GynoFiles

Well a life dream has always been to eat plenty of whatever my heart desires and then stand on a machine and have that waist belt just shake it off. It's a fantasy dream, so none of that. But can we shake the menstrual cramps right out of our body? What would be the biological mechanism for this? Well, distraction is a powerful tool. But actual factual basis of treating menstrual cramps with activity. Not so fast. Although exercise is a prescription commonly avowed by physicians for their patients, it turns out that the data is just not so convincing. firstly many studies have lumped in all sorts of PMS related symptoms (moodiness, anger, bursts of crying) when testing the pull-up, push up or sit-up cures, and secondly some studies have actually shown worse cramping when exercising, so maybe it is just put up! Or maybe my bodies is not like yours or hers, we probably all have some physiological uniqueness that affects our response to exercise as much as it affects our responses ...

Gynos say there are three phases to puberty first is the  development of formal thinking and processing as a more adult person, then the stages of adolescence that contribute to psychosocial development and final biologic processes. the menarche, the thelarche and the andrenarche, gonadarche  and pubarche, ( which stands for the ..periods, breasts,, the adrenal gland male hormones, and pubic hair development) accompanied by the final physical development of our body's organs, our size and our strength.  A girl's height shoots up at a fast pace around the time of the 'growth spurt' of puberty, and not quite 20%, closer to 18%, of one's eventual height growth occurs during this time. The first part of puberty is also accompanied by reductions in body fat percent as bones and muscles take president in the nutrition that spurs the growth. After age 16 girls tend to revert to gains because of gain in fat. Body fat % can trigger earlier physiologic steps in this proc...

Gals hate break through bleeding. It’s a worry from the standpoint of clean clothes and feeling as fresh, and it’s often worrisome to patients who wonder what the cause is and if it signals something more major. Although your gyno will likely reassure you that this is common, I always encourage my patients to get that extra gyno visit in to discuss their individual case, and to see if they need adjustment to their pills. This Gyno Gab Gal worries about unintended pregnancy for those having unscheduled bleeding, patients my only worry about the sheer annoyance of it! Usually those first three months are the worse, but about 10% of the time as you go forward with pill use you may have some breakthrough bleeding. Birth control pill users may experience breakthrough bleeding and failure. In the research world pill failure rates are less than 2% in the real world pill failure rates for pregnancy are about 8%. Lots of reasons have been proposed for this. Obesity, competing medications, s...

Decidual Cast Periods can be fairly easy, passing some tissue at a time, or off can come the whole lining in one piece called a decidual cast. Generally the lining of the uterus is only 6-8 mm thick at the time of the menstrual period, and it is shed gradually, a few cells at a time. The decidual cast is when the entire lining passes spontaneously.  It's not uncommon, but it usually both uncomfortable, and alarming to some. But us women are designed to have some sort of periods  Or Not? We have to pass tissue each month. Or Not? Are they good for us? Or Not? Do we want them? Or Not? Is this something that is individual? Or Not? It's a complex topic that I will be discussing a lot over my time in this blog. So lets start with basics: How much do we bleed and what are we loosing, and just what was this that the patient passed? And another basic: track your periods, and the Women's Health Practice site http://www.womenshealthpractice.com/media/pdf/menstrual_chart.pdf you...

The traditional way women have detected menopause was a set of hot flashes followed by a year of no menses. But understanding when that day is approaching, and if the symptoms that you are having may mean that menopause is near menopause has been a bigger challenge. Using FSH testing and estrogen testing had come into wide use almost 4 decades ago. In the past decade there has been more widespread use of the inhibin B tests. And now we have gone further with blood stream tests of a woman's serum anti-Mullerian hormones (AMH). Inhibin B rises, but AMH decreases as ovaries age towards menopause. In fact in a new study they have found that AMH decreases so evenly and steadily with aging that whether you are still fertile or not can be predicted with using this tes t.  decrease steadily with age - and researchers who quantified the changes say their work can help predict a woman's chances of pregnancy. In a November 2010 online paper in Fertility and Sterility, Dr. Seifer of Mai...

Women realize that after menopause women do not have periods. We technically run out of eggs to form the structures such as the follicle and corpus luteum which produce hormones and we are unable to ovulate or produce an egg at all. So there are no more cycles and at menopause women stop having these monthly bleeds called periods. But many of us have just come to call any bleeding episodes that act like periods and feel like periods: a period. It is true there might be that last fling ovulation or so. But then again, technically, that is not really menopause, but perimenopause. Your gyno will call this post-menopausal bleeding, and in the back of her mind, a bit of a red flag. She will want to know more. Statistics show that 10 to 15% of women who bleed  during menopause, when bleeding should have already stopped, will have lining cancer of the uterus. So investigations must be undertaken to make sure you don't have a treatable condition of the uterus that is causing bleeding. ...

