Extreme period pain

[dust]

Problem:

 

Someone has extreme, excruciating period pains. They vary in degree but more often than not, the pain/discomfort so intense that it causes vomiting & shaking, and the sufferer is bed-ridden for at least some of the day (and night).

 

This has been going on for some years, and neither Western nor Eastern medicine tried thus far has been much help. Acupuncture relieves to some degree.

 

Diet is mostly home-cooked, fresh ingredients, including a variety of 'food groups' -- green & other vegetables, grains, tubers (potato, sweet potato etc), fruit, some dairy, meat, & fish. Possibly more sugary food than most here would recommend (probably equivalent of 1 chocolate bar/day). No alcohol, tobacco, drugs.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks

[soaring crane]

That's terrible :-(

 

My daughter has developed really heavy menstruation issues and we've been giving her this:

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemilla

 

http://www.blessedmaineherbs.com/ourlamaalvu.html

 

(that looks like a really good source for info and herbal products, especially for women

http://www.blessedmaineherbs.com/womensherbs.html )

 

 

in tincture form.

 

It takes a few cycles for it to kick in, and you have to take it consistently, but it does seem to have relieved a lot of her suffering on her last cycle. We're hoping for the best, poor kid.

 

If your friend pratices qigong, there are special techniques for women, one of them being the reverse MCO. But imo these things don't really work beyond a mild placebo effect unless and until the person has considerable experience with the techniques.

[vonkrankenhaus]

Stop eating eggs entirely.

 

Reproductive product of another species effects reproductive organ in human. This is the cause.

 

Pains usually go away within 3 months of stopping eggs.

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[dust]

It takes a few cycles for it to kick in, and you have to take it consistently, but it does seem to have relieved a lot of her suffering on her last cycle. We're hoping for the best, poor kid.

 

Thanks SC.

 

It's my sister, in fact. I will suggest that she looks into Lady's Mantle.

 

 

 

Stop eating eggs entirely.

 

Reproductive product of another species effects reproductive organ in human. This is the cause.

 

Pains usually go away within 3 months of stopping eggs.

 

Thanks VK.

 

I will suggest this too.

 

Is this idea covered in Chinese medicine?

 

 

 

She believes that it has improved slightly since she stopped eating certain nightshades -- tomato, peppers, aubergine/eggplant. I'm not sure this is the case. Any thoughts on this?

[vonkrankenhaus]

Ever meet anyone with "PMS" or severe menstrual cramps who did not eat, ever in life, eggs?

 

I haven't.

 

I learned this by caring about people and asking them about themselves and listening.

 

Yes - nightshades can cause inflammation or make it worse - but they are not cause of severe menstrual cramps - only just adding worse to it.

 

BTW - ever meet anyone who had "chicken pox" who had never in their life eaten chicken eggs or been vaccinated with a vaccine made on chicken egg cell cultures?

 

I have not thus far.

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[dust]

Ever meet anyone with "PMS" or severe menstrual cramps who did not eat, ever in life, eggs?

 

I cannot say I've ever thought about it until today...

 

I'm not sure I know, of all the people I know, who eats eggs and who doesn't.. but I would guess that basically everyone I know, including a couple of vegetarians, eats eggs.

 

Thanks again. I will discuss with her.

[soaring crane]

BTW - ever meet anyone who had "chicken pox" who had never in their life eaten chicken eggs or been vaccinated with a vaccine made on chicken egg cell cultures?

 

I'm trying to get my head around the sentence structure here, but I think logic is getting in the way. 

 

I'm boiling it down to this: Ever met anyone who had chicken pox who had never been vaccinated? I would say everyone who has had chicken pox has never been vaccinated. Are you saying only those who have been vaccinated have later contracted the disease?

[ilumairen]

This is probably not THE answer, but I can speak from experience that it helps. I would also recommend drinking lots of water, and making sure the diet isn't deficient in any vitamins and minerals - taking into account the way said vitamins are processed by the body.

 

http://www.livestrong.com/article/468150-caffeine-and-menstrual-cramps/#page=1

[dust]

Thanks Des. She doesn't drink coffee or black tea, but does eat chocolate fairly regularly I think. Will mention caffeine too.

 

So many possible dietary culprits...

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

-----

"I'm boiling it down to this: Ever met anyone who had chicken pox who had never been vaccinated? I would say everyone who has had chicken pox has never been vaccinated. Are you saying only those who have been vaccinated have later contracted the disease?"

