Period drama

By Joanna Tilley 

Yesterday I watched this amazing interview with biologist Bruce Lipton. It covered all sorts of fascinating topics including the power of the body to heal itself and why we should be wary about trusting the pharmaceutical industry. It is really well worth a watch – so here is the link to the first half. Please do read this first though.

Lipton’s words resonated with me because I have become increasingly wary about relying on (or in fact, taking any) over the counter drugs and have often felt that if we sort out our minds, our bodies follow suit.

However, this morning I woke up thinking about one thing he mentioned in particular – the fight or flight response.

In the interview, Lipton describes how when our bodies are stressed they can go into the fight or flight response. The fight or flight response is an evolutionary device humans developed so that when we are in danger, our bodies react to the threat and prepare us to escape or defend ourselves.

The slight problem with the fight or flight response is that even if we are not in physical danger, our bodies still reacts in the same way when we are under stress.

So if we are stressed about a job interview or life in general, we have a similar physiological response to a caveman who is being chased by a grizzly bear.

There are many effects fight or flight has on the body but one Lipton talks about is the way our blood flows to our limbs – legs and arms – as these are important if we are to run away from that sabre-toothed tiger.

In order to get the blood flowing out to our extremities, the blood vessels running to our inner organs need to constrict which means that the blood flow to our stomach and core organs becomes weaker. This is why one of the side effects of the fight or flight response is to get a stomach ache.

So – whether it is induced by the threat of a wooly mammoth or the fear we will never meet the love of our lives – stress means that blood can stop flowing to crucial areas of our body.

Lipton’s words about the fight or flight response got me thinking about the biggest physical battle I have ever encountered.

No - it wasn’t a bloody battle with a sea dragon, it was a bloody battle with my menstrual cycle.

I went through a number of years – in my late 20s and early 30s – when I suffered horrendous period pain - the sort of pain that no words, however beautifully woven, could ever come close to describing. Let’s just say that days of work were missed, I was fearful of leaving the sanctuary of the bath and that on more than one occasion I ended up in A&E due to the fear that I might be exploding, or something. It was bad.

I should add at this point that despite using painkillers in the past to deal with period pain, I had developed an aversion to using drugs to deal with pain. I had foolishly or bravely (take your pick) decided I was going to go through the pain in a hope that I would learn something from it.

When Lipton spoke about the fight or flight response, it triggered my memory of the painful episodes I used to go through with my period. In retrospect – I think this is because I am now ready to admit that I was more responsible for this pain than I realised. Like so many afflictions, the cause of my period pains were not merely biological but psychological too.

Once upon a time…

There’s probably only one place I can start this tale of period woe and that is with the fact that the worst years of period pain coincided with the worst years of my life. (This was not because of the period pain – although that certainly didn’t help.)

This was a stage of my life when I was stressed/bored/frustrated at work, anxious about life in general, tired by life in general and spent way too many days hungover… in general. In essence – these were my fight or flight days.   

And this is why Lipton’s words hit a nerve with me – because maybe now is the time to take some ownership of my pain - and also to have a closer think about what was going on inside me. 

I remember what would happen. I would be sat at my desk, I would feel the first ache of period pain and I would panic. Instead of remaining calm, breathing, doing some stomach exercises, I would freeze with the fear that the worse pain to ever physically engulf a human being was coming my way.

This was the worse thing I could have done because I was triggering a fight or flight response. When I desperately needed blood to flow to my stomach and womb, the stress in my body was making my blood divert to my extremities. Queue panic, chaos and pain. 

Now as one of the side effects of the fight or flight response is a stomach ache (I told you that earlier, pay attention!), you can probably imagine the sort of stomach ache that happens when your body is trying to expel uterus wall lining with a shortage of oxygen and nutrients to deal with it. Add into the mix the fact that stress generally leads to a tightening of the muscles and for blood flow to slow down - what you have is a stomach ache that hath become a tornado of vaginal rage.

