Reproductive Health
Understanding Fertility and Reproductive Health
You know when you have a cold or flu because you recognise the symptoms: headaches, running nose, sneezes and a temperature.
However when it comes to your gynaecological health do you know if you are healthy or not?
Women who use a natural method to track their natural menstrual cycles will become familiar with their reproductive system.
In fact, everything from fertility to infertility, from avoiding pregnancy to trying to conceive, it all begins with health.
What's wrong with me?
Skin troubles!
A handful of my women friends suffer from polycystic ovarian disease.
This is a very common condition where multiple eggs all try to develop and mature for ovulation but none may come to ovulate.
Typical external symptoms often relate to the woman’s appearance: excessive hair growth, weight gain, severe acne and darker patches on the face.
Other signs include prolonged menstrual cycles, missing periods, continuous discharge, abnormal bleeding, insulin resistant, severe pre-menstrual syndromes and sometimes even depression.
Many such women do not know that the visible outward signs are all related to the hidden inward signs.
So they might only focus on resolving their skin troubles.
In fact all these symptoms together point to this condition in their ovaries, which is where treatment needs to focus on.
When I mentioned to a friend, that her continuous discharge throughout the month was abnormal, she exclaimed, “but I have always had this; I never thought it was unusual!”
Most women I have met just don’t know what is supposed to be normal and not normal.
What is this discharge?
A client told me this story.
In her teens she was so worried about a discharge that regularly occurred during the middle of her cycle that she went to her doctor in order to suppress it.
And indeed the doctor prescribed her a “treatment”.
Guess what - that discharge was her cervical mucus. So it was the expected, normal and healthy sign, confirming that her body was preparing to ovulate.
It is not unusual for a patient to be unaware of the normal signs of her cycle.
It appears that her doctor didn't know that either.
The Pill will fix it, surely!
Very often the pill is prescribed to treat a whole host of gynaecological conditions:
Severe period pain, heavy period, abnormal bleed in-between periods.. etc.
Instead of thorough checks and diagnostics - let's bring out the pill.
The pill will no doubt provide symptomatic relief.
But we still don't know what is wrong. The underlying conditions just get masked and suppressed.
So when these women come off the pill, say to try for a baby, they may find themselves in a similar situation as before.
Or worse still, that they are so scared about these symptoms returning, that they don't really want to come off the pill. But they want to try for a baby....
Manage Health through Fertility Charting
All of our clients learn to understand and monitor their fertility cycle.
They don't just record observations in an app.
They know what good health and normal cycles look like.
They know when they are potentially signs of concerns especially if they are trying to conceive.
And if there are any issues that trouble their daily life enough to warrant investigation and medical attention, we can always refer to medical professionals for a proper diagnosis and treatment.