Remedies to regulate your cycle
Though the average menstrual cycle is 28 days, anything from 21 to 35 days is considered normal. You can have normal cycle lengths, but experience abnormal spotting, extreme mood swings, menstrual bleeding that lasts longer than eight days, severe cramps, too heavy or too light bleeding. Sandra Wekesa tells us how you can you regulate your periods and avoid the unpredictability.
1. Check your diet
Overeating, under eating and nutrition may stress your hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands.
These glands regulate your body’s hormone balance, which can affect your periods.
According to Dr Wanjiru Ndegwa, a fertility specialist at Footsteps to Fertility Centre, eating the right way, that is, healthy eating, and in the right quantity, can help restore your menstrual cycle.
She adds that although some people might want to incorporate dieting to help with the cycle, it is important that it is done in the right way since under eating can also have an effect on your irregular cycle.
2. Catch some sleep
Sometimes, regulating your periods can be as simple as getting a good night sleep. Studies show that irregular sleeping patterns make your hormones wonky.
In most cases, your melatonin levels could go high. Melatonin is a hormone that regulates your sleep-wake cycle, known to affect your reproduction and menstruation.
For that reason, it is important to train your body to sleep and wake up the same time in order to avoid having irregular flows.
3. Do exercise
Get active. Engage in activities such as swimming, walking, and running for a few minutes.
However, it is important to know that vigorous exercises can have an effect in your periods because you could be putting stress on your body.
4. Go light on carbohydrate and fibre intake
Many doctors have no qualm in having a moderate amount of carbohydrates, but ensuring that you monitor the intake is necessary.
Henry Nge’the, chairman of nutrition association of Kenya says super low carb or no carb can mess with your cycle.
Not getting enough carbs can lead to irregular or even missed cycles (amenorrhea).
Low-carb diets may disrupt thyroid function and lower leptin levels in the body.
Leptin is produced by fat cells and helps regulate reproductive hormones.
Experts recommend getting 225 to 325 grammes of carbs per day if you’re consuming a 2,000-calorie diet.
This means you should get about 45 to 65 per cent of your total daily calorie intake from carbohydrates.
Fibre may lower the concentrations of progesterone, estrogen, luteinising hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH).
Researchers suspect this is why women who eat a high-fibre diet have a lower risk of developing breast cancer.
These hormones also play important roles in the body’s reproductive process.
As a result, eating too much fibre may affect ovulation, making periods late or causing you to skip them altogether.
5. Why not try acupuncture?
Acupuncture involves placing very thin needles at different energy points across the body.
According to traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture can balance the flow of energy in the body.
This may help regulate periods and improve symptoms of Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) or painful menstruation.
As a lifestyle medicine, studies show that it can work well with women struggling with intense cramping, headaches, clotting or mood swings and also regulate your cycle by normalising blood flow.
6. Keep a healthy weight
Being overweight or underweight can have an effect on your periods. This is because excess fat cells can have a result in elevated levels of oestrogen, which can stop your ovaries from releasing an egg.
“Having too much oestrogen for an extended period of time can result to endometrial cancer, because the endometrial lining will continue to thicken, this is why you would need to drop some kilogrammes to get your periods back on track,” says Wanjiru
She adds that being underweight can have a reversal effect to being overweight. This means that you won’t have adequate oestrogen levels.
7. Incorporate some nutritional supplements
Sometimes you are not able to get all your nutrients from food intake. This is why you need to get some nutritional supplements that can help your body get what it needs.
Talk to your doctor to help in getting you dietary supplements that can help in regulating your periods.
8. Try out turmeric and cinnamon
While research indicates that cinnamon can regulate your insulin levels, the same shows that turmeric can help reduce inflammation and solve period problems.
Therefore, using cinnamon to balance your insulin can go a long way in keeping your flow in check.
As for the turmeric, the curcumin component, which has health benefits to the body can influence oestrogen and androgen levels.
9. How about some essential oils?
Study conducted by Iranian Journal of psychiatry in 2010 revealed that supplements containing evening primrose oil (EPO), Vitamin E and vitamin B6 can help in alleviate premenstrual syndromes symptoms, which can help in regulating your periods.
10. Reduce stress
Researchers suggest that high levels of emotional stress have links to irregular periods. Finding ways to reduce stress may help a person regulate their menstrual cycle.
Avoiding stressful situations and managing family or workplace expectations may help.
When it is not possible to avoid stress, try doing activities that limit the impact it has on the body.
