The True Cost of Period Pain & How to Resolve It

Today's topic is life changing. If not for yourself, then 100% for someone you know. Today's Nurtition Letter is about how painful periods are not normal.

To many that is a colossal claim: often after decades of lived experience as proof to the contrary. 

I've been there too & I used to think the exact same thing.

I promise you, however, that after you've experienced the relief yourself (without surgery, drugs, herbs, or potions), you'll be annoyed at me for not bothering you about it earlier!  

This topic deserves a proper introduction, middle, and end - making it one of my longest Letters to date. This is why I've created a legend for what is ahead and for your continued reference later on.

 

Our key destinations points include:

1. how I discovered period pain is not normal & what is normal
2. the two root causes of period pain: malnutrition & overwhelmed detoxification systems
3. malnutrition example: common motherhood experience
4. malnutrition example: common vegetarian and vegan experience
5. malnutrition example: chronic dieters' experience
6. detoxification systems introduced, including stress, diet, & exercise
7. detoxification overwhelm example: classic work/school/life overwhelm
8. detoxification overwhelm example: over exercise, fasting, or dieting
9. how to nourish, diet, exercise, and fast if you are female (also includes important notes for males)
10. expensive & painful conequences of ignoring a painful period
11. audio version of this topic from my UK radio broadcast, link
12. I wish you period pain relief. Thank you & updates!

 

 

---

 

When I say "period pain is not normal", I stun women of all ages. 

 

The look on their faces is often priceless, but that's actually not my favorite part. 

 

It's what happens next that's absolutely brilliant.

 

Nine times out of ten, they either say,

 

"Well... I wish someone would have told me that 40 years ago!"

 

or...

 

"What!? Tell me everything you know!"  

 

What I love about those reactions is that most of us intuitively know that pain - chronic & persistent - is not normal.

 

And yes indeed - why would there be such a major fault in this miraculously adapted human body of ours?  And why would well-being for 50% of the population be such a luck of the draw?

 

The common understanding of periods among most women and the standard medical system is that some women are blessed with easy and smooth 3-4 day long periods and others are cursed to suffer...

• uncomfortably unpredictable periods, changing in length month to month
• 3 or more days of heavy bleeding & big blood clots, maybe over on day 4 or 5... but who knows? 
• sense of unending fatigue and/or low mood,
• debilitating referred back pain,
• massive digestive shifts (from indigestion & bloating, to diarrhea, etc) 
• and hellish cramps where it feels like someone is scraping your insides out with a thin metal spoon. 

And many other women alternate between the cursed and the blessed, month to month, almost having it worse off because they never know how "bad" it will be next time.

 

I belonged in the "blessed" crowd for all of highschool, blissfully ignorant of how hellish it was for many of my peers. Those were the days! Here's what they looked like:

• regular & predictable periods,
• 1 day - at maximum - of noticeable fatigue, 
• 1 - 2 days of heavier bleeding, quickly slowing down, with few if any small clots
• 1 day of easy and smooth medium flow,
• by the 3rd and 4th day, energy & motivation picking up, as the final few drops left

All I had to really deal with was what I affectionately call the "bloody mess".

 

Then I went to university, and slowly. . . over half a decade, my periods slowly worsened until I had it almost as bad as the most cursed out there, popping more and more painkillers - month by month - just to function. The culture around periods, however, lead to me accept this new reality. 

 

This pain is apparently "normal". 

 

Thank goodness that something else also developed in my undergraduate life, that I knew was NOT normal, and led me to the discovery that all healthy periods are smooth and easy.

 

This was depression. Everyone knows that's not normal, right?

 

So this is how I came to be writing to you today: during the same half decade or so, I progressively become more and more suicidal. It become so bad that I dropped out of my masters degree (philosophy being first professional calling). 

 

I remember lying to the university councilor on why I had to delay my program: I told her there had been a death in the family & I was needed to pick up the pieces. 

 

In retrospect, I wasn't exactly lying, because a part of me wanted to die. 

 

But I didn't dare tell anyone these thoughts - not my loving family nor friends nor my boyfriend - because how could they possibly understand? or worse . . . what if they misjudged my intentions as attention seeking, selfish, or some other nonsense that my brain made up as excuses. 

 

If you feel any of my words resonate, please read on to the end, because all of those thoughts and pain were lies & I'll teach you how to turn them off.

 

So I dropped out of my masters, worked freelance and odd jobs, and started doing my own deep research. I had been an aspiring biohacking "neo-aboriginal" for most of university, testing & experimenting constantly -- from fiber, supplements, foods, herbs, foraging, and various potions. . .  But this time around, I gave myself a time limit: 5 years. 

