Why are my periods irregular and how yoga can help regulate them
When you’re trying to conceive it can be incredibly frustrating when your periods are all over the place. How can you plan a pregnancy if you don’t even know when you’re fertile?
When we were trying to have our third baby mine were all over the place. After our third loss in a row we decided to take a break and I finally started looking into what causes irregular periods and how to get mine back into a healthy pattern.
For me, I believe it was mostly stress that was sending my periods haywire but if you’re trying to work out why yours are whack, the list below might help.
Why are my periods irregular?
Stress
When we’re stressed the body releases cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones interfere with the other hormones used in your reproductive systems and may the reason why your periods are irregular.
Weight
Carrying too much weight for your body size can play havoc with your hormones, specifically your oestrogen levels.
Being underweight or drastically losing a lot of weight quickly.
This point makes it feel like you can’t win, doesn’t it? Too much weight can affect your periods and too little is just as bad. It makes sense though, the body perceives too little weight as stress – it thinks there isn’t enough food to support a baby – so won’t create one. When it came to weight issues, I found it helpful to focus on finding health rather than stressing about weight.
Birth control pills or other hormonal contraception
Ughghgh! If only I knew to ask more questions before going on birth control pills for my acne as a teenager. It seems too many of us have going on hormonal contraception (on the advice of our Drs) to ‘fix’ hormonal issues like irregular periods, acne, heavy painful periods, symptoms of PCOS and endometriosis have actually been given
Polycystic Ovarian Sydrome
PCOS causes or is caused by a hormonal imbalance in the body which causes cysts to form on the ovaries. PCOS can cause irregular periods (because you’re not ovulating), acne, excess weight and body hair and other symptoms. It is common to miss periods and then have really heavy ones when they do come, when you have PCOS. Western medicine considers PCOS an incurable condition however many women are having success reducing the symptoms of PCOS with lifestyle choices (aka. eating super clean), reducing stress and moving regularly.
Thyroid problems
Your thyroid is a part of your endocrine system and it’s job is to produce, store and release hormones to make sure your body is working as it should. An overactive or underachieve thyroid could be the reason for your irregular periods.
Excessive exercise
I think we sometimes forget that exercise, especially strenuous exercise is stress for the body. We make it work hard to create the changes we want like losing weight, building muscle, etc. If you’re trying to conceive however you want to reduce stress as much as you can and this includes stressing the body out with too much exercise. And no, this is not permission to sloth it up on the couch, some exercise is good (it helps to relieve stress, helps circulation, etc) but too much exercise can stress the body too much and cause irregular periods.
Trauma
Our bodies store the affects of trauma, especially trauma that we haven’t processed and have tried to forget about. Trauma is any experience that we personally have found traumatic. You period may be irregular if you’ve experienced anything traumatic, but especially if you’ve experienced something like sexual assault where your reproductive system is involved.
I hope this list helps you to start finding out why your periods are irregular. I’m sharing today a fertility yoga class that will help you to start balancing your hormonal system. We’ll work deeply into the reproductive organs so this class is suitable for pre-ovulation only. If you’re wanting a class for ovulation, menstruation or the two week wait check out my four part series instead.