'Suddenly' my period stopped

This was a very real experience for me in 2021 while I was living in Singapore. My cycle was always like clockwork- 28 days on the dot with 4-5 days worth of bleeding, when suddenly my period stopped for 3 months.

At the time I couldn’t understand why my period had stopped. In hindsight I realise that menstruation doesn’t suddenly stop, like most things in the body there is usually a lead up that goes unnoticed that creates a bigger event that cannot go unnoticed. In this case for me it was the lack of my period for 3 months.

So why do periods sometimes stop?

Amenorrhoea = the absence of having a menstrual cycle in childbearing age. To be more specific the type of amenorrhea that will be discussed here is secondary- a women that has already been having a menstrual cycle which suddenly stops for a duration of 3+ months.

The cyclic flow of your menstrual cycle and thus overall fertility is a key sign in the health of your body. This is easily demonstrated when we are following our menstrual cycle closely. We start to notice differences month to month in the length of our cycle, the colour of our bleed, our cervical mucus as well as our fertility window. When we follow this consistently we start to notice the ebbs and flows of our cycle and how fluid they are to change depending on what is happening in our lives and how we choose to live.

You see, our ability to menstruate is a beautiful integration of biophysical and biochemical information inside our body. A concoction of hormonal signals, receptor cells and automatic responses within us.

So the absence of a menstrual cycle or even changes to your menstrual cycle is a sign of an underlying imbalance, disorder, or dis-ease- rather than a disease itself.

The most common causes to changes outside of peri and menopause are stress, poor eating habits, excess exercising and poor sleep quality ( or a combination of a few of these things). Occasionally however there could be something underlying that may be causing your changes in which case you will usually notice other changes or symptoms in your body along side the absence of your bleed. Below the table goes into more detail about some of these conditions.

In less mainstream circles of medicine amenorrhea is described as a cold and atonic condition. Stagnation and congestion of chi (lifeforce energy) occurs. On an anatomical level blood flow to and from the uterus stagnates which creates a loss of tone in the strong muscle of the uterus (atonia) but also on the energy of the organ as a whole.

This is true of all organs in the body but I believe it to be especially of the uterus as it is a portal for creation, the capability of birthing soul into the world whether that be a new life or a project!

On an energetic perspective many conditions of the uterus ( but not all) are a reflection of a deep suppression of some aspect of the spirit of that women, and a deep reflection into her mental and emotional body’s.

When a suppression of a Womens spirit occurs, this you feel in your body. It shows up as dis-ease, pain, inflammation throwing the physical body out of balance. 
Soul energy is flowing and expansive.
It spills out orbing around you and spanning larger than the physical confines of your physical body. And when you get too into your human conditioning and forget the luminous power of your soul and spirit you compress your soul and spirit into your physical being stagnating the beautiful flow of our natural energy and the beauty it can bring you in life.

So what was going on for me back in 2021? A beautiful cocktail of anxiety, feeling less than, imposter syndrome, rejection, abandonment, excess exercise, and warden like calorie control all of which which led to an undiagnosed but mildly symptomatic hypothyroid issue and cortisol face! Except the anxiety and stress I was feeling also pushed me into a very un-resourced state where my choice of management was to ‘just see how it goes’.

Funny because as a health practitioner and one that now moves in the realms of female health and energy work, there is a tiny part of me that feels some shame in writing that. And an un-resourced state is exactly that- its a space that many women get into when there is an overwhelm and without first handling this it can sometime be challenging to deal with the rest!

My bleed did return after 3 months and resumed its usual 28 day cycle but what could have happened differently??

1. Blood testing- Getting my labs to see exactly what was going on a biochemical

2. Nutrition- increasing the calories and more importantly eating food to support my hormones and nervous system (will be in another article in more depth) as well as my uterus.

3. Uterual warmth- because amenorrhea is considered cold and atonic, drinking the right tea blends to provide tonification and warmth to the uterus.

4. Mental and mindset- Nervine and adaptogenic teas and tonics to help with anxiety and high cortisol in the body. As well as the right support to unpack some of what was happening at the time.

5. Exercise- less Hiit based high intensity workouts and introducing something more down-regulating to help stimulate my parasympathetic

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   For many people health has to be something complicated- in fact in the past in my research when looking at tools or skills to learn that can improve my basic health I’ve caught myself wondering how something so simple can be effective. Of course if your condition is chronic there may be deeper threads that need to be worked on to create balance in the body and therefore health, but essentially it is about unlearning the habits that we picked up to get us there in the first place and putting into its place something that will have an effect on our system on a deeper level.

Neriman