My period has always been bad.
It started when I was in fifth grade so I should have known it was setting me up for failure. Yep, I was the girl in fifth grade carrying my little purse of pads. A few periods in and they quickly began keeping me from everyday life with cramps, mood swings, and nausea. When one period left me with double vision and vomiting on the bathroom floor in seventh grade, my mom took me to the doctor to see if something could help me.
Of course, the solution that is offered first is birth control.
I didn't know any better because I was only thirteen, so I got on the birth control that the doctor recommended. It made me have two periods a month and so my mom told me I could stop taking it.
Until senior year of high school, I just dealt with my period. I exercised intensely due to playing three sports and dancing so that helped with cramps. I did have to miss school a few times and there was a being wheeled out of the cafeteria in a wheelchair because of almost fainting situation freshman year but the biggest effect my period had on me was my emotions.
Every month, without fail, PMS would turn me into a crazy person.
I noticed it, my friends noticed it, everyone probably noticed it, but my mom especially noticed it. So senior year of high school my mom made me go back to the doctor for another chat about birth control. I had turned eighteen at this point and transferred from my pediatrician to a lady who specialized in women's health. She explained that the reason the pill I was on in middle school caused me to have such a reaction was because it had both estrogen and progesterone and I needed one that just had progesterone because of my age.
Disclaimer: the pill, no matter what version you have, has synthetic chemicals that mimic progesterone and estrogen, it does not actually have these hormones.
She said lots of people think the pill can cause infertility but actually it preserves your eggs because you don't ovulate while on birth control. All of this sounded good to me, and no one had ever told me I needed to research on my own, I had always been told that doctors know best and to trust them. So I went on the pill to manage my PMS.
At the end of the first semester of freshman year of college, this same provider prescribed me an anti-antidepressant for anxiety. My period seemed fine and I was not having any side effects from the pill it seemed.
Flashforward to senior year of college. I begin to hear people talk about how we need to care for our bodies holistically. I learn that the majority of serotonin is produced in the digestive tract instead of in the brain like scientists originally thought. I began to research more about how the systems in our body are connected because I felt like there might be an underlying problem with how I was caring for my body as a whole.
I joined Young Living on the team of women who had an autoimmune condition.
She was doing a class on oils for hormones and the topic of birth control was addressed. This was the first time I learned that birth control stopped your body from producing its own hormones because of the chemicals that mimic hormones in birth control. She recommended some naturopathic doctors to learn more and so I followed them and began to read their blogs about hormonal birth control and how it could really mess up your body.
Hormonal birth control turns off your hormones that your body needs to function properly.
It can cause insomnia (I have insomnia), weight gain or inability to lose weight (I gained weight and have been actively trying to lose it to no avail), anxiety (I have anxiety), depression (I have depression), inflammation (I have inflammation). The list goes on.
So I have gone off birth control, but it is not an easy fix.
It can take months to get your hormones back in balance after you have been on the pill. So I am using essential oils that support your body's production of hormones, looking into a diet that helps lower inflammation, and trying to get everything balanced out.
The pill can really mess with you.
And it fires me up that no one tells us this, but instead, the pill is prescribed as a fix-all for any period problems. So now I will talk periods with anyone and everyone because there is a better way.
