How To Help Heavy Menstrual Bleeding

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How To Help Heavy Menstrual Bleeding

Heavy menstrual bleeding is known as menorrhagia. There are several underlying conditions which may cause menorrhagia including fibroids, endometriosis, pelvic infection, under active thyroid, blood clotting disorders, insulin resistance and estrogen dominance. These should be investigated by your doctor.

How heavy should menstrual bleeding be?

In a normal menstrual period, you should not lose more than 2.7 oz of blood over all the days you bleed. That’s around 5 and a half tablespoons. It doesn’t seem like much. Heavy menstrual bleeding can occur at any time in a menstruating woman’s life but is most common during the teenage years and the 40s. They are both times when progesterone production is low compared to estrogen. In general, progesterone helps to make periods lighter while estrogen makes them heavier.

The biggest problem with heavy menstrual bleeding is the iron deficiency it almost always causes. For most women, it’s impossible to compensate for the heavy loss of iron through diet. This is especially the case in teenage girls who are often averse to eating red meat. In a woman’s late 40s, she has simply been menstruating for so many years, and may have had children and breast fed, so her loss of iron over the years is more than can be replaced through diet. An iron supplement or iron infusion is usually necessary.

Natural remedies to ease heavy menstrual bleeding

The solution depends on what is causing the heavy bleeding. It may be one or more of the following:

Under active thyroid gland. Apart from causing heavy menstrual bleeding, this condition can cause irregular periods. It can inhibit ovulation, and if ovulation doesn’t occur, progesterone cannot be produced. There is a great deal of helpful information in our book Your Thyroid Problems Solved.
Nutrient deficiencies can cause heavy bleeding, especially of iron and zinc. Having heavy menstrual bleeding will usually cause iron deficiency, but being iron deficient also makes the period heavier. A good quality iron supplement that doesn’t cause digestive discomfort or constipation, or an iron infusion can be an excellent solution. Zinc deficiency can cause heavy bleeding and many of our female patients are deficient because zinc is mostly found in red meat and seafood. A high fiber diet can bind with zinc in the intestines and prevent its absorption. Correcting zinc deficiency helps to lower prostaglandin levels, and this can also reduce period pain. Magnesium may help relieve muscle cramps and premenstrual tension.
Insufficient progesterone. Women with polycystic ovarian syndrome are typically low in progesterone because they don’t ovulate each month. Uterine fibroids, endometriosis and adenomyosis are all conditions that are typically downstream manifestations of progesterone deficiency, and once present can make uterine bleeding worse. Mild progesterone deficiency in young women can sometimes be corrected through correcting nutrient deficiencies, reducing stress and cleansing the gut and liver (because not excreting estrogen thoroughly causes it to build up and create estrogen dominance). In perimenopausal women, flooding can happen where women lose up to 8.4 oz of blood in one period. Anything more than mild progesterone deficiency requires use of bio-identical progesterone cream or capsules. This corrects the imbalance with estrogen and progesterone also has anti inflammatory properties.
Dairy products make menstrual bleeding heavier for many women. This is because the protein (casein) in milk can increase the production of inflammatory chemicals and histamine for some women. Mast cells of the uterine lining release histamine as well as heparin, which is a natural blood thinner and can make menstruation heavier. Even without knowing this, through personal experience many of our patients have found when they stop consuming dairy products, their period gets lighter. It may take 2 or 3 cycles to notice the change.
Insulin resistance is a common cause of heavy menstrual bleeding. This is especially the case in women with PCOS and those with a family member who has type 2 diabetes. It is also more common in perimenopausal women because the older we get, the poorer our tolerance for carbohydrate and the more insulin we need to secrete to control blood sugar. Insulin is a growth promoting hormone. There are only two times in life you’re supposed to be insulin resistant: 1) while a child and teenager and growing rapidly and 2) if pregnant, to encourage growth of the fetus. Insulin resistance causes abnormally high blood levels of insulin and that causes the uterine lining to over grow. This can cause heavy menstrual blood loss and clots. The cure for insulin resistance is a lower carbohydrate diet, less inflammation and stress and better sleep. There is lots of helpful information in our books I Can’t Lose Weight and I Don’t Know Why and Diabetes Type 2: You Can Reverse It.