THE ACHING MISERIES (CONGESTIVE DYSMENORRHOEA): IT HELPS TO RELAX
Because the aching miseries don’t knock you out as the cramps do, but just go grumbling away for days and days, they are more difficult to deal with. You can’t just take to bed and relax for a fortnight, nor would you want to. But regular relaxation can help, particularly if you practise it at least once a day for twenty minutes to half an hour from the moment your first symptoms appear (or just before they do, if you can work out when that will be) and carry on until your period is under way. Last thing at night is a good time to choose, particularly if you are too uncomfortable to sleep well: Relaxation is a great help if you suffer from insomnia.
If you keep your chart for several months and practise relaxation at the same time, you may find that you are gradually shortening the time when you have all your unpleasant symptoms. It’s very heartening to watch a cure gradually taking effect. But don’t be alarmed if you suddenly have a period which is much worse than you had hoped. All sorts of things can throw the body off balance and upset one’s periods —moving house, hearing bad news, even sudden good news, working far too hard, a family Christmas, a hectic holiday, a row. Although we are physically a lot tougher (as opposed to stronger) than men, in this respect we are like expensive watches: our mechanism is extremely delicate.
Even the number of cigarettes a woman smokes has an effect on period pain. Often the more you smoke, the worse it is. So if you’re a smoker, you should cut down on cigarettes just before your period. If you don’t smoke, don’t be tempted by well-meaning friends who offer you a cigarette when you’re under the weather with period pain, ‘because it’ll pick you up’. It won’t. It will make you feel worse.
It seems possible that the symptoms of the aching miseries are caused by a shortage of the sex hormone progesterone, a shortage which not only gives one those particular aches and pains low down in the abdomen but also throws the rest of one’s body out of balance too. We are also emotionally off-balance, so we become irritable or depressed or angry. Fortunately, deliberate relaxation can help, but with this kind of pain it’s a slow process, and it usually takes several months to be really effective. So in the following sections of this chapter I shall be dealing with as many of the symptoms of the miseries as I can, and suggest some other practical ways of coping with them; but please continue your regular relaxation.
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