Welcome back to the sixth episode of Hello Uterus! In today's episode, we cover a common question regarding PMS. Are your symptoms really normal? We also dive into how you should really be medicating for these symptoms. Join us next Tuesday for more!
Welcome back to the sixth episode of Hello Uterus! Hope you’re hungry! In today’s episode, we look at an amazing new product from Intimina, a menstrual cup company out of Sweden. You’ll be opening your wallet and mouth for this one!
In this week's Hear Me! Hear Me! Q & A segment, we address one of the most common questions regarding the normality of PMS symptoms. Is this normal or is it dysmenorrhea? Could these words sound any weirder? Wait for the prostaglandins! Get these words down and you could find your way to a possible diagnosis!
We’ll also cover how to take care of your symptoms when it comes to medicating. Not all doctors properly prescribe pain meds, and your liver is the one to suffer! Learn how to double-check your medication doses to keep you and your body happy and pain-free.
We end on a high note in the cutest way possible. Find out which endangered species is welcoming a brand new pup to their family! How adorable!
Join us back here every Tuesday for all things uterus, in service to you, uterinekind.
Carol:
If someone told me I would end my neverending periods by eating my uterus, I would have said past the pepper. But instead, we've got breakfast with intention. We are here to hear your pain and WTF are prostaglandins? I'm your host, Carol Johnson, and this is Hello, Uterus.
Breakfast time. Breakfast time. Everybody gather around the table. Come on, come on, get close, get close. Here, have some cereal. And then watch their face when they look at the box and think, oh, this is cute. You just wrapped a box in normal cereal. It's going to be like crunch berries, right? Well, kinda. Kinda like Crunch berries, but not exactly, but similar in name. It's called Period Crunch. That's what it's called. And I am for this. I am so for this Uterus shaped cereal for those mornings when you want to eat it or you want others to eat it for you, because that's an option. It's such a great idea, though. The Menstrual Cup brand came up with this concept to launch Period Crunch in order to bust the taboo around talking about periods and Uterine conditions and the Uterus itself, for goodness sake. And get this, it was inspired when their research showed that 82% of people cannot correctly identify where the Uterus is. 82% of people. Now, let's say 50% of that is guys. They're not going to know. Lock that right off the top. I don't do math, but that leaves you with a lot of people that don't know where the Uterus is. And some of them have one. We've talked about this before in our inaugural episode. We actually did a whole review of the uterus. And I'm going to be a little repetitive because I think it's important. We have a lot on our minds and we can't keep all of this information. And sometimes you just have to be reminded. We'll talk a little bit about the size, but the size in the cereal, they're little. They're like little raspberry-flavored, tiny uteruses. And, you know, that's going to turn that milk red, which is so great. I'm sure it's not gluten-free, so I can't partake. But I'm going to get this for my kids because they will love it. They'll think it's fantastic. And I'm sure they're going to learn from what's on the box. On the box, they have conversation prompts and a diagram the anatomy of where the Uterus is. I pretty much guarantee you it shows that the uterus has like a giant, huge cavity. And we all know that that's not the case. But anyway, that's fantastic. When I was growing up, we ate a ton of cereal. Cereal is huge. In our house, it was eight kids. There'd be like five boxes of cereal and three half gallons of milk or gallons. The big jugs gallons and five brothers, right? So by the time I got down, like no cereal left. But in this case, if I had Period Crunch, I can guarantee you. I can guarantee you that not one of those guys would have eaten that cereal at all, and it would have been all mine. Too late for me, but not too late for you. So get yourself some period crunch. I don't know where you buy it, but really just a giant round of applause for Intimina, for coming up with this and more, please. Like, we need more of this, more normalizing conversations around periods, which is part of the reason why hello, uterus is here. So before we head off into today's podcast, let's just do a little reset on where the uterus is. It's not a mystery. The one thing about the Uterus that we can definitively tell you is where it is. It doesn't travel like they used to think back in 1500, 1800s, probably six weeks ago in some places, that wherever the woman was feeling hysterical in her head or wherever the uterus traveled there. Now that would be pretty amazing. We're amazing enough as it is, but that would have been like over the top amazing. But it can't travel because it is jampacked in your lower pelvic region, below the stomach area, in between your pelvic bones, your hip bones. It's tiny. I mean, it's really freaking small. It is only three inches tall. The nonpregnant uterus three inches. Put your forefinger and your thumb up in the air and estimate three inches. That is the size of your non-pregnant uterus. It's only two inches wide. They are like candy bars bigger than your uterus. It's thickness one inch. And that inch is really two walls of the uterus, each measuring a half an inch in a three-inch by two, inch by one-inch organ that is as dense and hard as your calf muscle. You can have conditions that distort that so that it's the size of a melon. And I'm not talking about, like, being pregnant as a condition. When you're pregnant, the walls of your uterus, the structure, it thins, the hormones allow it to thin. But in the case of a non-pregnant uterus, it's that hard muscle. And so it could be the size of a cantaloupe. It did not naturally get that large. It's that large because of things like fibroids. And we want the 82% of people who can't identify where it is to understand where it is because it impacts your ability to connect the dots on symptoms, which helps you navigate the minefield that is getting uterine conditions diagnosed. So just an easy thing to remember. 