Lara Briden - The Period Revolutionary
Leading the change to better periods
Body literacy is learning to observe, chart, and interpret an ovulatory menstrual cycle.
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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It’s time to bring progesterone into the conversation about women’s health. That’s according to Canadian endocrinology professor Jerilynn Prior in her paper “Women’s reproductive system as balanced estradiol and progesterone actions—a revolutionary, paradigm-shifting concept in women’s health.” In the paper, Professor Prior makes the case that historically, there has been a “cultural over-emphasis on estrogen” while “progesterone tends to be ignored or associated with negative effects.”
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.
Ovarian hormones estrogen and progesterone are beneficial for health. That means natural ovulatory menstrual cycles are beneficial for health because ovulation is how women make hormones.
Does that surprise you? Men make testosterone every day, so you might think women do something similar, but we don’t. Instead, women make hormones as a surge of estradiol leading up to ovulation and an even bigger surge of progesterone after ovulation.