 

If I can't find a solution in 5 years, that's it, I can quit life.

 

Clearly, I found something that worked since then, as I'm still here to tell you what I discovered.

 

---

 

 

First thing I did was hire a practitioner to help me. My research said I needed functional medicine & nutrition; today's cutting edge of restorative & preventative medicine. 

 

In a sentence, functional medicine practices with the underlying assumption that the our natural lifespan is characterized with good health and vitality until the day or a few days before our death. It sees chronic disease as something we can resolve at the root rather than an inevitability. Standard medicine (and very necessary emergency care) assumes that slow chronic deterioration is the natural destiny of most humans, and the role of medicine is to patch us up as we fall apart.  

 

You can see why I couldn't see any point in turning to standard medicine; I knew I would only be met with hormonal birth control, anti-depressants, and/or disbelief. 

 

No, thank you! 

 

The practitioner I found was a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner [CNTP] who practiced with a functional medicine approach. 

 

Some relief followed and my health improved, but the depression remained - returning periodically with a vengeance. Oh yeah, and my periods didn't get better.   

 

You see, my CNTP's approach was still very much like the standard medical approach. He saw clients for "one-off" appointments. The only upside was that he spent 1-2 hours with me - his client - each time, rather than the 5-15 minutes of most general practitioners. 

 

Although his approach focused on the root cause of disease rather than just symptom management, what resulted were often unstructured half built understandings of what I needed to do & why. We worked on gut health, some bacterial overgrowths, and for my mood he gave me the fancy stuff (5-HTP) - that should NOT be given to you for mood relief before you at least make sure you have enough enough vitamin D3 and protein in your life ( but I didn't know that then... ) 

 

In the end, my CNTP didn't address the underlying problem: malnourishment & an overwhelmed liver. 

 

And how can I blame him? What time did we have to do that when he only sees me once every three months for an hour or two?

 

I realized then what I needed was a program to guide me though the functional foundations of health and tell me exactly how health was built and maintained. Having found some benefit in my CNTP's approach, I decided to take a closer look at where he received his training. Finding his school, I enrolled and became my own Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. 

 

What I learned since daresay resolved my depression for good and unintentionally also restored the smooth and easy periods of my youth.  

 

I could never have imagined any of this possible ten years ago.

 

But you know the saying? At first our dreams seem impossible, and then they seem improbable, and finally, then they become inevitable. 

 

You just need one person, to tell you what's possible, and a tiny crack of that "probable reality" opens up to you. So let me be that person to you and tell you once again,

 

Painful periods are not normal.

 

And the solutions to get to a smooth and easy period are so simple. 

 

The solutions are deep nourishment & detoxification support. 

 

Let's me give you an example of the first problem: long term chronic malnourishment.

First example: mothers.  

 

---

 

A classic case I come across all the time are women who start out "blessed" in their periods, but after their first or second child is born, join the cursed ones. 

 

Why? 

 

Because growing a baby is nutritionally demanding on a woman's body. Often well intended mothers walk down the so called "one-pill-is-all-you-need" pre natal multivitamin route & only deepen their multiple nutritional deficiencies year after year.

 

If you didn't already know, prenatal multivitamins are famously INSUFFICIENT in micronutrients to support a healthy pregnancy: these are often cheap combinations of minerals and vitamins, poorly bio-available, and just to top it all of, in quantities INsufficient for 1 baby, let alone 1 adult AND a growing baby. 

 

So this is what often happens to new mothers: she has her first, barely supported by her prenatal, and the body is amazing and terrifying in this way... it will still grow the baby, but if the mother's diet is insufficient, it will just suck the required micro and macro nutrients from the mother's body reserves. 

 

In return, she developes commonly embraced pregnancy symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, cravings, acid reflux, fatigue, and more. 

 

You read that right, in most cases those symptoms are malnutrition signs and symptoms.

 

Then she gives birth and the baby is healthy, but the mom feels off - in many ways. She only kind of restabilizes after a year or two, but then she decides to have her second child. Depending on how long she breastfeeds, she might not have had many periods between child 1 and child 2. So, if her periods are harder, she might just shrug it off as her body readjusting to having cycles again. 

 

Note to my dear reader: if your periods are EVER painful, something is already off. You don't need another few months to confirm this.