Now if at this point you don't lurch for the Feminax – the only thing you can do is work your way through this pain.

And here we perhaps need to think about period pains on two plains. ‘Period pains on two plains’ – surely a great name for a book?

Anyway, I digress - for some women a hot water bottle or a warm bath is enough to get through the discomfort. Anything warm that focuses on the stomach, relaxes the blood vessels and gets the blood pumping more easily to the abdominal organs in the stomach helps. As do warm drinks such as chamomile tea – but not caffeine.

These are simple tips to help women deal with period pains. But if you are depressed, stressed, confused and sad, it is more than likely these won't cut the mustard.

If you are at a stage in your life where you are overthinking, overanalysing and paralysing yourself with fear, I’m afraid you will have to work a little harder to get out of this one, my friend. But there is still a way out. Come with me.

Three things

There are three things that have majorly helped to reduce the pain of my monthly cycles – and have meant that I no longer live in fear of the next onslaught.

The first two, and in my opinion the cure to almost all ailments on planet earth, are yoga and meditation.

I am not here to teach you about yoga and meditation because quite frankly that’s why the internet exists.  I am also hungry and want my breakfast, so in a nutshell, the reason why yoga and meditation help is because they simply teach you to relax your body and mind.  

By regularly relaxing your body and mind, you become a lot more resilient to stress. 

By becoming more resilient to stress – you are less likely to enter into the fight or flight response. 

And by avoiding the side-effects of the fight or flight response, you can avoid excruciating stomach pain. (Am I right, Lipton?)

To put it even more simply – yoga creates the peace inside your body to stop any panic that is exacerbating the pain.   

At this point, it is sensible to mention that there are women who suffer from a condition called endometriosis – where the womb lining grows into places that it shouldn’t and sometimes wraps itself around our ovaries and causes pain this way. Some women have surgical treatment on their endometriosis and they have got rid of the pain this way. I value all women’s stories and we need to listen to as many as possible and then make our own informed decisions on these issues.

My story is that I was told by a doctor I had endometriosis and that my period pains were likely linked to it. I opted not to explore this further as I believed that reducing stress in my life could naturally help cure my endometriosis. Like Lipton - that’s the way I think about pain – not everyone does. It is my belief.

And thankfully I now have experiences that back up this belief.

Since getting into yoga and meditation, I have less period pain and more regular periods. I like to think this means my endometriosis has sorted itself out – I could be wrong – but a lack of physical pain suggests that things are running much more smoothly down there. I certainly feel no need for a doctor to go poking away in my tubes.

Warning

So – there will be some of you thinking – Joanna Tilley – for goodness sake, what is the third thing? My dear ladies (and one gentleman) – are you sure you want to know? If you have just about had enough of all this – you can leave now. But for those brave souls, please continue.  

Using yoga and meditation to become more calm, and to improve the connection between my body and mind, has dramatically reduced the levels of my period pain – however, there’s one recent lifestyle change I have made which has taken things to the next level.

Okay – here goes it - I did warn you – nine months ago I quit alcohol – completely.

Almost instantaneously I realised my periods were even less painful – and at the moment (prays be to god) I now have the sort of periods I could only have dreamt about. Every month I am winning the lottery of life – not being in pain!

(This is the part of the story when I should try to sell you some sort of product based on my findings – instead I’m just recommending you cut out one of the greatest sources of joy known to mankind. It's not quite so marketable!)

I don’t want to preach to you about all the negative affects of alcohol because that article is well and truly in the pipeline. Haha.  

But I do feel quitting alcohol is the final piece in the winning-the-war-on-period-pains-puzzle.

If I do have to say anything about alcohol I will just say that whether it is by giving us high blood pressure or the capacity to do something that brings us great shame the next morning – alcohol doesn’t seem to be great at helping us manage stress. It doesn’t seem to do us many favours when it comes to fighting health problems either. 

There is however one elephant in the corner I should mention before I have breakfast - even though I’m not massively comfortable doing so.

