Menstrual health literacy is alarmingly low – what you don’t know can harm you
When I ask my menstrual health workshop participants – including clinicians – there’s usually a lot of shrugging and shaking of heads.
- When I ask my menstrual health workshop participants – including clinicians – there’s usually a lot of shrugging and shaking of heads.
- If given multiple choice options, most think that periods either “clean the womb” or somehow “help prepare for pregnancy”.
- Yes, the blood part can stain clothing, but there is nothing pathological, contaminating, or dangerous about periods.
So, why do we have periods?
- Periods likely evolved as a kind of preemptive abortion, to protect women from unviable or dangerous pregnancies.
- As a result, we have low rates of conception, high rates of miscarriage, and extremely high rates of maternal mortality in comparison to other mammals.
- The menstrual cycle is critical for facilitation of the initial steps of this raison d’être of the female reproductive system.
- The menstrual cycle is critical for facilitation of the initial steps of this raison d’être of the female reproductive system.
What else don’t we know?
- Perhaps with the fact that the second phase of the cycle from ovulation to menstruation is a series of highly inflammatory processes.
- This was only very briefly mentioned in three out of 16 textbooks.
- We really ought to be taught from puberty how to reduce period pain and blood loss – this is not difficult science.
Why aren’t we taught this stuff?
- My research shows that the exclusive focus on the female sex hormones in menstrual education is informed by societal influences, such as the myth of the hysterical or hormonal female.
- This gender myth is still alive and well, although now we tend to blame the (female sex) hormones.
- Again, there was no scientific reason for this change in focus, although it reflected existing societal beliefs about the inherently irrational behaviour of women.
- Unfortunately, menstrual health literacy has not yet recovered from this shift in physiological models.
So what?
- It also becomes much easier to differentiate premenstrual changes from underlying health conditions, since the latter will not be substantially alleviated by anti-inflammatory interventions alone.
- Teaching the reductive hormonal model of the menstrual cycle unintentionally provides pseudo-scientific evidence for the damaging hormonal or hysterical female gender myth.
Sally King is the founder of Menstrual Matters- the world's first evidence-based info hub on menstrual health and rights www.menstrual-matters.com. Her doctoral research and current research fellowship were funded by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council).