You will love the ring. It’s handy, you can control when to pop it in and when to pop it out, so you are controlling the hormone use, and it’s more effective at having steady blood levels. So do consider switching to the ring even if you are quite pleased with your pills. Today you have to take your pill, and yesterday, and tomorrow, and we have you scheduled to take over 3650 of these pills over the next ten years. So trying to minimize that day in and day out issue has been one of the main driving forces behind the popularity of the vaginal ring for contraception. Vaginal rings should be available in the 40 different sizes and shapes that birth control pills come in, but they are not, they are currently available in one size and one shape. The shape is simple: a ring. It’s soft, it sits pretty much anywhere in the vagina. It doesn’t need the careful engineering of a diaphragm placement, and it’s not likely to pinch or be felt. About 1/10 women in some studies report the ring can sl...

Amenorrhea/Azomenorrhea/Omenorrhea What are we taught? Give a patient a diagnosis, give her the formal name or the formal medical terminology her condition will be labeled and coded as when she gets to her physician’s office, and finally, the name will help explain the meaning of the condition. Confusion exists when we persist in labeling disparate conditions with the same medical term. We have expanded the options for menstrual control and elimination of menses. But to a patient it all translates into a skipped period, and women know that their body is trying to tell them something if they skip periods when they are supposed to have a period. And many girls, young women and even some older women have trouble  wrapping their hands around the idea that no period could be healthy. I hear that idea expressed daily, and anthropologists and sociologists reading this will be smiling because they themselves know that menstrual blood has powerful psychological ind historical mea...

Women who have heavy bleeding are told to consider eliminating the uterine lining. The uterine lining is medically called the endometrium, and it is designed to be the lush baby bed. Originally, or as scientists like to say "ontogenetically" shedding the lining in the way of menstrual blood is to keep it fresh and ready for the next pregnancy. But I like to think of those menstrual periods as the first' blue stick' tests we had. We just needed that firm signal once our roles changed from ready to have a baby to baby present. So the lining is shed monthly, it's not destroyed permanently in the 'natural' premenopausal state. Of course we go back far enough in time women didn't actually have many of those shedding episodes at all. Women in cave times had about 20 menstrual cycles in their life, and now we have about 400. They were pregnant, they were breast feeding, they were malnourished, and no periods. Then physicians came up with a thought. Gyneco...

Judging how heavy your periods are is difficult. And filling out forms can be one of the most challenging parts of the doctors visit. At the gyno office one of the first questions is, "are your periods normal?" and you need to judge that. So that requires you to know your normal, and a bit about others normal as well. Timing is important, just keeping the "menstrual calendar" is helpful, and yes, many cycles are 28 days. We've discussed the range of normal in a few posts. Judging the amount of bleeding is a different issue. Pad tests, used mostly in research, are very helpful, but it's a bit awkward. And when you are young or have other medical issues Pad Testing is difficult to accomplish. Pad testing means weighing for menstrual blood, and by the way we also say pad tests when you are older means weighing for pee. For accuracy, and knowing whether you've really passed clots or whether you soaked through the  pads, or just change your pad a lot, it...

In 1977 Snow and Johnson published a landmark paper in JAMA regarding the fears inner-city women in Michigan had regarding their menstrual blood flow. It was thought to be full of impurities the body had to rid itself of, and to this day, these misconceptions persist. And these fears are fairly culturally pervasive across the globe with tribes in Africa that believe menstrual blood can ruin crops and livestock.It's actually pretty great reading to just muse over what we've thought about menstrual blood. And as the pill turns 50 we have to realize that millions of women were forced to bleed monthly by well meaning obstetricians because frankly, they too thought that it would be thought of to be more "natural" to mimic a menstrual period. But not natural for cave women, or many native cultures. And fears of discussing menstruation prohibit women from getting proper diagnosis and care for endometriosis according to , Lone Hummelshoj, secretary general of the World End...

Menstrual migraines are often listed under migraine myths, but they do occur . Migraine sufferers have headaches, but often they will have warning symptoms as well. Some of the warning symptoms are vague and some are more typically recognized as migraines. These may be nausea, light adversity, odd sense of smell or even vomiting. These non-headache neurological symptoms that occur when the pain starts are known as auras. Recent studies have shown that it is actually more common to have migraines without warning than with warning auras. But other women might have migraine symptoms that precede the actual headache pain by a day or even several days. And these symptoms may be those that are commonly recognized to be associated with migraines: like spots before your eyes, vision changes or, fatigue. But it is also possible to get a condition known as facial congestion or swelling that can even be mistaken for a sinus infection. So make sure you think about when you are having those sinu...