3213 inches tall by two inches wide by one inch thick. And it is smushed in between your rectum. Your bladder and the intestines are on top of it. And it sort of leans over your bladder like a little umbrella. That's your uterus teeny, teeny tiny. Not as small as period crunch, but I think they did its service there by not making it giant. So just knowing where it is is helpful knowing how it operates. Even more helpful, we're here to help you do that. Which brings me to a conversation around pain. And this week's Hear me, hear me, which comes from pain in the everywhere I hear you, I see you. And her question is what is normal when it comes to PMS? I've heard this question hundreds of times in interviews and research that we've done around chronic conditions involving the uterus. Everyone's experience of PMS is different, and it's conditioned by the way they've been raised to express themselves around pain or maybe periods weren't talked about in the family, so it wasn't common to discuss what your feelings are. You just dealt with it because it was supposedly normal. It's a really, really difficult question to answer. What is normal when it comes to PMS? But there are distinctions between free menstrual syndrome and a problematic period. So what's normal? You're going to laugh when I tell you what's normal? Because I think if you're listening to this podcast, you probably are experiencing things that are not normal with your uterus. And when I tell you what a normal period is, you're going to be like, who has that? That's the person who uses the slim tampon, I'm sure. So normal PMS, although there isn't a definitive it's subjective, I guess it's stuff like some bloating. Your pants don't fit, you've got cramps in your pelvic area in the two ish days before your period, and then they start to diminish almost straight away when your period starts to flow. And by the second day they should pretty much be gone. You might feel a little bit off, but you're functioning without any herculean efforts. Your protection tampons, menstrual cups. Those things are doing their job. You're not having to change them every hour and a half, 2 hours. They can actually stand the test of some time. You're generally not leading out. You might once in a while on an overnight, but it's about five to seven days of a period, and really two, three or four days can be a little bit uncomfortable. And I'd say that's probably a normal PMS, but if you aren't able to function normally during your period, you have a case for being diagnosed and treated. What does not normal look like? You're in your bed for one day. Your period shouldn't let you out in bed for a day. You are in bed for multiple days. You are unable to think clearly. You are experiencing reactions to hormone fluctuations in your body. Some people have a lot of bouts of crying and anger or anxiety, things like that. That's not stuff that's just fake up in your head or whatever that is part of experiencing your period. We shove down a lot of stuff in order to function normally on a regular basis, but we should probably do an episode on what is normal functioning in today's society because I have lost sight of it. So Pain in the Everywhere, I would recommend that you start keeping a Journal, put a little notepad by your bed, and start just tracking it. Two sentences at the end of every day about your pain level, your emotional well being, if it's during your period, what your period is like, and keep a Journal for 30 days or so and longer. Honestly, ongoing forever is a great idea so that you can get a handle on what's actually happening. Because my bet is, as I said before, we diminish and minimize so much, see what's happening. And then if it's not normal, then you need to go to a doctor and tell them about your symptoms. And I almost would separate it from your period. I would talk about this as pain because it seems like if you introduce period out of the gate, foggy, white noise enters the room and the doctor is like, here's some birth control pills. You're like, oh, boy, OK, we're not going to do this anymore. If you are experiencing tremendous pain, then I'd say, doctor, I'm in tremendous pain and I need to understand what's causing it. It is affecting all aspects of my life, and I know that's not normal. Will you help me get a diagnosis and see where that goes? And if they're not willing to do that, then you find someone else. And we will. In upcoming episodes, we're going to have patient, experienced people come on to give you super detailed information about how to get the wheels of the healthcare system to turn in your favor. So definitely come back for that. But your question, Pain in the Everywhere, leads me to today's topic that I want to talk about, which is Dysmenorrhea. We've got a fun little hormonal chemically thing to learn about that the body does totally wild. We'll be right back with that.