 

In any case, the mom decides to have her second child. She might notice that her pregnancy is harder than the first one. More sickness, more cravings, and more pain and discomfort (yes, all signs of an undernourished mom). She gives birth, breastfeeds (if she is able to eat enough, otherwise her ability to produce milk will dry up), and eventually resumes her periods. 

 

But now her periods are the cursed kind. Painful beyond all reason. She talks to her friends about it - and who knew? - it turns out they've always had cursed periods. Just pop a few painkillers, try not to hate 1/4 of your month, and suck it up. Or, which is also becoming popular, feel the pain - preferably in an artistic manner - & go into seclusion - if possible with a work life - every month. One is a certainly a healthier mindset, but both accept pain as the default reality.  

 

Let me be the person who tells you these are not your only options.

 

It is incredibly rewarding to see mothers in my practice who once struggled during and after pregnancy with their first 2 children, have a morning-sickness free & craving free pregnancy with their third child, just from taking high quality beef organ supplements, mineralizing their water, optimizing their vitamin D levels, and eating enough macronutrients. All of which also support your detoxification systems like your liver, now working overtime for 2 people during pregnancy.    

 

---

 

Fun fact: over half of my clients came to me as vegans or vegetarians. 

 

After our work together, all of them leave as omnivores = at minimum. 

 

Not only are micronutrients hard to meet on either one of these mostly plant-based diets, but so is one of the most essential macronutrients: protein. 

 

You can read about the increible power of protein in my previous Nutrition Letter here. 

 

For now, just know these basics

1. most people don't eat enough protein
2. plant based proteins are significantly less bio-available to the human body compared to animal based protein
3. plant based proteins famously overstimulate the human immune system, often triggering or worsening auto immune conditions (like arthritis & fibromyalgia) and chronic fatigue

All together, this is a recipe for a chronically malnourished human being. 

 

Nevertheless, new vegans or vegetarians often notice that they feel amazing on their plant-based diets for a few months. 

 

This is the positive theraputic effect of protein fasting. Similar to fasting, protein fasting helps your body cleanse itself via autophagy. Essentially, autophagy is when your body plunders old slow cells to reuse their protein building blocks.

 

The key word to remember here is theraputic.

 

Good therapies are time limited, because they draw out a certain desired result from your body. But all good therapies must be followed by a nourishing maintenance plan.

 

But most people don't know this, so what do they do instead?

 

When they start to feel bad on the diet that made them feel SO good, they decide they must not be doing it "hard enough".

 

So they become more extreme. More strict. "Maybe I didn't ferment that enough!"

 

Thus digging themselves a deeper hole of malnourishment.

 

It's my job to show these clients the life changing effects of adding back more high quality animal based protein into their diet. 

 

And when it comes to period pain, protein is a life saver, helping us

• fill up our daily energy reserves
• feel much better moods
• build our blood, uteral lining, and MOST of our hormones

I always approach my plant based clients the same way: everything is not for you to believe, but for you to experience. 

 

Because results are so noticable. 

 

As we add animal based protein back into their lives, people light up again. The world comes back into colour. 

 

I often see anxiety and depression cycles melt off them, and that optimism return like a welcome friend. 

 

Good mood, great spirits, and ofcourse, way easier periods.

 

---

 

There are two ways to diet for weight loss or fitness:

 

1. diet without nourishment
2. diet with nourishment

 

Both ways work, but the 2nd way is 110% easier and gives you better results in less time. 

 

In fact, this is the smart way to diet. I coach people how here.

 

Most people just do follow way #1 and just eat less of everything. 

 

They diet without thinking about whether or not they are receiving enough nourishment for their body. And they do this often for decades, digging themselves into a deeper and deeper malnourished hole.

 

Here's something most people don't know: 

 

calories are not the same as nutrients.

 

We have a minumum requirement for calories and nutrients everyday, but they are not the same requirements & not measured in the same units.

 

In functional nutritional therapy we recommend the following as daily requirements [notice the equivalent calorie number]: 

 

minimum daily maintenance calories: 

1400-2800 caloies per day 

(depending on your age, height, sex, etc) 

 

absolute minimum calories: 

800-1200 caloies per day

(depending on your age, height, sex, etc) 

 

minimum macronutrients:

carbs: 25% of maintenance calories [i.e. 500 calories]

fats: 25% of maintenance calories [i.e. 500 calories]

proteins: 20% of maintenance calories [i.e. 400 calories]

 

minimum micronutrient examples:

vitmains: 5000IU of vit D3 [0 calories]

minerals: 2grams of sodium [0 calories]

(there are at least a dozen more essential minerals and half a dozen essential vitamins) 

 

As you can see, you can meet most of your fundamental macronutrient and micronutrient requirements and still lose weight (eat in a calorie deficit) day to day. 

