Diet and Menstruation
According to Obstetrics & Gynecology 2000;95:245-250 (© 2000) from The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (link to study done), eating a vegetarian diet may ease premenstrual and menstrual symptoms. A study found that when women changed to a low-fat, meatless diet they felt less pain than when on their usual diets. This diet also helped to improve mood changes and water retention. At end of this it shows the association of endometriosis (inflammation of uterus) and PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) with menstruation.

First, for relief of the pain of cramping right now use a heating pad on your belly or as other women suggest, produce an orgasm. Taking drugs like Tylenol will destroy your liver. I first learned of this from an article called Menstruation and Diet by Diane Olive in the January/February 1995 issue of New Frontier magazine. When I read about the women wanting advice about this I did an internet search for Diane Olive and this subject. All I could find was info on Diane's book, Think Before You Eat. So maybe this info is in that book which is about eating living (raw) food. But nowadays people want to be able to find this information on the internet so here it is.

After reading the article I sent copies to my female friends. The article starts like this: "This information is the most exciting breakthrough for women: A healthy diet and menstruation are related. The number of days you bleed, how much you cramp, and your mood swings correlate to how healthy you eat. A diet consisting of fruits and vegetables can change your menstruation to a lighter blood flow of a few days or even less."

First medications or medical problems can cause the above so you can go to a doctor first to get checked out and make sure that serious problems are not causing this. At age 29, Diane had problems with depression, arthritis, Candida, stomach aches, an irritable bowel, painful liver, TMJ, indigestion and food allergies. She changed to a healthy vegetarian diet with many raw foods and in 4 months her "health problems were vanishing." Also her menstrual periods vanished-- no cramping, no blood flow, no pain and no mood swings. Occasionally she would eat junk foods and they would come back and last a day. When she would go back to no junk food she would have 0 days of menstruation. Later she became pregnant without a blood flow but unlike her previous pregnancy, this one resulted in a very easy birth.

She explains the medical reason for menstruation and tells how people eating more junk food have more days of bleeding and says that changing to a vegetarian diet almost always lessens the days of bleeding. Difference in diet may be why American girls and Chinese girls, with an American diet, start bleeding at age 12. While Chinese girls with a Chinese diet (mostly vegetarian) start menstruating at ages 15 to 19. Some women with a pure diet just have 1 day of white creamy discharge every 28 days.

There are cases when menstruation stops due to a highly toxic diet. The body could be weakened to the point where it cannot cleanse itself. Eating while upset impairs digestion making the food you eat more toxic and fattening. According to the book (not part of this article), Formula For Long Life by Morris Krok (Copyright 1967) "In the study of primitive people and also of those persons who changed to a purer diet and a more rational way of living [Morris practiced yoga], menstruation was non-existent or ceased after a time." He also explains that it can stop due to bad health and how cravings during pregnancy could be caused by the body cleaning out those substances to make a purer environment for the fetus.

In a book Natural Way to Sexual Health (1972), Dr Beilar writes "When toxic blood seeks an outlet through the womb via the menstrual function, the resulting inflammation and irritation to the delicate mucous membrane throw the organ into spasms which are registered as pain or cramps. If the toxin is milder or more dilute, the patient simply feels heavy or congested in her pelvis. Once the flow has started, nature pours out as much toxic material from the blood as possible." Menstruation is the body cleansing itself of toxins before possible childbirth.

Since women still have children, the menses have not stopped, just the bleeding and other negative things. Also without the bleeding there is not the tiredness or depression that goes along with blood menstruation. Many female athletes who do not have the best diets do not have bloody menstruation since they get rid of toxins with increased sweating and breathing.

Mrs. P.B. had many health problems. She improved her diet and felt much better and her "once-a-month blood flow disappeared." She read that when the body works properly it is more like a light cream discharge. Her doctor told her that she can never get pregnant without the monthly blood flow. But 2 months later she did and had a healthy boy. Her grandmother would tell her stories of native American women who had monthly light cream colored discharge and also would become pregnant.

The book Is Menstruation Necessary? by Wendy Harris and Forrest McDonald said that blood menstruation went away when women switched to a raw foods diet. The book (from around 1900) Mucusless Diet Healing System by Arnold Ehret says "If the female body is perfectly clean through diet, the menstruation disappears. Everyone of my female patients reported their menses as becoming less and less, followed then by a two, and four months intermission, and then finally entirely disappearing." Forty percent of women by age 40 have myomas ( common benign fibroid tumors of the uterine muscle). Since they never develop before the onset of menstruation or after its cessation (menopause), they are probably due to blood flow which thickens and inflames the uterine muscle lining.

The above is from Diane's 1995 article. Around 2003 I was friends with a woman, Laurie, who had just got divorced. Due to this, she had very little appetite. I told her to not listen to what people say about forcing herself to eat. I told her to listen to what her body is telling her. Eating while upset, hurts digestion and makes the food toxic. She had endometriosis (inflammation of uterus) which caused painful menstruation and she could not get pregnant after many years. She was concerned about this since she was almost 40 and now not involved with anyone. Laurie had had an operation for this which helps for awhile but now needed another one. There is no cure for endometriosis. She smoked cigarettes, ate meat and was overweight.

On the home page of this site, one fat loss tip is to stay away from negative people. The mistake that Laurie made was becoming friends with me and asking for my help. She would fast for 3 days before her menstruation which was the main cure of her endometriosis. She also (all within a couple of months) lost her excess weight, quit smoking and after looking at a vegan website became a vegetarian. I mailed her that article by Diane and warned that it may happen to her.

She was concerned when it happened and asked me about it. I told her that I warned her about it and sent her the article about it. She said that if I had not, she would have been freaked out when she no longer had menstruation but since I had warned her she was just concerned. Still with no menstruation she met someone, got involved (and married) and got pregnant. She gave birth to twins-- a boy and a girl!

Here is information from a letter from her before she got pregnant: "Today would normally be day 5 of my period, except my period lasted less than a day.... Almost no blood, no weight gain, no bloating, no irritability, no tender breasts, no sign that I was even menstruating.... It's important that other women know about this. There must be tens of thousands of women in the U.S. alone who are in agony every month, because their doctors don't know squat [squat-- slang for nothing]."

Now if you have a healthy lifestyle and have been to the doctor and he says that he could not find out that anything is wrong with you and you don't have bleeding you still may wonder if the above theory is true. Well wonder no more. You can test it for yourself and see. If this theory is correct then spend the next month getting very little exercise and eat a lot of meat and junk food. If this theory is correct then you should be bleeding. If not, the theory is not correct. This is what Diane Olive did. If it does happen, it still could be pure coincidence. So a couple of months later test it again. If it works again it could just be a big coincidence. So keep testing it until you are sure of it. That is the only way you will know. And knowing is a whole lot better than believing.

I looked on the internet for women on raw diet and this subject. One woman had been on a raw diet for 18 months and her blood flow became lighter and no longer had pain during menstruation. One woman had PCOS-- polycystic ovarian syndrome. She had PMS, and during menstruation severe cramps and headaches that were almost debilitating. After switching to raw food her PMS was mild and her blood flow was lighter and the color was brighter. Her PCOS was totally eliminated. Another woman said that she had lighter cycles but gets heavier when she eats unhealthy foods.

On the home page under fat loss tip # 11, it has articles by 2 female MDs telling about why you should avoid birth control pills unless you are looking to get yeast infections, obesity, depression, infertility, strokes and breast cancer. They also tell about safe alternatives.

Copyright 2006 by Chuck Bluestein