Participant #1:
According to the National Library of Medicine, PMS is a clustering of symptoms that occur between two and twelve days before the onset of your period and resolve within the first 24 hours of flow. Two and twelve days. Can we just pause on that for a second? Twelve days before the start of your period? And if your period is seven days long, that's 19 days. Oh, my gosh. Okay, so that is what it is. Definitely that kind of PMS not as bad as what we're about to talk about. Dysmenorrhea is a clustering of symptoms that occurs one to two days before your period and diminishes within two to four days into the flow. My first question is what if your flow is like 14 days long? Does that mean then that Dysmenorrhea is extended by that? So if they're saying two days into your flow because you have a five day period, if you have 14 day period, does that mean it lasts for six days into your flow? We don't know. Right. Because probably there's no research. But dismantler is what may be happening if you're having a period that does not seem to be the norm. And there are two different types of dysmenorrhea. There's primary dysmenor and secondary dysmenorrhea. Primary dysmenorrhea. There is no cause to the dysmenorrhea beyond the normal functioning of the uterus during the menstrual cycle. I mean, there is a cause. We're going to get into it. But I want to make a distinction between secondary secondary Menara is caused by things like endometriosis, uterine fibroids, adenomyosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, these types of conditions that are diagnosable, that we treat it as their own. Right. We're going to put those aside for a second and go back to primary dysenterea. There's no structural cause to this in the sense that you can't point to a fibroid. There is a chemical cause, though, and it's cool in many ways. In many ways, it sucks, but it's cool in many ways. Primary dysmenorrhea is that cramping pain, that really painful pain that happens before, during and in some cases after the period. This pain is caused by these natural chemicals called prostaglandins that are made in the lining of the uterus. They're like hormones, but they're not secreted by a gland, but they act like hormones in that they affect a change in your body. And they come to places that are injured. They show up like if you have a cut or a vein wound or something, they show up there because they can plot that area. But what's wild is they can do one thing and the opposite of it. They're like humans. They can clot blood, but they can also cause bleeding. They can cause things to contract and release, like the cramping in your uterus. And that's actually what is causing those really bad cramps. Well, what causes all the cramps? But when you are having dysmenorrhea and you've got super bad cramps, it means that you're producing an excess of these little Goblin like creatures. Your typical run of the mill PMS is like, oh, God, I don't feel good. My stomach hurts. But you got some prostagland in action going on there. When it's really bad, it means that you've got a lot more of them. They hang around areas that are inflamed, like the lining of your uterus right before your period. And in the uterus, the contractions that they are able to cause help the uterus to expel the endometrium the lining of your uterus. That's what you shed each month during your period. That's pretty wild. I mean, this one little thing, and they're in if they're not just in the uterus, they're everywhere in your body. They're super cool. And I can't wait to have an expert on we're not going to have an expert this week because it's graduation and it was Memorial Day weekend. All of those researchers and scientists, they're busy. So we didn't hassle them this week, but we will talk to them about this because I want to know more. And also the research is not fully in on what they do and what they're capable of doing. So that goes for pretty much everything. I just want to say, but get this, this is the part that blew my mind. Nobody tells you this. How many times have you been like, wow, it's so weird that I'm either constipated or I have really loose bowels around my period. And why does that happen? That used to be a signal to me. Prostaglandins stimulate the smooth muscles in your uterus. That's how it helps it contract. Well, if your body produces more of these little goblins than it needs, they'll enter your bloodstream and go have a party and the rest of your body and have a similar effect on other smooth muscles in your body, like your bowels. The result is more poop. More pooping. By prostaglandins, I'm telling you, the