 

But most people don't supplement their micronutrients, so when they diet they rely on their macronutrients (daily protein fat and carbs) to supply their basic micronutrient dose.

 

And as we diet, we generally reduce our overall macronutrient intake, thus also reducing our micronutrient intake.

 

Most people diet off and on for years, never reaching their goals - or gaining it all back, and their bodies becomes more and more depleted.

 

This depletion slows the body's ability to create everything - from hormones, to healthy skin cells, to enzymes, to muscles, to new brain cells. 

 

And ofcourse, the first systems to get hit are the "non essential systems" like your reproductive mojo (suddenly lost your sex drive?), along with your reproductive capacity & maintenance systems (infertility, painful periods, endometriosis, difficult meopause). 

 

Oops. 

 

Here's the good news: your body is waiting for you to nourish it so it can bounce back!

 

In my practice I see the biggest recovery in my clients when I make sure they are re-nourished. 

 

Even after decades of yo-yo dieting and fasting. The body is waiting and ready to express it's full potential.

 

And most of the time, I can accomplish this without adding calories.

 

---

 

The second part to the smooth & easy period solution is detoxification system support. 

 

The detoxification system includes all the systems in your body that deal with stress; whether chemical, emotional, or physical.

 

Supporting this system involves 

1. lowering personal environmental toxin load (from hygiene pads to skin care products),
2. lowering unnecessary work & interpersonal stress &/or false expectations,
3. increasing your body's mineral and vitamin stores essential for your organs and nervous system to deal smoothly and easily with stress, so you don't feel exhausted afterwards
4. smart scheduling of healthy ( but also demanding ) activities including and dieting, fasting, and exercise 

 

---

 

A classic example is a woman who notice stress changing their cycles. Sometimes a particularly stressful month - from school to work to finances - can change the length of their cycles and severity of their period pain. One month the menstruation is easy and the cycle 28-29 days long, and the next month the menstruation painful and the cycle 35 days in length!

 

Here's why stress can have this affect: stress is nutritionally demanding.    

 

Think of it like inflation. 

 

When you are mostly calm, well regulated, and feeling good in the day, the "cost" for your body to breathe, walk, think, digest, and all other normal body functions is the same price as houses, food, and petrol was over a 100 years ago... mere dollars and cents. And the currency your body uses is macronutrients (carbs, fat, and protein) & micronutrients (minerals & vitamins). The functional equivalent of dollars and cents.   

 

When you are constantly reactive, overwhelmed with your schedule & responsibilities, and mostly feeling depressed or pissed off all day, then the daily maintenance costs for your body are inflated to today's cost of houses, food, and petrol. That is, over 30x more costly. 

 

Let me ask you this, if you had the chance to pay 30x LESS for everything in your life, would you take it? 

 

Please read that again. 

 

Here's a concrete example: 20 American dollars in 1913 has the purchasing power of $650 today. This is the equivalent biologically inflated cost of stress in your life.

 

At the same time, not all stress is in your control. Here's what to do handle that better: just take a deep breath. Learn to breath less per minute, reducing your total unecessary stress by at least 80%.

 

At the same time, sometimes you want to stress your body for certain desirable outcomes, including:

• intense exercise for increased strength and/or endurance 
• dieting for fat loss or weight loss, (or weight gain, for some people)
• sauna, cold plunge, or fasting for increased body resilience and detox support

 

These "hormetic" stressors are wonderful, but I also see them overdone all the time.    

 

Let me explain.

 

---

 

First, women are not "little men". 

 

In most of the medical research literature, including prescription drug studies, the female biology has been treated like the small version of male biology. 

 

In reality, male and female bodies have widely different hormonal and biochemical reactions to the same stimuli.

 

Yes, it's true! It's not just a "cultural construct". 

 

For example, consider a man and a women who are both stressed. When we are stressed both men and women produce cortisol. Now, how does the human body destress? 

 

For men, increasing testosterone decreases cortisol.

For women, balancing estrogen and progesterone decreases cortisol.

 

And it doesn't work if I switch them up:

 

For women, increased testosterone does NOT decrease levels of cortisol.

For men, increased estrogen actually does not decrease levels of cortisol.

 

As per this example and many others, we can't treat the male and female biology the same way. Similarly, women can't exercise or fast or diet the same way the same as most men. 

