long, heavy period you probably are suffering from what is known in Traditional Chinese Medicine as spleen qi deficiency or spleen qi sinking. The spleen can be overtaxed by overwork with your job, family-life, school, or workouts. The spleen can also become deficient when consuming excessive sugar, cold, or raw foods.
On the other hand, maybe you actually get really painful cramps, breast tenderness, temporal headaches, or extreme irritability especially right before or beginning of the period. This is most likely related to the pattern known as liver qi stagnation. The liver qi can be stagnated when there’s an excessive amount of stress or lack of movement in one’s life. Sometimes people don’t even realize the amount of stress that is actually present in one’s life because they have become accustomed to living with it for so long. However, stress can be extremely detrimental to our health and period symptoms such as cramps and irritability are typically a direct result.
Although these are just a small handful of symptoms that people feel during their periods, it can be fixed by treating the underlining pattern according to traditional Chinese medicine. These patterns can be treated through acupuncture, herbal medicine, and dietary or lifestyle changes.
Furthermore, menopause symptoms seem to be affecting more and more women nowadays. Maybe it’s from the taxing lifestyle throughout their life or maybe it’s from the over processed foods in America. Whatever the cause is, menopause also does not need to be life altering. Hot flashes, extreme periods, brain fog, forgetfulness, mood swings, and night sweats are just a disharmony that’s within the body. For instance, hot flashes and night sweats are often associated with kidney yin deficiency. By tonifying the kidney yin, the symptoms reduce dramatically and typically disappear completely.
The menstrual cycle is a healthy, natural process. It should not interrupt the flow of your day (or week)!
Why suffer from these symptoms anymore! Don’t waste your time with pain and suffering.
**Disclaimer** The “patterns” mentioned above are simply examples. Not everyone fits the same pattern and just because you have one of the symptoms does not mean you have that exact pattern. Chinese medicine takes the entire health of an individual to determine their specific pattern. Often times, people have more than just one pattern!