This is the link between alcohol and fertility. I am 34 and I have frequently wondered whether my period pains were just telling me to ‘get a bloody move on love’. ‘Bash that baby out of yerr’.

However, I am not so sure anymore. I now wonder whether my period pains were instead just trying to lead me to a healthier life. My depression was my mental warning, my period pains were a physical warning in case the first warning didn’t get through to me. Thanks guys.

It was during this two-pronged assault that I found yoga and meditation and then found the strength and courage to leave a job that was killing me. More recently, I think my period pains are just politely informing me that drinking alcohol is not going to prolong my fertility. When my body speaks to me – I have decided it is best to listen. This is why I am sceptical about painkillers because I think they just tell the body to ‘shut it’ – without listening to any of its concerns.

I read a piece yesterday by comedian Naomi Cooper where she was discussing all sorts of interesting things – such as society’s reaction to women talking graphically about their sex lives on stage. In the article she also casually refers to pickling her ovaries in chardonnay – Cooper says this in reference to her future ability to conceive children. Whether it was a joke or not, those three words ‘pickling my ovaries’ go a long way to explaining my thoughts about alcohol and fertility. My personal experience is that once I got to a certain age - ovaries and alcohol didn’t mix.

But away from the delicate issue of fertility as fast as we can muster - the main point of this article is that I think we have far more control over our bodies, and the pain that our bodies cause us, than we can ever understand from traditional medical science.

There is certainly space for medicine – especially when it comes to dealing with serious illnesses – but sometimes, and much more often than we realise, we are the ones holding the key. 

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Here are some things I have found that help manage painful periods:

• Practice mindfulness, yoga and meditation - so your body reacts more calmly to stress
• Make sure you do some exercise - for example go for walks - so that you get the blood pumping around the whole body 
• If you have pain in your stomach, instead of keeping it rigid, do stomach exercise by pulling your belly button in as far as you can and then pushing it out. Repeat this at least 100 times. It may hurt but it loosens up your stomach muscles and gets blood flowing 
• Reduce intake of alcohol and caffeine 
• Drink warm drinks (chamomile is great), use hot water bottles, take baths - warmth is our friend! 
• Eat a balanced diet - and eat more than you want to! I have found food helps ease the pain 
• Make sure you get enough sleep - and if you need a day-time nap - bloody well have one - without any guilt. If our body needs to rest, we rest 
• Find hugs

Lost in the Cloud

Over the last few days I have been feeling quite down, low energy, and very confused and negative about a lot of things. Perhaps for two very good reasons as I have been blessed with the double whammy of being ill and having my period (why do I still feel embarrassed to write the word period in the 21st century?).   

Anyway, I can partly put my low energy and dark mental state down to one, if not both of these.

But this period (of time) has also opened my eyes up to how I try to deal with these feelings, and in particular the role of my mobile phone. While feeling this sadness/darkness/not-right-ness – I noticed I kept looking over at my phone. I was looking at it like I would look to a friend. I wanted my phone to give me some answers. I wanted my phone to fix me.

Instead of sitting with my uncomfortable feelings for a bit, I kept grabbing at the black box to randomly tap on different apps to only come away with the feeling that my phone had let me down. There was nothing there that was making me feel any better. This only exasperated my feelings of loneliness and frustration. I mean I could have created my own entertainment – started conversations with friends on whats ap and received the stimulus from their reply – but I didn’t want to give my phone any energy. I just wanted it to make me feel better. To do something.

When I initially considered this, it felt ridiculous… But it isn’t ridiculous, is it? Isn’t it actually perfectly sane to turn to my only permanent companion to try to stop the dark cloud of feelings that were looming over me?

It is sane because I turn to my phone all the time. To provide entertainment. To connect with people. And I am definitely not the only one. On the tube, most people are tapping away on something or other, and its part of the way we function these days. Phones let us keep up to date with things we enjoy, they keep us informed when we are curious – but they also keep us distracted. Constantly distracted.