uterus gets the worst wrap. We think it's the uterus. And it's like, no, it's the 52 million other things that are problematic that are causing the issues. And in this case, we just unmasked one that's been hiding for decades because I'm pretty sure not a lot of people know this. Just think about this for a second. The prostaglandins show up when there's inflammation or bleeding or things that it needs to repair. And in the case of the uterus, it helps the uterus contract and shed the endometrium. So then I also learned this little tidbit today that the more estrogen based foods you consume, the more likely your uterine lining becomes abnormally thick. And as a result, when it begins to break down during the menstrual cycle because it's abnormally thick, it's going to create more pro. Stag Landons, if you need more, you will make more. This is going to increase your pain level. So when people say, you got to look at your diet, too, you do have to look at your diet, but it should never be in that like, what are you eating? You bad human. Cut that out. There's not enough education on foods and how it affects us starting at a super young age. Right. We're not going to solve all those problems today. I just wanted to point out to you that you can have an impact on the pain that you're experiencing beyond having to take pain meds and understanding these prostaglandins, that really helps to connect the dots. Understanding prostaglandins is going to be a game changer in how we view our periods, and we're going to get more into this. I promise. That's just a quick little introduction to when it's beyond PMS. It may be dysmenorrhea, and if it's dysentorea, a lot of the pain can be caused by an increase in prostaglandin. And what can you possibly do about that? Well, one thing that's within your power is to maybe eat less estrogen based foods, which are things like cauliflower, broccoli. It's a lot of healthy stuff. It's not like permission to go to have, like, a bakery free for all, but maybe give it a shot, see if it works. It's better than what we're about to talk about quickly, which is how you pain relieve your way through this. So just as a reminder, secondary cause is really important. We will be getting into all of these in greater detail. We've already talked about uterine fibroids endometriosis. If you didn't listen to Dr. Christine Metz's interview last week's episode and the after show on endometriosis, please go listen to that episode. It is mind blowing. The secondary causes will continue to cover. But what if there are no secondary causes? Maybe you're in a situation where the doctor is not hearing you and suggests the pain is in your head. Oftentimes what they will say is take pain relievers. I'm not anti pain reliever. I don't know anybody that's anti pain reliever, but what I am is pro liver. We want to make sure that you're not overmedicating on pain relievers. So just a reminder, this is a little trick that I learned. When you want to get the straight scoop on a drug that you are taking and whether it's Motrin or some other drug, you can do a Google search with the drug name and these two words. Well, one is an acronym drug name plus FDA labeling. And the first link that will come up is the actual label that the FDA created for that drug. It's really important to check those out because oftentimes you'll be given pain relievers and they'll just tell you how often to take them. Sometimes you're told to take them more often than the FDA recommends. That's not a good idea. There's evidence of that happening in other areas with things like medicine for acid reflux and such, where people are taking them under a doctor's guidance at doses that are higher and for durations that are longer than the FDA recommends. So what does the FDA recommend for Dysmenorrhea? Because you need to take some pain relievers for that. They can be like labor cramps. Seriously, don't feel bad that you have to medicate that. I want you to know what the rules are around it. First of all, always the FDA recommends use the lowest dosage for the shortest amount of time. That's your guiding principle. I'm going to take as little as I need to get relief for the shortest amount of time possible. So you don't medicate through yourself through all of the pain, medicate yourself through the amount of pain that you can while safely taking whatever it is that you're taking. So in the case of Motrin, which is a nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug, Ibuprofen, essentially. And under the labeling for Dysentery, it says for the treatment of Dysenterya, beginning with the earliest onset of such pain, motion