Today, we are going to start a mini-series on how healthy is your menstrual cycle. So, we’ll have three videos as part of this series. For the first video, we are going to learn how to track your menstrual cycle. Now over the course of these three series, you will learn to understand whether or not you have healthy menstrual cycles and how to identify them. Because, the menstrual cycle is a great source of information to evaluate overall fertility. Through the menstrual cycle, we get first-hand information about the quality and quantity of blood, the health of the circulation of the blood. Through visualization of the menstrual cycle or of the menstrual blood itself and the timing of all of the different components that happen throughout the month. By observing the menstrual cycle, we can identify where hormones might be struggling or out of balance, where a blood supply might be poor in regard to feeding the reproductive organs and the developing eggs and even the health of the entire your entire body and other parts of the system.
When we’re working with our patients, we do ask them to pay particular attention to certain parts of their cycles and attract them for us over several months. So, we can get an assessment of the overall their overall mental health and their fertility. So, we have a few videos here, to help you understand how to start tracking your cycles, what the healthy cycle look like and how to know if you should get help in resolving an unhealthy menstrual cycle. So, today first we’re going to cover tracking your menstrual cycle. So, what’s the most important thing that you need to know first? Well, when it comes down to it. You need to know when the first day of your cycle is and this might be straightforward for you. For some people, it’s a little bit more confusing.
So, we like to chart the first day of the menstrual cycle as as the first day of the period. Now, if your period starts out with a regular full flow, then that’s great, that’s a very easy identifier for you. But, if you if your cycle starts out a little slow and begins with spotting then, it might be a little bit more ambiguous as what to call cycle day one. So generally, we want people to mark cycle day one as the day that they have, first substantial amount of flow the day that they might need to be changing their their menstrual pad or tampon or their cup whatever source that they’re using. If they’re spotting beforehand we want that noted, but we don’t count that as the first day. So, first thing to know is when cycle day one is. The second important thing to note in regards to the menstrual blood itself, is the colouring and thickness of the münster what. We want to know if that blood is dark burgundy colored, we want to know if it’s a bright magenta color. Is it a pale pink kind of watery color? or Is it a nice bright red fresh blood? color, we want to know if it has clots in it. It doesn’t seem sludging. is it thick? Is it, is it more watery? All of these things will inform us, as to where some of the underlying problems might be to explain some of your fertility struggles.
We, the third thing we ask women to be aware of is to document signs of ovulation. So, things like cervical mucus, if they get lower abdominal cramping or bloating fullness, if they get breast pain or if they can always get headaches at mid cycle, those are important things to note and of course more objective signs like, ovulation predictor kits. If you track your baby teaching temperatures and we want to look for that drop and spike in the temperature on that and some women are comfortable taking measurements of the cervical movements that happen throughout the menstrual cycle, so that’s another great way to to monitor for ovulation. Now, if you’re just beginning to track your cycles or you’re not sure when you ovulate, we recommend combining several of those methods starting at about cycle day seven, through cycle day 21, it’s how you have a distinctive pattern. What we’re really looking for, is for multiple of these different types of methods to line up and agree as to when you ovulate.
That will indicate to us that all of the systems are working together, that the communication from the control centers of the brain to the adrenal glands and the ovaries and the uterus that everything is working harmoniously. If things are not lining up, you’re taking your baby T temperatures, you’re doing OPK, your cervical mucus. If those things are not lining up that can indicate that there’s some imbalance in the hormones, some imbalance in the blood flow, maybe some nutritional deficiencies we need to address. So, all of these things are really important to know on your charts. These will really help us narrow in on the problems that that might be underlying, the overall fertility struggles. Over time keeping record of all of this information for several months, will help you identify patterns that occur in your cycles and if you decide that you need to get professional help having tracked this for several months, it’s going to be immensely helpful and hoping you get a jump start on that work.
You’re gonna be able to identify underlying causes very quickly, to get to those route struggles and help you solve some of the fertility issues. So, that sums it up for how to track your menstrual cycle so, a quick recap you need to know when cycle day 1 is, so that can be a little bit more confusing, if you have some lead in spotting so work on identifying when that first fall day of bleeding is. You need to track the color and the thickness of the menstrual blood and you need to track signs that are happening at ovulation. Keep all of those things together in a monthly log and bring those to your healthcare professional whenever you’re seeking help.
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