And this worries me because I don’t know if humans have developed the mechanism to know when we are using our phones out of necessity, out of boredom, or as a distraction. Or, worst still, as a diversion.

I think the problem with modern technology is that it fucks us up on multiple-fronts. It fills us with so much information, a lot of this negative, and quite horrifying, that this can trigger anxiety in itself.

I also believe that when we see a horrific picture or read a tragic story that the information goes into us, but it doesn’t come out again. I think we carry what we consume. So while Westminster was an attack many had been expecting - we are still impacted by its sheer barbarity. These days, though, instead of giving these events the respect and space they deserve, we just move on to the next story and the next distraction – whether it is a stabbing or a picture of a friend’s wedding.

But I feel there is also something else happening too. That as we increasingly focus on external stimulus, we become less able to process our own emotions.

And this is probably why I turned to look at my phone when I was feeling low. My phone does everything else – surely it can just flick me back into positivity setting…

The hi-tech and media industry know all this of course – they feed on it. They provide us with the technology and information - but they have absolutely no regard or responsibility for how we then process it.

And so the pile of information mounts up – day after day, layer upon layer, one huge hit after another. And somewhere deep underneath this massive pile of Trump, Brexit, terrorism fears – lies a much more troubling source of pain – our own.

The personal problems and worries of our real 3-dimensional lives. But is there much time to register these issues, and our feelings about them, when every day we are floating in a world-wide web of information. 

Well, there isn’t, until you get sick – and suddenly see your phone for what it really is - a piece of electronics.

So what I ended up doing was lying on my bed and thinking, or more accurately feeling. (Not in a sexy way.) I didn’t think about Westminster, I thought about visions in my own life that have stuck with me, the child-like fear on my parent's faces when realising after 30 years of marriage they have to build their lives up again and move on – of my frail Nana who smiled at me with love, as a carer took off the shit-covered knickers she had around her ankles. Well, these things happen darling...

And in amongst these vivid and painful scenes I would think about other things – career frustrations, my non-existent love life – family and friendship issues – why everything just seems so damn complicated. How not enough people buy the Big Issue. That I still feel embarrassed to write the word period in the 21st century. The fact that with all these thoughts maybe I would go mad. Or that perhaps I should see a counsellor. I’ve seen one before and it helped.

But the reason seeing a counsellor helped me was very simple – by listening to myself go on and on (and on) I started to realise how many feelings I’d stored up from my past. How almost every interaction with someone, every good feeling, bad feeling, frustrating feeling, guilty feeling, regretful feeling, was stored inside me – like a computer… Is there any wonder why some of us struggle so? 

And this is why I think we’ve got a problem brewing with technology. Because at a time when it’s already tough out there and there’s so many pressures on us to compete and achieve, we seem to be actively choosing to put more sources of anxiety into our minds. And on top of this, we have less time to mull any of it over.

I know from talking to friends I am not alone – many of us feel like we are battling to keep our sanity. We may have a roof over our head, food in our cupboard, and friends – but man, don’t you just feel totally helpless and alone sometimes?

So if we are over-stimulated, and becoming less connected to ourselves, what do we do about it?

Well for what it is worth - my gut feeling is that we can reduce some stress and anxiety by just giving ourselves some alone time with our minds. Just some time staring at the ceiling, staring out the window, sitting alone – with our phones in a different part of the house – and just be-ing. Yes, friends and partners are cool, but I don’t think it’s ever a substitute for spending a few minutes alone with your feelings – even if this is quite hard, very hard, or even harder than that! Or if they are nice feelings, be with those feelings too : )

Not everyone, I do hope, but many of us have an extremely deep well of sadness, loneliness and desperation inside us. But one thing that is important to cling on to – is that it is through pain, and really connecting to that pain, that we grow. We become more empathetic, more intuitive, more resilient and more beautiful.

I don’t know - but I fear that the more we interact with the world within our phones, the more we forget to tap into ourselves – to stop, to feel and to grow.