-----

 

I am suggesting that people who have never eaten eggs or chicken, and never been vaccinated with a vaccine made using chicken cells (could be for any disease), will not get "chicken pox".

 

And that it seems to me that everyone I have ever met who developed chicken pox did do these things.

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

Edited November 2, 2015 by vonkrankenhaus

[soaring crane]

And that it seems to me that everyone I have ever met who developed chicken pox did do these things.

 

but that means that the people you've met who have had chicken pox have all been vaccinated against it.

 

Am I understanding that correctly?

[Brian]

but that means that the people you've met who have had chicken pox have all been vaccinated against it.

 

Am I understanding that correctly?

He's not talking about a chicken pox vaccine per se but vaccines made with chicken eggs regardless of the virus targeted.

 

Personally, I think the pool of people who have never eaten anything containing egg or containing chicken and who have never been an egg-containing vaccine seems small. I don't think I know any, anyhow.

 

As I understand it, chicken pox is named such because of the visual resemblance to a plucked bird.

[vonkrankenhaus]

The plucked bird explaination is fake.

 

The older explaination is like that of "cow pox".

 

Think they named cow pox because people who got it look like plucked cows?

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Brian]

The plucked bird explaination is fake.

 

The older explaination is like that of "cow pox".

 

Think they named cow pox because people who got it look like plucked cows?

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

Cow pox is not the same as chicken pox but your point is taken and I've found with a bit of additional digging that the etymology of the name is very uncertain.

 

As an aside, cow pox is like a less severe smallpox and the original smallpox vaccine was actually just cow pox.

[C T]

the herbal remedy most widely used by asian women wrt menstrual problems is Dong Quai 

 

http://bodyecology.com/articles/nine_benefits_of_dong_quai.php

Edited November 2, 2015 by C T

[Brian]

Problem:

 

Someone has extreme, excruciating period pains. They vary in degree but more often than not, the pain/discomfort so intense that it causes vomiting & shaking, and the sufferer is bed-ridden for at least some of the day (and night).

 

This has been going on for some years, and neither Western nor Eastern medicine tried thus far has been much help. Acupuncture relieves to some degree.

 

Diet is mostly home-cooked, fresh ingredients, including a variety of 'food groups' -- green & other vegetables, grains, tubers (potato, sweet potato etc), fruit, some dairy, meat, & fish. Possibly more sugary food than most here would recommend (probably equivalent of 1 chocolate bar/day). No alcohol, tobacco, drugs.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks

The Stillness-Movement system taught by Ya Mu is often very effective with this sort of dis-ease. Don't know where your sister lives but this might be worthwhile exploring.

[thelerner]

If there's not much fat in her diet  perhaps adding some healthy ones- avocado, ghee.. kind of things might be helpful and balancing.  Some bodies need more then others.  

[dust]

Thanks guys. I'm going to list the suggestions so far, for my own clarity and perhaps that of others.

 

 

Tinctures/herbs:

 

- Lady's Mantle, 3x daily, 1-2 weeks prior

 

- Dong quai, 当归 (will ask local acupuncturist)

 

 

Dietary suggestions:

 

- No eggs

 

- No nightshades

 

- No caffeine

 

- More fats

 

 

Qigong/neigong:

 

- Stillness-Movement system as taught by Ya Mu / Michael Lomax

[Bud Jetsun]

The body may deliver sensations.  It is not a requirement for the mind to receive them as pain, this is a choice of fear-filtered interpretation. 

 

Decades of competitive and non-competitive motorcycling and auto racing brought with it the experiences of breaking most limbs, back, neck, ribs etc and cumulatively grinding square feet of skin off my body.  Simple mindfulness can enable perfect comfort and peace with a body offering sensations of broken bones ruptured through the skin.   That said, I've found internal organ sensations  can be substantially more intense than mere broken bones, ligaments and abrasions. 

 

'Pain' and 'pleasure' are sensation, what makes the sensation pleasure is receiving and interpreting it with Love and enjoying it.  This is also a possible choice with 'pain' sensations, to interpret them with Love and enjoy them as pleasure (perhaps a counter-to-survival skill). 

 

As a primary path, perhaps making efforts to cease the unwanted sensations with the many good ideas given above.  For what sensations remain, perhaps share awareness that sensation is as powerful as she makes it through how she chooses to fearfully focus conscious perception upon it, or mindfully recognizing it as another transitory and fleeting sensation. 

