#NormalizeThePeriod

Q: Are women’s periods clear and blue and gatorade-like? Because that’s what commercials always show.

A: HELL NO. 

Women bleed real blood. It’s red, sometimes brown; it can even be black. It can be liquidy and thin, viscous or even have clotted matter in it. 

The blue liquid thing we see in commercials was an attempt on the part of advertisers to “neutralize” menstruation and decrease their own “ick factor” associated with this fact of life. 

Thank you, Bodyform, for releasing this commercial that features real blood in it. 

A: We love this thorough explanation so much that we’ve decided to let Suzanne Sadedin (Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Monash University) speak for us. 

Spoiler alert -- the answer will bum you out and it has something to do with aggro placenta. 

Click the link below:

We remember hearing this back in the day! What we learned from researching this was actually a *little* surprising:

In short, your period flow does not “stop” when you go swimming in water (or champagne or rosé or jello, for that matter). So -- FALSE.

HOWEVER -- something interesting does happen: 

If you’re submerged in water, the water applies pressure on your body. This actually can mean that water is pushing against your vaginal opening and kind of pushing the blood back in... like it’s arm wrestling your blood into submission (so what your friend told you is actually partially true!). 

HOWEVER ... all it takes is another change in pressure (say from coughing, sneezing, laughing, or just getting out of the pool) for your blood to overpower the pressure from the water.

If you’re looking to swim but are in the bleeding portion of your cycle, then definitely use a tampon if you don’t want leakage. Just remember to change your tampon after swimming because the tampon will absorb excess water and could give you an infection if you leave it in too long.

Thanks for the question!

Great question! 

Because tampons don’t include ingredients that can “expire,” per se, they don’t typically carry an expiration date (though some boxes do have a printed date on them). 

As long as your tampon supply is stored in a cool and dry place, they should last a very long time. Remember, though, that tampons are just fluffy puffs of cotton (or rayon) so if they’re in a damp environment they’re going to turn into a beach party for fungi and mold. 

If you have some tampons that you’ve kept around for a long time or in a damp place and think are questionable, DON’T RISK IT. These little buggers go inside you so it’s best to get fresh ones if you’re on the fence. 

Some people remember from sex ed or bio class that the human egg cell, or “ovum,” is much bigger than an individual sperm (nerd alert: specifically, the human ovum measures between 100 and 200 µm in diameter whereas human sperm cells consists of a head 5 µm by 3 µm and a tail 50 µm long... so a three foot sperm would have an egg that is 8.16 ft in diameter!).

SO -- it’s natural that folks wonder if women can actually feel their eggs passing through them. 

In general, the answer is: No. The ovum is still too small to feel throughout most of menstruation.

HOWEVER -- some women do feel it when they ovulate ( “ovulation” is when the egg cell comes out of the ovaries), and this phenomenon is called “mittelschmerz.” These feeling scan consist of a one-sided backache or a tender area that may last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days (source).

Most ladies discover dark clumps of tissue in our menstrual blood at some point in our lives. That stuff is most likely just some of your uterine lining (or “endometrium”) shedding and is nothing to be concerned about.

Remember that every cycle and every woman are different. Only if you’re experiencing something very unusual and/or painful for your own body should you start to get worried. 

Nope. How heavy your periods are has little relationship to how fertile you are. If you have super light periods, lasting only a day or two, it may be more difficult to get pregnant. But having heavy flow doesn’t mean that you will get pregnant more easily. Predictable timing of your period (meaning that the time between the first day of one period and the first day of the next is consistent) usually means you will find it easier to get pregnant than someone who’s periods are very irregular in their frequency. Never rely on the timing of your cycle or having a light flow to prevent pregnancy. Always use protection!

This is a very commonly wondered/asked question! 

As with most things, the answer varies from woman to woman, cycle to cycle. In general, a woman can bleed from around four tablespoons to as much as a cup of blood per cycle!

In short, the answer to this varies from woman to woman. 

There are no definitive studies that suggest women, on average, report orgasming to be easier or more difficult during menstruation. What we DO know is there is a trend between menstrual hormones and feeling hornier during that time of the month (yow!)... but as far as achieving orgasm goes, that’s super variable. 

Because the female orgasm, on AVERAGE, tends to incorporate broader portions of the brain than the male orgasm (check out this awesome podcast on “How Orgasms Work,” which explains this phenomenon), it’s very possible that if a woman is more self conscious due to the fact that she is on her period, that she will find it more difficult to climax. The same goes for a guy who is self conscious who is trying to climax.

So long as we’re chatting about orgasms and periods, though, we thought this little fact was interesting:

Orgasms are affected by a woman’s menstrual cycle. Researchers at Yale report that when a woman is not menstruating, her orgasms during intercourse produce traveling wave-like uterine contractions that can suck semen into the uterus. By contrast, during menstruation, orgasms produce uterine contractions that travel in the opposite direction, which pushes debris out of the uterus instead of sucking inward.c

c Komisaruk, Barry R., et al. 2010. The Orgasm Answer Guide. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Amazing question!!

