From Excruciating Pain to Painless Periods!
Some women have absolutely no dramas with their menstrual cycle and breeze through each month much to the shock of others who have a rollercoaster of a time - that was me. I have experienced it all and want to share my journey in the hope of encouraging others if this has also been a turbulent, painful, daunting time for you too. There is hope of change!
I was a ‘late bloomer’ and didn’t even get a cycle until about 16. And not actually a consistent cycle until I was about 20/21. Looking back now, I can see I wasn’t eating enough and was doing too much sport - the classic female triad of 1. Too little energy intake 2. Exerting too much energy 3. No or an irregular menstrual cycle. It didn’t really bother me at the time and seemed quite convenient!
When it did finally regulate it was light, painless and drama free. Great!
Over the years however things started to slowly worsen - heavier and increasing pain. I remember not even understanding what ‘period pain’ really was and finding it amazing that people would actually take pain medication when they were bleeding - I just thought they must have a low pain threshold. Well, how this was about to come back and slap me in the face!
From the age of about 25 I started to get very painful periods. I remember the back pain began and I initially thought it was my posture at my desk until I figured out it only turned up when I was bleeding. This progressed to me lying on the ground writhing around in pain trying my best to avoid any pain medication as it was just ‘period pain’. Being in the industry I started to really explore this area and implement the right natural tools to address the inflammation. I would have minor success but mostly no major change and left very frustrated. Particularly, when the same tools I’d use would often be successful in my clients.
Month after month I’d be in excruciating pain, nauseous, vomiting and just have this horrible few days of blurriness. The bleeding was so heavy that I would change an over-flowing moon cup about 5-8x per day and 1-2x per night. Large clots would be present - quite scary when it feels like your insides are falling out! Neurophen and panadol became my friend and would thankfully take the pain away. However, I always hated taking it knowing that the same inflammation was still happening internally. I was just numbing myself to it. Each month I’d typically be implementing some sort of different dietary change, supplement protocol or gut protocol and always have hope that the next period was different - it never was. This went on for about 5 years.
I saw a few different practitioners - both conventional and alternative - over this time in the hope that I was missing something but also had no results. Endometriosis was ruled out as my ultrasound was clear (even though it only shows up in ⅓ of cases) and the only solutions from my GP were pain medication, tranexamic acid (a medication that stops bleeding) or a contraceptive. All of which I didn’t want - apart from the pain mediation to get me through the few horrible days each month while I continued to explore what else could be driving this.
I was missing a key piece! While I had explored my gut microbiome a lot I hadn’t explored the vaginal microbiome. I was finally suggested to see a lady in Australia who does a lot of work in this area with good success. I completed a vaginal microbiome test and discovered that there was an overgrowth of a bacteria called ureaplasma which is associated with pelvic inflammatory disorder and endometriosis. Aha! This made sense to me considering the pain and heavy bleeding. I was advised that it was best to take an antibiotic to get rid of this particular infection due to its gnarly nature and then re-build the microbiome after. I was at the point I’d do anything and so went through the course.
The change of my next period was like night and day! NO pain, NO heaviness, no brain fog or fatigue. Just what I’d consider a normal period. It was honestly amazing and shocking all at once! I wondered if this was just a one off but sure enough the next period was fine too. I re-tested the vaginal microbiome to ensure it had completely gone. After all the years of trialing many different things it ended up being quite a simple solution!
It makes a lot of sense now thinking about the immune response to such infection and how much inflammation that can cause. This has opened up a whole new area of clinical insight and research for me which I have already begun utilising in my practise. While I will use the same tools as I always tried on myself, I now know there is another area to explore if these changes don’t bear the results that we want.
Feel free to get in touch if you find yourself in a similar situation!
Grace xx