 

Unlimited Love,

-Bud

[Taoist Texts]

Problem:

 

Someone has extreme, excruciating period pains. They vary in degree but more often than not, the pain/discomfort so intense that it causes vomiting & shaking, and the sufferer is bed-ridden for at least some of the day (and night). 

 

spleen and liver are the organs that transform food into blood, as such, they are subject to pressure on both ends, the digestive system and the blood circulation system. When these two organs are out of sync  at the time of the menses, the blood backs up in them causing pains. Vomiting is the symptom of internal poisoning by the excess blood. The traditional remedy for that were leeches and bloodletting, nowadays women in Brazil donate blood for the same purpose. If this solution is unpractical, then i would suggest relieving the stress on these two organs from the other end, by fasting 3-4 days before the period, perhaps with laxatives.

[vonkrankenhaus]

Menstruation is the female way of casting off excess contractive and "yang" factors to retain femaleness.

 

So women who eat a lot of meat and animal fat (especially eggs, as mentioned) and salt will have more intense periods with more discharge.

 

Vegetarian women avoiding all animal foods and eating very moderately would have less to deal with in menstruation.

 

The male wayof casting off excess "yin" factors to retain maleness is mainly through external activity, but also in the production and discharge of semen and sperm. Of course, excess production and discharge of these results in loss of kidney yin.

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[soaring crane]

Regarding the meat eaters, I suggest getting TaoMeow involved in this.

 

It occurred to me that I used to know a lot of very athletic women, marathon racers et al. And my sister is very atheltic, as are her two daughters. The effect of sports on menstruation is well-documented, and a cause for concern, too. Women who do a lot of sports very often have very mild periods, or virtually lose them altogether, and that's not a good situation for them.

 

I think the inverse is probably true as well. Women who by their nature have very mild cycles may tend more toward athletics, because of their hormone balance. And they don't get bogged down avery couple of weeks, like my daughter does.

 

So, as a way of alleviating some of the misery and maybe bringing some balance into her life, Dusty's sister could start a sensible exercise regimine?

[dust]

So, as a way of alleviating some of the misery and maybe bringing some balance into her life, Dusty's sister could start a sensible exercise regimine?

 

This is in fact something I've already suggested to her. I think she, as many, gets caught in the idea that diet and medicines are the only thing that affect one's body, and that exercise is a chore; forgetting the fact that man is an animal, we're supposed to move.

 

So yeah, thanks, I will suggest again..

 

 

 

Menstruation is the female way of casting off excess contractive and "yang" factors to retain femaleness.

 

So women who eat a lot of meat and animal fat (especially eggs, as mentioned) and salt will have more intense periods with more discharge.

 

Vegetarian women avoiding all animal foods and eating very moderately would have less to deal with in menstruation.

 

Interestingly, she was vegetarian for nearly a decade, and as far as I'm aware the problem began during this time. She is sure that starting to eat meat again solved some other problems, and I don't think it made the monthly problem worse.

 

Her diet has always contained eggs and cheeses etc. I will suggest she look into eggs and their affects.

 

 

 

spleen and liver are the organs that transform food into blood, as such, they are subject to pressure on both ends, the digestive system and the blood circulation system. When these two organs are out of sync  at the time of the menses, the blood backs up in them causing pains. Vomiting is the symptom of internal poisoning by the excess blood. The traditional remedy for that were leeches and bloodletting, nowadays women in Brazil donate blood for the same purpose. If this solution is unpractical, then i would suggest relieving the stress on these two organs from the other end, by fasting 3-4 days before the period, perhaps with laxatives.

 

I will suggest, though cannot assure that she will be very open to the idea of fasting.

Thanks.

 

 

For what sensations remain, perhaps share awareness that sensation is as powerful as she makes it through how she chooses to fearfully focus conscious perception upon it, or mindfully recognizing it as another transitory and fleeting sensation.

 

Thanks. I'm sure she does her best at this already.

 

I'm also pretty sure that me suggesting anything along these lines will result in severe pain in my abdominal region... (from a swift punch to the gut, if that wasn't clear!)

[C T]

Both my partner and her sister are vegetarians, with eggs being excluded from the latter's diet. My partner works out regularly while her sis (they are both in their late 20s), who is pursuing a masters degree at this time, leads a more sedentary lifestyle. Their menstrual issues are almost identical - occasionally both would experience severe cramps coupled with slightly heavier flows, but this happens maybe twice a year. 