We found this great article by Slate about precisely this question. 

The main reasons why yoga teachers tell menstruating women not to invert, in short, are: apana and Endometriosis: 

According to yogic tradition, your body’s energy during your period is apana, or flowing downward, and it’s better not to mess with that by swinging your feet over your head. Fair enough. But screwed-up apana isn’t a medical condition. Endometriosis is.

At the way bottom of this entry you’ll find a Yoga Journal entry about apana, but first: what is Endometriosis?? 

Endometriosis is a condition in which cells resembling those in your uterine lining (the stuff you shed during your period) start growing outside your uterus, creating lesions that often lead to excruciating pain and sometimes even infertility. Endometriosis lesions can pop up pretty much anywhere in the abdomen, but some locations are more common than others, such as on the outside of the ovaries, the intestines, and the bladder. More rarely, lesions can appear on the diaphragm and even the lungs.

Some folks have thought Endometriosis can be caused by inverting the menstruating body because it might lead to “retrograde menstruation” (where the period flows up and out of the fallopian tubes instead of down and out of the vagina). But that’s a myth:

...retrograde menstruation is far from being the conclusive cause of endometriosis. Lesions have been observed in places where rogue menstrual blood definitely cannot reach, like the skin, the brain, and even the eye. Very occasionally, the disease shows up in men who have received estrogen treatments after prostate surgery.

According to a study conducted in 1984, 90% of menstruating women had “menstrual blood” floating around their other pelvic organs. “That means almost all women who get periods experience retrograde menstruation.”

So inversion probably has nothing to do with the endometriosis part. And women who already have endometriosis also don’t need to worry about inversions, according to--

Robert Taylor, a reproductive biologist at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. Menstrual blood doesn’t “fall out of the uterus” due to gravity, he says. It’s pushed out by uterine contractions. Because turning upside-down has no effect on those contractions, inversions won’t change the direction of your flow or increase the amount of retrograde menstruation you experience, he says. In other words, standing on your head, hands, or shoulders is no riskier than standing on your feet, sitting on your butt, lying on your back, or any other position you want to assume during your period.

As far as the apana part of this equation is concerned, here’s an Yoga Journal article that might be worth checking out, but there seem to be no conclusive, controlled experiments to prove/disprove drawbacks to inversions in the yogic world. 

Photo by Rupi Kaur.

YES! It is perfectly OK, safe, and natural to have sex while menstruating! In fact, some people find sex more pleasurable during menstruation because of a heightened levels of hormones.

BUT – and this is very important – you/your partner can STILL get pregnant while menstruating, so be sure to wear protection and/or use birth control!

If you’re worried about making a mess, you’re not alone! Many of us keep an old towel around to put underneath us during sex on our period, or we have more shower-sex during that time of the month :)

We received this great question earlier today and did some research/digging to find the answer. 

First thing’s first -- yes, menstruation and menarche (first period) can feel traumatic/scary (after all -- blood usually = danger/bad things) -- but hopefully by talking about it more it’ll be less so. 

Ok, onto the question at hand!

Everyone is different -- so some 12 year olds are more/less mature than others (just like some 14, 18, 30, or 65 year olds are more/less mature!). Why one young woman starts her period before another is a result of many factors, both biological (in her body) and environmental (outside of her body). 

Your genetics can lead you to menstruate at a certain time, but so can your stress level, diet, and your home life.

For those who are interested in a headier answer, we found this interesting article on the topic in Psychology Today:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-stone-age-mind/201202/why-are-girls-getting-their-periods-so-young

The article states,

“When parental care is inconsistent, less sensitive, and more emotionally negative, children will develop insecure attachments and opportunistic mating strategies. This, researchers argue, translates to earlier onset of puberty and menarche (Belsky et al., 1991).”

...

“The theory suggests that when Dad's not around, menarche is brought on by way of bio-signals that tell the body, ‘This is an unstable environment,’ or ‘There's a shortage of males in the population.' In these scenarios, the evolutionary brain sees survival as less likely, and therefore speeds up the sexual maturation process.”

...

“...recent research has shown that the presence of a stepfather does accelerate menarche (Ellis, 2004; Ellis & Garber, 2000). But interestingly enough, the conclusion is reversed in girls who have supportive and invested stepfathers (Jaffee et al., 2003). “

...

“Girls who had insecure attachments to their mother achieved menarche earlier than girls who had secure attachments (Belsky, Houts, & Fearon, 2010). ...if Mom is harsh, then it would be in a girl’s evolutionary interest to mature faster. This way, she could find a mate that would take care of her.”

But, again, it could simply be a genetic thing, so don’t start drawing conclusions about the state of a young woman’s home/parenting based on when she experienced menarche! 

When asked the same question our MD expert offered, “Unless having a later period confers some sort of survival benefit, there is no reason why evolution would select for it. Furthermore, Evolution happens on such a long time scale that it would probably be thousands of years before a significant change would happen.”