tablets should be given in a dose of 400 mg every 4 hours as necessary for the relief of pain. So check yourself. Are you exceeding 400 mg every 4 hours? And how many days are you needing to take this for? If you need to take it for what the FDA would consider Dysmenorrhea. Remember, Dysmenorrhea is the first couple of days before you start bleeding, and then the first day or two after you start bleeding. So that's three to four days. I don't want to be a Downer here and be like, oh, God, now what? Then what is to get a diagnosis. And if it is primary Dysentery, then you have a definitive diagnosis. You know it's not fibroids. You know it's not endometriosis. You know it's not a genomiasis. So now you've got it nailed. You know what it is. And you can start working on solutions that include using pain medicine when necessary. But you have a stronger foundation of tools to use to help yourself get through these time periods. Dysentaria, that's the condition. It has two types, primary and secondary. Secondary has structural causes. Primary is all because of the prostaglandins. It is, in fact, the uterus pain causes. And now, you know, PMS is not just one thing, and it's not just something that you blow off. Don't let anyone dismiss it for you. If they do, tell them you're dismissing my experience. That's not okay. I just want to wrap up on this whole PMS and pain thing by saying being flattened by your period, in bed, in agony, and by agony. I don't mean that you think you're going to die. I mean that you feel like crap. You don't have to go more than that. You don't have to be on death's door to get treated. Pain relievers are not miracle workers. Miracle workers are those physicians who get you diagnosed, and they get you diagnosed quickly. That's a miracle worker. Don't rest all your hope on Motrin. The road to uterine health doesn't begin with birth control and pain meds and ended hysterectomy, the middle taken up by you suffering. There are lots of ways in which you can get help. You need an advocate. You need someone in your corner that's walking with you along that path. And I hope that we can fulfill that role for you. So we're going to come right back with ending on a high note.
Score one point for the red Wolf of Eastern North Carolina. We just had a birth. A little baby red Wolf was born at Roger Williams Park Zoo. And get this, there are only about 15 red Wolves in existence in the world. I can't even comprehend this. If you were a little baby and you grew up and you recognize that there was only 15 of you, like if there were only 15 humans on the planet, that's just nuts. This Wolf almost went extinct largely due to hunting. Can we stop doing that? Can we stop shooting red Wolf? Anyway, this little baby, his mother's name is Brave, and his dad's name is Diego. Dad is back out in the wild. So they go into the wild. They get a female and a male Wolf and they breed them. And as a result, they've been able to save this species. What a fantastic program. The red Wolf species survival plan. Breed them, ensure a healthy birth, release the male Wolf out into the wild. The female Wolf and pup stay in a healthy environment where they're taken care of. They're receiving excellent support and care as they recover from birth. I think we can learn a lot from this actually. And now we have one more red Wolf out in the world. So Roger Williams Park Zoo ultimately the baby will be out in the wild too and then we'll get more red Wolves. That's really awesome. That's our ending on a high note. I love it when we save a species. So thank you for spending this time with me to learn all about prostaglandin. I'm so immature. I can't say the word without laughing. I don't know. It's just so bad. Anyway, we learned a lot about them. Period. Pain how to keep an eye on your Med dosing. Remember Google the drug name and FDA labeling and you'll get the straight scoop. Thank you, Angel for producing the hell out of this podcast. You make us sound great and thank you to everyone back at UrbanKind for all the work you're doing behind the scenes to build a comprehensive platform for people seeking uterine care. And thank you everyone for listening for sending in your questions to hear me. Hear me. We have a stock of questions to get through. Please email hello at hello. Uterus.com your questions and we'll get them answered by experts. Also visit hello. Uterus.com to check out our blog. We'll be back next week. A sneak peek at our upcoming episodes include endocrine, disrupting chemicals, medical gas, lighting, navigating an end to diagnosis and more. So till then, be informed, be well and thank you for listening.