 

I see this a lot when it comes to exercise culture: women get into exercise for weight loss, see quick initial results, then eventually results start stalling, and then - cause more is better, right? - double down on exercising 2x as much as before.

 

It worked for her male trainer, why wouldn't it work for her?

 

Listen up! 

 

As a biological female, your body is highly attuned to all the following elements:

1. high physical demands (i.e. over fasting, excercise, or other hormetic stimuli), 
2. shortage of food (i.e. dieting), 
3. and stress (i.e. everything from work place stress to that never ending to-do list).

Why? Because your body will carry a much higher biological burden  than a man, if you get pregnant. 

 

"But I don't want to get pregnant."

 

What you want when it comes to kids doesn't matter to your DNA. 

 

Your body is optimized for a healthy pregnancy.

 

Instead of resenting that fact, leverage it to your advantage.

 

So, women are not little men, and here is an example of an excellent unfair hormonal advantage (starting at puberty and continuing past menopause).

 

So how do you exersice, diet, etc as a woman?

 

I've outlined it all in the next section:

 

---

 

It's simple:

1. Meet your daily minimum macros & micros, as outlined above in the "malnutrition example: the chronic dieting experience" section of this Nutrition Letter.
2. Drink enough water: start with a minimum of 1 liter or 40 oz daily. More details found in my dedicated Hydration Nutrition Letter.
3. If you want to diet, then diet smart. I've designed my Fat Release Program this way.
4. Reduce stress as much as possible with this technique.
5. Unless you are a professional athlete, minimize intense exercise to 3x a week, with at least 1 rest day in between. Slow-Medium intensity exercise are fine on rest days. 
6. Unless you are a professional athlete, minimize intense endurance exercise to 1-2x a week, with at least 1 rest day in between. This includes activities like rowing & long distance running, exceptions are non competitive forms of walking like backpacking.
7. Fasting: no more than 3 days a week. If you like 24 hour fasts. do not do for more than once a week, maximum. Longer fasts, 3 day to 1 week long, I recommend only once a quarter (every three months), maximum.

 

For guys: all the above tips apply to you too. You can push the limits only a wee little bit longer than women, but I promise you that it's not worth it. 

 

Over stressing your body comes at more cost than gain.

 

More is NOT always better.

 

You want the minimum effective dose, to maximize your return on time invested exercising, dieting, and/or fasting.

 

As you embrace the less is more way of life, you'll eventually realize your deepest goal is to reclaim your time in order to go back to doing what you love with those you love.

 

---

 

 

Let's just make a list & their associated cost, as per my experience in and outside my private functional nutrition practice:

 

• popping painkillers is not harmless. These are widely used for cramp pain, headaches, and body aches but they are bad news. Most over the counter pain relievers worsen leaky gut: creating food sensitivities, immune stimulation, and digestive distress. Leaky gut also affects the brain, from fatigue to brain fog to headaches. Don't mess with these drugs. One day, our society will treat these NSAIDs like cigarettes. Don't take your chances and become a statistic for future generations. Pain is a signal from your body that there is something deeply wrong or needs attention. (Easily a few thousand dollars in cost just for the pills over decades, not including dealing with the chronic conditions to which they contribute)
• losing work for every 1 day of the month every year over 30 years because of a painful period ($40,000-$200,000 dollars total, depending on your hourly wage/commission)
• endometriosis diagnosis & surgery ($3000 on average per surgery, over 60% regression of all symptoms in a few years)
• hysterectomy surgery (5-10,000 dollars just for the surgery)
• drugs for PMDD or premenstrual dyspohoria disorder aka "PMS on steroids" (a few hundred dollars per year, depending where you live, and mostly only seeing short term relief before having to switch drugs again)
• infertility or miscarriages (next to impossible to put a dollar value on lost life and lost "life creating window" so to speak)
• feeling crazy, anxious, depressed, or angry for a part of every month and thinking it is "just who you are" (what's the cost of therapy these days? around 5-10,000 dollars per year depending where you live)

 

---

I had the pleasure of broadcasting this content on a UK Radio show.

 

If you'd like to listen to it in audio, here is the link.

 

Enjoy!

 

---

 

These Nutrition Letters are now broadcasted by a local Radio Host in Maine, USA. 

 

As these Letters come out each month, Radio Host Bill & I dive deeper and answer your questions. 

 

If you have any questions for our next show, please send them my way at 

[email protected]

 

Here is the audio link to our conversation for the last Nutrition How to Lose Weight For the Last Time.

 

My private functional nutrition practice is currently accepting new clients.

 

Here are the conditions I help resolve, at isabellathor.com :