Ladies Only: Happy New Year 2013, Dear Aunt Flow

A surprise visitor, who I had not seen in exactly 120 days, showed up minutes after I rolled out of bed on this lovely January 1, 2013.

After a rockin’ New Year’s Eve with the family and friends, dancing until 3am in front of the Wii…(scroll to end of post for video)

I slept like a baby until 9:30am this morning.

I headed to this bathroom, and inside found a nice surprise.

My period.

Go with the Flow.

I did NOT see this coming. No PMS, no cramps. Perhaps some unusual cravings for Asian soup. When the initially shock wore off, I thought hard, “Where did I leave my Diva Cup?!”. It was still in my travel bag from last summer’s trip to Maui! Diva Cup, you ask? Tampons and maxipads are a thing of the past in my world. For more info on the menstrual cup, which makes periods less of a pain while traveling, and is completely re-usable for years, which equals sustainable periods for both your budget and the planet, and makes traveling way easier during that ‘time of the month’, check out my friend Aimee’s informational post on the Diva Cup. Heehee, sustainable periods ;)

The Mind-Body link has fascinated me for quite some time now. My…um…flow, hasn’t been ‘regular’ since I quit taking hormonal birth control pills nearly four years ago. This was a personal decision, as I don’t want foreign chemicals in my body. Sometimes the flow comes steadily for months, sometimes not at all for months.

One MD and several well-meaning people have remarked (and assumed) it’s because of my relatively low body mass index and my activity level (yoga and a good amount of walking outdoors). However, I’ve actually had a period at my thinnest. I was in love and so high on it I could hardly touch food! Still, Aunt Flow was a regular each month.

Acquaintances in the alternative health field suggested all sorts of solutions. No Period. The Chinese Doctor said, “your river run dry, Elisa, go home and make big stew, lots of warm vegetable, purple potato, no more cold food”. I bought a crock pot and made big stew to eat seven nights a week. No period. Dr. Bragg, my boss and Naturopathic Doctor, suggested Lugol’s, an iodine supplement to support the thyroid and resting in the sunshine. No period, nice tan. Some said all the toxins from the birth control pills were wreaking havoc on the body. So, I tried detoxes in Thailand and Hawaii. During the Thailand detox program, I felt great, as if someone hit a ‘reset’ button on my energy level. In Hawaii, I found myself depleted and combing Waikiki for the nearest Haagen Daaz. Still no period.

On the contrary, I tried gaining weight and cutting back on activity with no positive period results this past year (see On Energy, Eating, and Living Well: My Story as of Late, Summer 2012). I did feel better with more rest and routine, but not 100%. That ‘experiment’ left me feeling I suddenly inhabited an alien body by overloading my system with more sustenance than it needed, and a cranky mind and body screaming for more movement. There is only so much eating right and rest can do.

I was living alone on the island of Oahu and had just gone through a break-up, plus my temporary job personal assisting ended. My boss, a like-minded author who I’d grown close with and considered surrogate family on the island, left for her next destination. I’d made a few promising friendships during my first 6 months on the island, but everyone I truly trusted and loved was an ocean away. Period just disappeared for a while as I stressed, beat myself up a good amount for not making the dead relationship work, tried making living way outside of my comfort zone work, plus did not have the drive or energy to have the wild time of my life that Hawaii ‘should’ have been. (Can you tell that break-ups take their toll on this sensitive gal? Ugh.) Life looked beautiful from the outside, but things were not flowing, literally and figuratively. I needed my support system!

My own opinion after all of this?

Listen to your own body first. Maybe you just need a hug and some emotional support. Maybe you need to listen to your cravings for Asian Soup, cheesecake, warm or cold food.

What you don’t need is everyone else’s two cents. Only you know how it feels to live in your body. Many well-meaning people want to show you “their” way…but don’t let anyone convince you that the way you treat your body is wrong if you know what does work for you (unless you truly are not treating yourself right).

I think having a regular flow has more to do with how much love, either familial, romantic, and from yourself, plus the amount of relaxation you feel in your life. The parasympathetic nervous system’s (the “rest” response) accompanying anti-inflammatory, stabilizing hormones in the body opposed to the sympathetic nervous system’s (the “stress” response) inflammatory hormones such as cortisol caused by stress and feeling isolated, could have a profound effect on the female bodies’ reproductive processes. Same goes with your digestion!

My only health professional ‘legitimacy’ is through yoga teaching; I’m no M.D, but I know a whole lot about yoga and the relaxation response. Let’s just say I really enjoy studying health publications and hanging out at the bookstore for fun. I know enough to come up with these theories, but please don’t quote me. These are my suspicions as I look to my body as my own laboratory.

For a fact, I feel exponentially more settled, relaxed, and like I’m recharging back here in California, opposed to Hawaii, or any other place. I definitely take this normalizing of my body’s processes as a POSITIVE sign that moving home for a while was a GREAT choice. Although I’m not waking up to balmy 80+ degree tempuratures, feeling loved and finding stability in the mind and heart is doing wonders for the physical. Another point given to trusting my intuition.

Leave your comments below! I want to hear your experience about…weird periods, other ‘off’ mind-body symptoms…tell me everything