 

When i met my partner about 7 years ago, her alcohol (beers mostly) consumption was quite high, and at that time her menstruations were excruciatingly painful, with a lot similar symptoms to Dusty's sis. Gradually she altered this habit and have since reduced intake by at least 90%, during which time she saw a gradual decrease in her periodic struggles. 

 

I remember being told that women with difficult periods ought to avoid consuming 'cooling' foods and drinks as this tend to exacerbate the condition in a drastic way, and beer is definitely listed as a 'cooling' beverage. Was also told that this same group must avoid 'cooling' fruits, with special emphasis on the avoidance of pineapple, melons, grapes, mangos, longan and lychee. 

 

hth

 

(edit) found this info link on dong quai which is better than the other one i posted earlier (apologies)

http://www.rjwhelan.co.nz/herbs%20A-Z/dongquai.html

Edited November 3, 2015 by C T

[Taomeow]

Regarding the meat eaters, I suggest getting TaoMeow involved in this.

 

It occurred to me that I used to know a lot of very athletic women, marathon racers et al. And my sister is very atheltic, as are her two daughters. The effect of sports on menstruation is well-documented, and a cause for concern, too. Women who do a lot of sports very often have very mild periods, or virtually lose them altogether, and that's not a good situation for them.

 

I think the inverse is probably true as well. Women who by their nature have very mild cycles may tend more toward athletics, because of their hormone balance. And they don't get bogged down avery couple of weeks, like my daughter does.

 

So, as a way of alleviating some of the misery and maybe bringing some balance into her life, Dusty's sister could start a sensible exercise regimine?

 

Thank you for the invite, SC.

 

To share my experience, I had menstrual cramps as a teenager (though more or less on the common end of the spectrum, similar to those most teenage girls get), but my twins were conceived when I was 20, and I never had a cramp after they were born.  Many women report normalization of their menses after the birth of their first child,  so whatever massive hormonal changes a full term pregnancy, natural labor, breastfeeding, and bonding (if mom is "really there") causes the body and psyche to undergo apparently harmonizes them for many.  (The word "hormone" is derived from the word "harmony," that's the function of healthy hormones -- to establish harmony in the body.) 

 

I never had any irregularities to the periods after that either, could time myself to an hour -- 28 days like clockwork.  The only time this was somewhat disrupted was in my one vegetarian year when I would get lighter but longer, and unevenly spaced (shorter intervals) periods, due to (as I soon figured out) anovulatory cycles the diet provoked.  Female hormones are made out of saturated fat and cholesterol, believe it or not. 

 

Exercise -- well, it's true that athletic women suppress their estrogen/progesterone with excessive physical exertion and have many problems as a result, including menstrual and overall reproductive-health-related.  Here in SoCal everybody exercises at the gym (I've never been), and you see many female bodies vigorously worked at that, however, reveal chronic estrogen deficiency and, possibly, testosterone excess -- strong and muscular but with hip to waist ratios that aren't exactly female, the hips too narrow the waist too wide -- in combo with artificial boobs (for certain social strata nearly a built-in uniform).

 

Many years ago I learned something crazy about periods:  the hormonal profile of a woman in the first day of her monthly period is identical to that of a newborn baby, in whom, in turn, the levels of stress hormones are directly dependent on the level of traumatization during birth.  This gets imprinted, and if it was high, in a woman it will spike every month to replicate (in an attempt to resolve) that trauma.  (I don't know how it works in men, but my observations tell me it's got periodicity as well but either irregular or with a kind of regularity that is less predictable.)  The systemic trauma of modern birth is possible but very difficult to resolve.  However, like I said, a natural window of reproduction (the ideal age being between 18 and 22, which the majority of women in the "developed" countries today miss) normalizes it in most cases if taken advantage of.

 

Other than that, I would look to Chinese herbs and acupuncture. 

 

Vaccines are definitely a factor -- e.g. some of them (notably the one that is supposed to prevent cervical cancer) are banned in many "developed" countries yet are vigorously used in the "third world" -- their well-documented "side effect" is sterility.  (The US is interesting in that this vaccine is recommended here for boys as well as girls.)  But we won't get into that due to -- well, nevermind.  Not going there beyond the already-committed digression.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Taomeow