Menstruation is always experienced by all women every month. However, every month menstruation is always accompanied by abdominal pain and sometimes even makes the body weak so that it is easy to get sick. If you experience this often, a question will surely arise in your mind: what actually causes a woman to get sick easily during her period?
Why do women get sick easily during menstruation?
For most women, menstruation can easily change the mood in an instant. How come? When you are menstruating, your body suddenly feels weak, your stomach hurts, and it often even reduces your body's health, aka you are susceptible to disease.
Headache, fever, flu, and cough, are some of the conditions that women often experience while menstruating. Finally, this makes you grumpy all day because it interferes with all the plans that have been neatly arranged.
If you experience this, don't panic just yet. According to Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a medical director at the Joan H. Tisch Center for Women's Health at NYU Langone Medical Center, a weakened body condition that causes pain during menstruation is caused by hormonal changes in the body.
The reason is, entering the menstrual period, the level of the hormone estrogen in the body decreases. In fact, estrogen plays a role in helping activate the part of the brain that regulates pain. That is why, the lower the level of estrogen in the body, the weaker the brain's ability to relieve pain.
In addition, there is another opinion which says that the cause of a woman getting sick easily during menstruation is due to the release of prostaglandins, which are chemicals that cause contractions of the uterus to expel blood during menstruation.
Prostaglandin production in the body will usually increase entering the menstrual period, the aim is to push blood out of the uterus. Well, this increase in prostaglandins can trigger stomach cramps, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and other discomfort.
In addition, prostaglandins are also believed to have a role in the rise and fall of your body temperature. Maybe this is one of the reasons why women have a fever while menstruating.
How to prevent pain during menstruation?
Actually, pain that only appears during menstruation will recover and disappear by itself after the menstrual period ends. However, there is nothing wrong if you want to prevent disease so that the body stays fit during menstruation. Some of the ways you can do this are:
1. Know your period time
The first step you can take to prevent pain from entering your period is to recognize your menstrual pattern. So, you have to know when your menstrual cycle starts, and when your body usually starts to weaken until you fall ill.
Dr. Rashmi Halker, an assistant professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic Arizona, explains that women with regular menstrual cycles are more predictable when it comes to starting pain, so you can be better prepared before sudden weakness.
2. Eat nutritious food
When you eat healthy food sources, it will not only provide energy for the body, but also provide good nutrition for the cells and organs in the body. In short, nutrients that are met properly from food can help maintain your body's health ahead of menstruation.
Not only that, paying attention to the food you eat can help you to prevent the possibility of getting diseases that come from food – such as stomach pain and diarrhea.
3. Take vitamins
Taking vitamins can be one way to prevent pain during menstruation. The reason is, vitamins can help meet the body's nutritional needs that may not be met from food sources.
In addition, certain types of vitamins – such as vitamins C and E – can also help strengthen the immune system's resistance, thus supporting disease prevention.
4. Get enough rest
It is undeniable that quality sleep plays an important role not only in daily performance, but also to keep the body in a healthy condition.
Because, without realizing it, sleep helps the body in maintaining a balance of hormones that may fluctuate before the menstrual period, to maintain the immune system to protect the body from infections and other harmful substances.
Therefore, it is important to start sleeping and wake up on time, not only before your period, but also every day.