Loss of periods..

[Ginger]

I believe that bleeding is not normal. Wearing a device to prevent leaking blood everywhere is just not right sounding to me no matter how you put it! Yes you can lose it the unhealthy way and then it is not good but I have heard of women who lost it the healthy way and still ovulate and have children normally. If you eat and live SAD and lose it, yes that is clearly dangerous. When I eat optimally mine is now hardly noticible and I bet if I were to thouroughly detox I would not have to bother with it at all. We shall see.

[Alba]

This is my first post in such a long time!
Long story short: aug 06 I went 100% raw over night and stayed that way for little over a year. In the process I cleared up my skin (if I ate low sugar, meaning no fruits other than berries and sour apples) and lost 18 pounds.
This took me to the pretty low weight of 110 pounds - I'm 176 cm tall so I bet you can imagine that I was pretty skinny.
Too skinny.
By september 2007 I started not feeling so great, I got dizzy from walking up stairs, my lips were pale and my periods had completely stopped!
My parents were worried and I promised I would start eating a little more normal (I added organic eggs, some goat cheese etc).
Then I moved to Paris where I met my boyfriend and started going out much more, to restaurants, clubs etc. I allowed myself to stray from rawfood more and more when I went out and in a way it was really good for me, letting go, losing control ya know - It had all gotten a little excessive.
My periods came back and my sex drive too (BIG Time *wink wink*) the latter might have to do with the complete and utter hotness of my bf, though!
I enjoyed life for nine full months - this being said I reckon I was still 75% raw, never ate sugar, flour, carbs etc. I had a healthy diet, but not a vegan one - at some points not even vegetarian.

.... I had gained around 14 lbs and looked pretty fab.

When I came back I started eating still less rawfood - at one point I even ate a piece of lasagna and I now weigh 130 lbs - this I do not like, my boobs are too big, my ass is too big - and I miss feeling raw and fresh.
So now I've decided to go raw, but from time to time eat a little animal protein just to be on the safe side and not go back to the skeleton-look and no sexdrive, no period days.

Raw is amazing amazing and it helps people in soooo many ways - but I have tried all stages on my own body and honestly - nothing is good in excess. I say eat raw vegan all week - have a plate of scrambled eggs on saturdays.

Hope this helped someone in some way?

Oh - and merry Xmas!!


Love Alba

[rawstrength]

Before raw, I once lost my period when I was anorexic and my body fat levels got too low.
On raw I have regular periods that are light and only last three days. And best of all, I have no cramps!!! My period cramps were horrendous before raw.

Alba - I hope you find a way to eat raw and stay healthy. Being raw doesn't necessarily mean that you will be super skinny. I eat raw and maintain a healthy and normal weight for my body size. I also have quite a bit of muscle tone. Make sure to include lots of sweet fruits and healthy raw fats to keep the weight on while eating raw.

[oceanluv]

In all the reading I have done, it (or they) say that when you are 100% raw, you might get too thin, at first, but it is like your body is squeezing out all the toxins, and when it is done with that process, you will then gain the weight that is normal for your body. The dizzyness, etc. could also be that you were not getting enough calories. doesn't have to be "protein". Good luck on your raw journey. (and congrats on the hot bf) ;)

[Temperance]

V.355, Issue 9207, 11 March 2000, Pages 922-924
Nuisance or natural and healthy: should monthly menstruation be optional for women?
It is simplicity itself to eliminate menstruation with safe, inexpensive, and widely available oral contraceptive tablets. Yet monthly menses continue to be the standard for women. Why? Any woman can tell you that menstruating is a pain, literally and metaphorically. At a minimum, it is a nuisance that requires planning and expensive sanitary supplies and paracetamol to avoid messy discomfort for about 1 week each month. In many cases, however, menstruation has a far greater impact on the female half of the population. It can debilitate, and it constitutes a significant and largely unacknowledged cost to society, according to a lively and provocative new book by Elsimar Coutinho and Sheldon Segal.1 Menstrual disorders are by far the leading cause of gynaecological morbidity reported in the USA, outnumbering their nearest competitor (adnexal masses) by a factor of three and affecting nearly 2.5 million American womean anually.2 The effects extend beyond individual women to society more generally, including through the workplace.3 Menstrual disorders cost US industry about 8% of its total wage bill. Expenses are particularly concentrated in sectors that employ predominantly women. For example, Texas Instruments found a 25% reduction in the productivity of female workers during the paramenstruum. Most treatments for conditions caused or exacerbated by menstruation are symptomatic, with little attention paid to the underlying cause—ie, the menstrual cycle itself and its hormonal fluctuations. Women are expected to function as usual, with minimal attention paid to managing the physical and mental pain and discomfort. This is surely an anomaly in modern medicine. There can be no other disease or condition that affects so many people on such a regular basis with consequences, at both the individual and societal level, which is not prioritised in some way by health professionals or policy makers.

