Lara Briden - The Period Revolutionary
Leading the change to better periods and hormones
Body literacy is learning to observe, chart, and interpret an ovulatory menstrual cycle.
Progesterone has been both ignored and mistakenly blamed for side effects it does not cause. How did that happen?
First, progesterone was discovered after estrogen, so, according to endocrinology professor Jerilynn Prior, missed being part of the tidy hormone dichotomy of “testosterone for men and estrogen for women.”
The next time your doctor orders a progesterone test, ask yourself: “When is the right day to do this test?”
Forget “day 21 progesterone.” There’s no reason to test progesterone until you are approximately one week before your period. That will depend on how long your cycle actually is.
Here’s what you need to know about progesterone testing.
Some basic body literacy:
A proper period or menstrual bleed is a bleed at the end of a natural ovulatory cycle. Any other type of bleed is either a pill bleed (a withdrawal bleed from stopping contraceptive drugs) or an anovulatory cycle (a bleed when there has been no ovulation).
A menstrual cycle is, therefore, an “ovulatory cycle,” in which ovulation is the main event.
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With the news that women don’t need pill-bleeds came the headline “Women don’t need periods,” which is completely wrong.
It’s true that women don’t need pill-bleeds because pill-bleeds are not periods. But women do need natural menstrual cycles, and here’s why.