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There is a cure for period pains

May 2010 (Updated)

I got my first period when I was 11. From the word go they caused me to be in agony. Not just in pain, but in actual agony. Imagine your toes and fingers feeling like they're being cut off while a giant was stamping on your abdomen and you may have a slight clue as to how it felt. Actually, if you have never experienced period pains, you won't have a clue, it's just too hard to compare it to anything.

I spent years on the pill to avoid the pain, but that didn't feel right. I always avoided painkillers at any other time of my life, but come period time, I would faint with the pain if I didn't have them. When I went raw in 2000, they became significantly better most of the time, but every now and then I'd still get the worst period pain ever.

And I am not alone, thousands of women in the UK and abroad lose work days and leisure days every month because of their painful periods -- usually with very little sympathy.

In 2004 I became pregnant and my periods went away, along with the memory of the sickness, diarrhoea, agony and feeling faint. I breastfed for four years, and I never missed one period in all that time. Breastfeeders mostly don't get any periods. However, I didn't have the agony that I'd previously known, just some light cramps.

Then in August 2008 I stopped breastfeeding. The pain returned and then some. I took to laying in the bath for hours, drinking wine to take the edge off the pain. A long term raw vegan by now, I was shocked that I still had an imbalance like this.

In May 2009 I decided I was going to find a cure. I didn't know how. I didn't need to know. I live my life in instant manifestation mode where I can create my own reality at the switch of a synapse.

At the same time as making this declaration to myself I started megadosing on vegan DHA for entirely different reasons. I was taking between 3-5g (3000-5000mg) a day. I felt great in so many ways, my body loving the top-up after its stint of growing and breastfeeding a child and her brain.

Then I got my period. It was a couple of days early, and it was on and off. Then it came on properly, and I couldn't feel any pain. I lay in bed waiting for the pain to strike. It didn't. I just had a very mild cramping -- nothing at all in comparison to being pummelled by a giant. All the next day, I had a minor feeling of its presence, but nothing I could describe as pain. Not once.

I knew immediately what did it. I knew it was the DHA. I know it affects hormone and inflammation. But I didn't know there had been studies on girls with period pains, where they'd taken about 1.2g a day for two months with "significant improvement". (Google cure period pain and DHA for the studies.) Now, The Doxtor is hardcore and isn't into "significant improvement." I wanted 100% improvement.

It's now been a year since this happened and I've had one period with noticable pain. The rest of them have been either zero pain or very slight cramping. I am going to write the protocol for getting to this point, but if you can't wait for that, then just megadose on DHA for 40 days as I did, then go down to the RDA.

My guess is that once your DHA levels are corrected, you won't need to take so much to remain "cured". Do remember that this is not medication or a temporary fix, it's just rebalancing the omega 3 levels in your body which is a simple nutritional issue.

Please let me know your experiences so we can get this right for all women out there.

References

Omega 3s and menstrual pain

Bliss U.

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