Is menstruation really natural?
Monthly menstruation for decades on end is not the historical norm. Women in prehistoric times, as estimated by research among contemporary hunter-gathered populations,6 probably had far fewer periods (about 160 ovulations over their lifetime) than modern women. Our foremothers most likely experienced later menarche (around 16 years of age), earlier first births (19.5 years), frequent pregnancies (on average six livebirths), and long periods of breastfeeding between pregnancies, with births at intervals of 3 years. By contrast, the modern woman living in an industrialised country begins menstruating earlier (on average 12.5 years of age for American girls), first gives birth later (24 years), has fewer pregnancies (two or three), scarcely breastfeeds (3 months per birth, with half of American infants never breastfed at all), and undergoes menopause later. She can expect about 450 periods in her life. Current menstrual patterns are in this sense new and unproven as to their health effectss.

Furthermore, there is plenty of modern evidence that amenorrhoea is often healthier than the alternative.7 If a woman is not menstruating, she is probably also avoiding the sharp changes in hormone levels that regulate this bleeding. Measures to eliminate these fluctuations may help some women to avoid those mood and personality changes of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) that do not stem from problems with the receptors for these hormones. In addition, diseases directly caused by menstruation such as endometriosis would improve; and catamenial conditions (such as epilepsy and arthritis) would not worsen cyclically. Frequent ovulation and menses also contribute to anaemia, some reproductive cancers and heart disease, as well as other health threats. Anaemia in turn has been shown to hinder learning; similarly endometriosis causes great discomfort, contributing to painful intercourse and infertility among other conditions.

Obviously, our ancestors did not accomplish their long menstruation-free intervals by the artificial use of hormones. But by re-examining the credo that frequent and prolonged menstruation is the “natural” state, it is easier to see menstrual management using oral contraceptives as just another medical therapy, akin to daily and continuous pharmaceutical management of hypertension of benign prostatic hypertrophy for men. Modern medicine is all about the artificial control of conditions that range from the life threatening, debilitating, and uncomfortable to matters of mere taste. Eye glasses, insulin, fluoridated water, and now perhaps Viagra, are just a few examples. The use of hormone replacement thereapy (HRT) is a closely related example. HRT has been widely accepted by women and health professionals and provides undisputed protection against certain conditions. Suppression of menstruation is no different, and in some ways more beneficial. It not only gives relief from menstrual-related disorders to individual women, but it also confers additional health benefits and gains to society.

Cultural biases against “medicalising” menstruation
There is still, however, some way to go before widespread acceptance of the idea that menses should be optional and convenient. Women and health professionals are conditioned to think of monthly menstruation as the holy grail of womahood. Birth control pills themselves, for contraceptive purposes, have now been accepted for many years, but there was a sensitivity among their earliest marketing executives to the psychological importance to women of the monthly bleed. The classic “21/7” schedule of oral contraceptive use was designed to mimic the normal menstrual cycle, even though it was unnecessary (other than perhaps to reassure women poineering this new technology each month that they were not pregnant—something easily handled today with home pregnancy urine dipsticks which can be used as needed). Users of oral contraceptives experience a “withdrawal” bleeding or “pseudo period” for 1 week out of each 28 days, substituting in the minds of many women for menses. This schedule is supposedly easier for doctors to explain and for women to understand.

Actually, the bleeding that oral-contraceptive users experience each month bears little biological resemblance to a menstrual period. Indeed, there is scarcely any builtup uterine lining to be shed for these women. Rather, the bleeding results from a drop in the hormone levels after the 21st day when the woman stops taking active tablets and switches to placebo. Women who use oral contraceptives and feel that they are maintaining a “normal” or “natural” cycle are being duped. There is no evidence of any health benefit to taking the placebo tablets for 1 week each cycle. Women taking oral contraceptives might as well be told that with the exact same health risk-benefit ratio, they could eliminate bleeding completely by discarding the placebo tablets in each pack and using the other tablets continuously. In this vein, even if convincing health-based arguments touting the benefits of true menstruation could be marshalled, the millions of women currently using oral contraceptives to control their fertility are already not menstruating in any medical sense. These women at least should be offered the option of eliminating the useless bleeding and related iron-deficiency anaemia and other drawbacks they experience each month, courtesy of the drug company marketing departments. Such women should not feel alarmed that they are not really menstruating—the few health-based theories supporting true menstruation do not convince; far more evidence points to the protective properties of oral contraceptive use and the advantages of being amenorrhoaeic. As to the most significant populerties of oral contraceptive use and the advantages of being amenorrhoaeic. As to the most significant popular fear—that of monthly shedding as protection against cancer—even true menstrual bleeding involves shedding only the top layer of the endometrim, and not the basal layer where cancer can start.


