Women are becoming more comfortable, open and direct about discussing issues related to menstruation, and the medical community is answering by devising new treatments.
What is Menorrhagia?
Menorrhagia is the medical term for heavy periods, but an increase in period blood is only one of the symptoms. Women suffering from menorrhagia actually experience an amplification of the entire menstrual period. Cramps and mood swings tend to be more severe, and the duration of the period is longer than average. Clotting is larger and occurs more frequently.
Women with this disorder have found their experience compounded by the fact that menstruation is something not openly discussed. Heavy periods, for example, make many women physically unable to attend work for one to three days every single month. Explaining the situation to a male — or even female — supervisor, however, is something most are not comfortable doing.
How are Heavy Periods Treated?
In some cases, menorrhagia exists as a solitary issue. Other times, though, an underlying condition may actually precipitate heavy periods. Cysts and polyps on the reproductive organs, as well as endometriosis and pelvic inflammatory disease, are the most common conditions in this category. For women whose heavy periods are caused by an outside issue, treatment of the underlying condition is generally effective.
When there is no hidden culprit, doctors can still treat the menorrhagia itself using a couple of different methods. Certain hormone-based contraception methods can be quite effective at regulating periods. For women who would prefer to avoid contraceptives, a medication known as tranexamic acid may be prescribed. This medication works by encouraging clotting when taken during the early days of menstruation.
Another surprising alternative a doctor may recommend is the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. This treatment tends to be slightly less effective than others, but is more accessible with fewer side effects, and has the benefit of pain relieving properties. Other non-invasive methods involve synthesized hormones taken as either injections or pills, but these may cause unpleasant side effects, and are not the first choice of most medical providers.
Outside of medications, one particular treatment that is growing in popularity is called NovaSure endometrial ablation. While the procedure is not recommended for women who wish to have more children, for menorrhagia sufferers with no future pregnancy plans, endometrial ablation has shown a 90% success rate.
The procedure takes about five minutes and is usually done with only local anesthesia. Essentially, the lining of the uterus is destroyed, inhibiting the blood flow of heavy periods without interfering with hormone production. Some women find that after undergoing the NovaSure procedure their periods go away altogether. In a small number of cases, a second procedure may be required though.
Some of the treatments listed here have been around for decades. It simply took a while for society to get comfortable talking about them. Others, like endometrial ablation, were only recently made possible by new technology and research.
If women want information about these treatments to become more common knowledge, though, and especially if medical science is going to continue researching new treatments, the discussion must be had openly, without whispers and euphemisms. Menorrhagia can severely interfere with your life, so don’t let outdated taboos keep you from seeking treatment for your heavy periods.
0 comments:
Post a Comment