Do Not Let Your Monthly Period Put a Period on Your Life

Do Not Let Your Monthly Period Put a Period on Your Life

             “Is it that time of the month yet?” a question that majority of the women ranging from 17-45 year old face at least once a social setting where they are questioned about their emotions due to the menstrual cycle. This biological process has given rise to exploration of several questions, both in politics and in the medicinal world. For example, in politics women are constantly been pushing for a paid period day leave while in the medicinal world the studies focus on chronic pain, migraines, ovarian cancer and even asthma. A biological process that is intended for aiding sexual reproduction tends to outweigh in its disadvantages for women than its benefits. Women suffer through constant hormonal changes that impact their behavior, ability to be physically active in tasks and social stigma along with judgmental from the society. One of the biggest side-effect of these hormonal changes in pain and its modulation. As Michael Craig Miller, M.D and Chicago Tribune Content Agency describes in his article, women who go through menstrual cycle are likely to suffer from migraines and chronic pain in the pelvic regions. The problem with modulating pain during menstrual cycle is its wide range of variation that differs from one patient to another. The delayed diagnosis of severe pain related to monthly periods makes this issue even more troublesome. Administrator of the Mayo Clinic, attribute this to the carelessness of the patient as majority of the women believe that every women goes through painful periods.

    What about migraine patients who go through menstrual cycle? What happens to their headaches when they go through this biological process? Studies performed by American Headache Society suggests that migraine patients have a higher chance of facing a migraine attack during menopause than during the pre-menopause duration. This implies that the headaches just get worse as the menstrual cycle progresses. The study conducted as part of American Migraine Prevalence and Prevention (AMPP) from the data collected in 2006 that surveyed 3,603 migraine patients aging from 35-65.

      Over the course of past couple of decades, psychiatrists have put in extraneous efforts to finding a way to modulate pain for menstrual cycle. Several medications such as contraceptive pills and over the counter pain relievers have been utilized to modulate the minor pain. However, what does one do when this case becomes severe? To identify a linkage between menstrual cycle and chronic pain in the pelvic region, MD Frank F. Tu, had conducted several experiments to identify the correlation. In his published paper, A Noninvasive Bladder Sensory Test Supports a Role for Dysmenorrhea Increasing Bladder Noxious Mechanosensitivy, Tu performed an experiment with 50 healthy patients, women with age 18 or older, by measuring their mechanosensivity as the volume of the bladder increased. In his 2 hour experiment, participants were asked to drink glass of 12 oz of water prior to the beginning of the experiment and another 20 oz of water in five minutes during experimentation. During the experimentation period, the participant’s pelvic region specifically the bladder was examined using a sonography and their visceral sensitivity mechanoreception and nociception (pain) by asking for rating their sensation on a scale of 1 to 3. One being the least sensitive such that if they were in a car and the driver stopped to make a bathroom stop they would join driver too and three being the most severe to a point that they would ask the driver to stop on the road and urinate.

  

       The result from the study suggested that women with moderate or severe dysmenorrhea showed increase bladder urgency with low threshold noxious perception. With both the studies being kept in mind, it indicates that menstrual cycle leads to increased perception of the mechanosensitivity and nociception in the body. This could be accomplished by either the lowering the threshold of pain receptors and mechano-receptors by the hormonal changes that are accompanied during the periods. The identified psychological and biological pathway for this mechanism is still to be discovered.

 

Reference:

American Headache Society (AHS). (2014, June 24). Women with migraines experience more headaches during the menopausal transition. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 12, 2014 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140624215851.htm

For some women, headaches that come with menstruation can be severe. (2014, April 24).Chicago Tribune. Retrieved December 10, 2014, from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-0424/lifestyle/sns-201404241700--tms--mayoclnctnmc-a20140424-20140424_1_headaches menstrual-migraine-intense-throbbing

Miller, M. (2013, August 14). Severe PMS symptoms could mean PMDD. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved December 10, 2014, from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-04-24/lifestyle/sns 201404241700--tms--mayoclnctnmc-a20140424-20140424_1_headaches-menstrual-migraine intense-throbbing

Tu, F., Epstein, A., Polozo, K., Sexton, D., Melynk, A., & Hellman, K. (2013). A Noninvasive Bladder Sensory Test Supports a Role for Dysmenorrhea Increasing Bladder Noxious Mechanosensitivy. The Clinical Journal of Pain, 20(10), 83-890.