Criticisms of this view
There are of course some problems with this approach. First, viewing menstruation as “unnecessary” and medically controllable in some way pathologises it for all women, even those for whom it is simply a practical nuisance rather than the cause or correlate of serious health problems. Rather than a natural event with unpredictable and varying consequences, menstruation might be viewed as a “sickness” and women who opted not to suppress their cycles, and therefore to menstruate “naturally”, might face censure. In fact, suppression should be just one option for women.

Second, some may argue that synthetic hormones can never approximate the fine balance created by the body. Indeed, for certain women, particular synthetic hormonal regimens may end up exacerbating the symptoms of PMS or inducing other unwanted side-effects. Being wary of “technological” approaches to achieve a desired “natural” state, however, does not explain why the hormone fluctuations associated with “natural” menstruation are healthful or even benign for most women.

Conclusion
Despite these counterarguments, menstrual control with oral contraceptives could substantially improve women's health and concurrently constitute a gain for society. It may not be for all, but at the very least, health professionals and women should know about the option and its potential benefits. When such a safe, simple, and inexpensive treatment is already so widely available, women should not have to be driven loony by their lunar cycles if they prefer not to bleed each month.

[curlygirl82]

Temperence - where's this article from? Just wondering if it wasnt paid for by a BC manufacturer :)

[Temperance]

Hi

The article is from the Lancet- I believe it is a well-respected medical journal from the UK but correct me if I am wrong.

Temperance

[Vaclare79]

I've noticed that since going RAW my periods are lighter and no cramping as well.. It's great! :)

[fruitandveggies]

So, I'm wondering...why do humans bleed while other mammals don't? I've watched a whole lot of animal documentaries and none of them mentioned the females having bleeding. Is that because they get pregnant every time they are in heat? That's can't be true...so what's up with that?

[GreenVariety]

Personally I got off of birth control because I had been with my husband (boyfriend then) for 2 years and was not concerned about getting pregnant. We would figure it out if I did but we were both super careful and as far as I was concerned there were other ways to manage it. In fact I use Cycle Beads (http://www.cyclebeads.com/) just like I used to use the pill. Don't get me wrong, I did use the pill from 16 - 23.

A little background:
Originally I went off the pill because I didn't have health insurance and had to cover rent. When that no longer was an issue I decided not to go back on it because my bf and I had been doing a wonderful job of managing ourselves and I had a friend who just calendared and used protection during the most fertile days with her hubby. This was still near the beginning of my health journey but one of the first things for me was getting rid of pharmaceuticals. This was a personal choice and the main reason I was comfortable doing it was because I had been with the same partner and intended to stay with him. Had that changed, I am sure I would have started taking oral contraceptives again because I wasn't ready to be a mom! It's now been almost 4 years, my hubby and I have been married for almost 2 and we have continued our routine of managing with cycle beads and calendaring.

Although I used to get horrible PMS(including but not limited to back pains, exhaustion, mood swings) cleaning out my diet has significantly helped. I don't get cramps anymore (attributed to diet) and last month I had my first true raw foodie period :) It was light and clot free! Wonderful!


And back to my point:
Working in a vet clinic for a few years I was definitely exposed to animals the bleed. I can not speak to why they bleed (kibble, vaccines, lifestyle) but they did bleed. I have read (my passion started with animal nutrition) that pets on a raw diet are very clean during heat (they are able to keep themselves clean because it is not an unmanageable amount of blood). I am not sure how founded this is but I have read a lot of information from holistic breeders/pet forums and that was the consensus (on dogs anyway). Cats are very clean animals already. I am sure that is something they stay right on top of. I do know that a lot of show dogs wear diapers during heat (it is ill advised to spay a show dog). They were the ones I was generally exposed to that we not spayed. I worked at a holistic and western mix practice and there were very few that fed a species specific diet. I was the one that talked to most of clients who did feed species specific (I was the only person at the clinic that even fed a home made diet as far as I am aware and I feed raw). I realize this is not scientific data by any means and I am afraid I don't have any sources to back it up but it is what I have observed so I thought I would share.

