Period Health
Acupuncture For Easing Painful Periods
Acupuncture is well known for easing pain such as lower back pain and headaches, but it is not well known for its benefits for period health. At some point in a woman’s life, she may experience one, or many painful periods, requiring her to take time off from work, school, or other aspects of life; so she can lie in bed with a heat pack, ice cream, a pack of Midol, and may some tears. Other times, she may have to push through the discomfort pain of her period to carry on with the many responsibilities of life such as raising children, running a business, or attending classes.
Painful periods may be a regular experience, but life goes on-right? Well, eventually those series of painful periods take a toll on the body, mind, and emotions. Maybe those early years of painful periods motivated her to go on birth control to catch a break, but now she is ready to start a family and finds out her endometriosis is causing her infertility. Whether painful periods are interfering with high school attendance, ability to conceive, the ability to go to work, to play with your children on the floor-Acupuncture is the answer to easing painful periods, improving period health, and helping you get back to living the your life.
Painful periods are known as Dysmenorrhea, which is different from the symptoms of PMS, Premenstrual Syndrome. There are 2 types of Dysmenorrhea: Primary Dysmenorrhea and Secondary Dysmenorrhea. Primary Dysmenorrhea are painful cramps not caused by another condition, while Secondary Dysmenorrhea are a symptom and result of another condition such as Endometriosis, or Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID). Either way, both produce painful cramping that is debilitating for women. The cramping are “colicky spasms of pain in the suprapubic area — occurring within 8–72 hours of menstruation, and the pain usually peaks with the increase in menstrual flow during the first few days of a woman's menstrual cycle. In addition to painful cramps, many women with primary dysmenorrhea experience other menstrual-related symptoms, including back and thigh pain, headaches, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting." [2]
Painful periods for young women in their teens and early twenties are very common. Most of the time, many brush it off with a Midol, Tylenol, heating pack, or a slap on the shoulder to “suck it up and welcome to womanhood”. This frame of mind does not help those in pain and there are many reasons for painful periods. Luckily, we have seen a shift in women’s medicine and an increase demand for further study, understanding, and respect to experiences women have. The physical and emotional pain caused by cramping is not “all in our heads”. There are many physical causes to severe cramping.
One of the main reasons for cramping are higher levels of “the hormone prostaglandins F2 alpha (PGF2 alpha) in the period blood. When this hormone is released into the bloodstream as the endometrial lining (the tissue we bleed out each month) breaks down, the uterus spasms leading to cramping pain” (1). If a woman is prone to higher stress levels (who does not today?) and eats a poor high-carb, low-fat diet will more likely have levels of the prostaglandins F2 leading to increase cramping (1). The big take away from this is to balancing these hormones through lifestyle choices: nutrition, de-stressing practices, and Acupuncture. Balancing these eicosanoids is the foundation of treating cramping pain alongside providing pain relief.
How can Acupuncture help with Painful Periods and Severe cramping? Acupuncture is part of a complete medical system of Chinese Medicine. Acupuncture can help address symptoms and underlying causes of the painful periods. Studies have shown how Acupuncture can influence the uterus to calm down in its cramping locally and influencing through the mid-brain.
Locally, Acupuncture helps release the tension on the tissues pulling on the uterus, it calms the uterine muscle by increasing blood flow to the area, it releases opioid like hormones for pain relief, directly influences the female hormones of estrogen, progesterone, and more (2). Usually a combination of abdominal points and distal points on the legs will be used to customized a treatment plan for cramping relief. How would acupuncture away from the cramping help? Well, for example: The “acupoint SP6 (Sanyinjiao) may be distal, but it is effective for the treatment of dysmenorrhea, ‘likely due to the fact that SP6 is segmental to the uterus… This segmental activation at the level of sacral spinal nerve 2 (S2) may lead to reflex sympathetic inhibition of the uterus resulting in increased uterine blood flow’ (5).'“ Acupuncture influences the electrical network of the nervous system by working through the interstitial space, the space in between the skin and the muscles. The acupuncture influences the nervous system to either turn on, or off. Each major nerve has a zone it influences. For example, some nerves from the sacrum (tailbone) control muscle movement, nerve feeling, circulation, organ function from the tail bone all the way down to the top of the foot. Acupuncture placed within this zone will influence the local area and the entire zone itself.
Painful periods not only disrupts a women’s quality of life for a time, but may effect her quality of sleep, energy levels, emotional well-being, and relationships. It is important to listen to the body when it is communicating through pain because it will provide insight to what is out of balance. Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture provides a non-drug, safe, and effective option to easing painful periods.
Reference
Northrup, Christine, M.D. “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom”.
3. Ko, J. H., & Kim, S. N. (2018). A Literature Review of Women's Sex Hormone Changes by Acupuncture Treatment: Analysis of Human and Animal Studies. Evidence-based complementary and alt
4. Yang, M., Chen, X., Bo, L., Lao, L., Chen, J., Yu, S., . . . Liang, F. (n.d.). Moxibustion for pain relief in patients with primary dysmenorrhea: A randomized controlled trial.
5. Armour, M., & Smith, C. A. (2016). Treating primary dysmenorrhoea with acupuncture: a narrative review of the relationship between acupuncture ‘dose' and menstrual pain outcomes. Acupuncture in Medicine, 34(6), pg 422.