I dont cut and paste very often and when I do its usually something that I either found very entertaining or consider important. The article below is something that I think should be read by everyone. Women, because its something that every woman I know has questions and concerns about, and men because its something that every man who hopes to have a woman in his life should know.

Menstruation is still considered tabboo for way too many people but something that intimately concerns half of the world and is the reason why all of us are here, should be something that we all read up on.

You or your mothers, your sisters, your wives, and your daughters all have menstrual cycles and its astonishing how little both men and women know anything about it. I can remember the confusion and the anger and the frustration - mixed in with a healthy dollop of hormones no doubt - that used to plague me growing up that no sex ed class could really resolve to my satisfaction.

Today I came across this article in Newsweek and I think its great!

Menstrual Mysteries
What’s normal, what’s not--and what a woman’s period may reveal about her health.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert
Newsweek
Updated: 1:02 p.m. ET Jan. 31, 2006

Jan. 31, 2006 - Maybe you grew up calling it Aunt Flo. Perhaps you referred to it as "my friend." But despite references that imply familiarity, most of us don’t really know that much about our monthly menstrual periods. After having "the talk" with your mother, you probably learned little beyond what your own experiences told you.

So it might surprise you to learn that some women get a period every 11 days, and others, every 100. Some women lose so little blood every month that it’s barely measurable, while others lose more than two cupfuls every cycle. Researchers have also found that most women are acutely aware of even the slightest change in their cycle, and can often accurately recall menstrual events from years before, especially if they occurred during a major life event.

Women also have a tendency to worry about these changes. Phyllis Kernoff Mansfield, a professor at Pennsylvania State University and one of the leading authorities on menstruation in the country, says that too often women assume that any change is a sign of disease, especially cancer. While it’s smart to be vigilant and mention any changes in menstrual flow (like spotting between periods and very heavy flows) to your doctor, these events shouldn’t inspire panic. That’s because there are many more versions of "normal" menstruation than we once thought.

Discovering what’s really normal has been the goal of the TREMIN Research Program on Women’s Health, the oldest and longest-running study of menstruation in the world. It got its start in the botany department at the University of Minnesota in 1934 and has followed several thousand women (including generations of women in the same families) ever since, even though it is now based at Penn State. TREMIN researchers were the first to establish that every healthy woman did not have a 28-day cycle, as scientists once insisted was true. To do that, the amazingly patient founder, Dr. Alan E. Treloar, followed 2,702 women for 30 years and tabulated most of the data by hand before converting it to punch cards in the 1960s. His research also proved that cycle variability was at its most extreme at the start, when girls first started menstruating, and at the end, just before menopause. Women between the ages of 20 and 40 turned out to have the most consistent cycles.

In more recent years, TREMIN (an acroyn created by combining the first three letters of Treloar and Minnesota) has helped disprove the idea that heavy menstrual bleeding wasn’t very common. It turns out that it affects about 10 million American women a year, half of them in the 40-to-50-year-old age group, and it can have a powerful impact on their lives. Mansfield, the director of TREMIN, says 40 percent of the women who regularly have heavy bleeding say they have difficulty working outside the home because their periods are so unpredictable and heavy that they live in constant fear of having a public accident. The blood loss can also put them at risk for anemia.

What exactly is an excessively heavy period? Scientists describe it as 80 milliliters or more of blood loss per cycle. That’s about a third of a cup. (Average blood loss is more in the range of an eighth to a quarter of a cup of discharge a month.) Some studies indicate that in extreme cases, the loss can be more than two cups per cycle (or 500ml). But how would any one woman know how much she’s losing? No one catches their monthly flow in a measuring cup.

The lack of a simple but reliable measure has proved to be a real problem, Mansfield says, because heavy bleeding is the most common reason women get hysterectomies. There’s been increasing concern in recent years that many of these surgeries may have been unnecessary, more a result of a miscommunication between doctor and patient, than a major health problem. "Some women get hysterectomies because of excessive bleeding," Mansfield said, "but in reality, their blood loss is really mild to moderate."

One of the reasons this happens, research has shown, is because women have a very hard time describing how much blood they’ve lost. Their estimates are relative. Women who usually have light periods have a much different idea of "heavy bleeding" than women who bleed heavily every cycle. "We had some women who said they were bleeding like pigs, but when we looked at the record, there was very little blood compared to others," said Mansfield. "There were other women who normally bleed very heavily, but they don’t see it as a problem."

To help women describe their symptoms better, Mansfield and her colleagues developed an inexpensive, easy-to-use, six-point scale described below:

Mansfield-Voda-Jorgensen Menstrual Bleeding Scale
(1) Spotting. A drop or two of blood, not even requiring sanitary protection though you may prefer to use some.

(2) Very light bleeding. You would need to change the least absorbent tampon or pad one or two times per day, though you may prefer to change more frequently.

(3) Light bleeding. You would need to change a low or regular absorbency tampon or pad two or three times per day, though you may prefer to change more frequently.

(4) Moderate bleeding. You would need to change a regular absorbency tampon or pad every three to four hours, though you may prefer to change more frequently.

(5) Heavy bleeding. You would need to change a high absorbency tampon or pad every three to four hours, though you may prefer to change more frequently.

(6) Very heavy bleeding or gushing. Protection hardly works at all; you would need to change the highest absorbency tampon or pad every hour or two.

To prove it was reliable, the researchers randomly recruited 31 women between the ages of 35 and 55 (all of whom were still menstruating and none of whom were using hormones) who agreed to meticulously save and preserve all their used menstrual products from three complete cycles. At the end of each cycle, a technician was sent out to collect the samples for processing in the lab. Over the course of the three cycles, the researchers collected 1,489 bags of used products. As part of the project, the women were also asked to use the six-point scale to estimate how much blood they had lost for each cycle. When the data was processed at the end, the researchers found that most of the women’s ratings closely correlated with their actual blood loss. This was particularly true of the women who were the heaviest bleeders.

Women experiencing heavy bleeding (especially if it lasts for more than five days and clots are passed) should mention it to their doctor. Other types of bleeding that may be reason for concern include frequent spotting between periods, bleeding with fever or pain, blood in the urine, bleeding after sex or an abrupt cessation of your periods. Young girls who are just starting to menstruate and older women who are approaching menopause often have erratic periods. But skipping a period when you’re in the prime reproductive years could be a sign that you’re pregnant or stressed. If neither is the case, and this goes on into a second or third month, it could be a warning that you’ve lost too much weight, are overexercising or have gone into premature menopause. It could also be a symptom of polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition characterized by multiple cysts in the ovary and overproduction of the hormone androgen. Because you begin to lose bone density after many months without normal periods, you need to follow up on this. Women on oral contraceptives tend to have scanty periods, but if your flow is really short and light and you’re not on the pill, you should mention that to your doctor, too. It could be a sign of thyroid disease, an inflamed uterine lining or other conditions.

If you have any concerns about your monthly bleeds, Mansfield suggests keeping a daily menstrual diary, available free on her Web site (www.pop.psu.edu/tremin/tremin-docs.htm) that uses the six-point scale. Even if you’re not having any problems, it’s a smart idea to keep track of your cycles. Just think of it as getting better acquainted with Aunt Flo.
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

© 2006 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11103465/site/newsweek/page/2/