My current stand on birth control is that it shouldn't be marketed for convince... I also don't feel that it is something that should be part of a long term lifestyle choice. Because it is a pharmaceutical, old stuff is being phased out and new stuff is coming into the market all the time...while I was on birth control Ortho Tri Cyclin was phased out to make room for Ortho Low (or something like that). I also have little faith in the ability of pharmaceutical companies to do any sort of long term testing before unleashing new compounds on the general public under the guise of it being safer and better! That is in fact one of my main concerns. What are the long term effects of man made intervention? We have seen the route it has taken us with food, that's why most of us are here. Do we really want to be the lab animals in an experiment on humanity? JMHO.

I feel that it is important for everyone to make their own decisions for their own reasons. I would not begin to judge anyone for their lifestyle decisions. If being raw has taught me one thing, its that I can not judge anyone for their choices (treat others the way I wish to be treated - even if it doesn't always work that way). And like I said before, if I were to have a different partner I would be darn sure he was just as willing to manage a non contraceptive lifestyle with me before choosing to go off oral contraceptives. Because it is not something you can do on your own. But I would also be sure to express to him my concerns about remaining on birth control long term. There are contradictions.

I am not convinced that periods are exclusively a form of detox but I do think that what we have become accustomed to (the norm) the heavier more inconvenient event that it has become in the eyes of most. I do not find my period inconvenient, especially after last months experience and the lapse of my "symptoms". That is not to say that I would complain if it was virtually unnoticeable. I would however be concerned if it did not exist at all just because of what I am accustomed to personally. I feel like it is part of the natural cycle of things, shedding the old to make room for the new. Sorry this was so long. This is actually something I am pretty passionate about.

Love, Blessings & RAWhugs!!!

[SimplyFabulush]

I have never heard this as being normal. A loss of your period is called amenorrhea, which is caused by low body fat percentage, which is not a good thing. It can lead to osteoperosis and decreased sexual desires, as well as hair loss. Eating enough fat will ensure this does not happen.

I know this from Experience! I was anorexic for about 8 months and this happened to me.

You can't really be anorexic for only 8 months. It's a serious psychological disorder people deal with for years and years. It's not something you decide to do for a few months to lose weight and just quit. Much more depth than that :)

[Irish_Vegan_Girl]

Yes, I have heard of the no period while on raw thing frequently, although would never talk to my doc about it as they don't know a lot about those things, although they claim to. They would tell me it is ill and that anyone like that should eat meat for iron etc... ya - rite!! SO anyway, I believe that when we are pure and eating lots of raw foods period pains naturally decrease and eventually periods can become bloodless. You will still ovulate monthly but not have the detox of the blood. There is a woman who got pregnat this way and had a healthy baby, I will try to find the link.

[Rufassa]

I am not a women but I happen to stumbled apon this topic. Here is an article that seems to address what you are talking about.

They do not mean the "sloughing off of the menses" which is what menstruation is, but "bloody discharge" which is not menstruation even though it accompanies menstruation almost universally in women of childbearing "age" in the modern world.

The article is primarily devoted to "reasons" and hypotheses as to why delayed menarche or menstrual abnormalities are characteristic of ballerinas. If the researchers had been looking on a broader scale they would have researched the subject more and discovered this same syndrome among the following: female tennis players, runners, swimmers, gymnasts, and in fact, all female athletes who exercise regularly and consistently. Further they would have found this syndrome among primitive females in certain areas of the world, most notably among Hunza women and among women who live thoroughly in accord with our biological adaptations per the health system advocated by Life Science!

If the Harvard School researchers had looked even farther, they might have noted that female domesticated dogs and cats often have bloody menstruation whereas their wild relatives do not.

http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/repr...ngnorance.html

[circle]

my friend has a female dog who gets her period bad. he started feeding her raw (not raw vegan), and she no longer bled or had diarhea when she bled.

[RawkinOnSunshine]

I disagree that periods are unnatural and a form of detox. I lost my period for extended periods of time (ie 5 or 6 months) when I was severely underweight and suffering from malnutrition. The moment I started eating more nutrient dense foods Auntie Flow came back.

Also intact female dogs get their periods as well. Even without a raw diet, on high quality dog food they are still eating MUCH better (nutritionally speaking) than the majority of North America.