ZOE Science & Nutrition - Recap: Menstruation - what everyone needs to know | Jen Gunter & Sarah Berry

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Today we tackle menstruation. Despite affecting half the world’s population for a significant part of their lives, menstruation remains clouded by taboo. This lack of open conversation can leave women without the knowledge they need to address pain, discomfort, or irregularities associated with their period. So, what signs should raise concern when it comes to menstruation, and how can we manage symptoms effectively? Professor Sarah Berry and Dr. Jen Gunter join us to break the silence around menstruation. 🥑 Make smarter food choices. Become a member a zoe.com - 10% off with code PODCAST 🌱 Try our new plant based wholefood supplement - Daily30+ 📚 Books from our ZOE Scientists: The Food For Life Cookbook by Prof. Tim Spector Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Free resources from ZOE: Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition  Gut Guide - for a healthier microbiome in weeks Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here Listen to the full episode here

Hello and welcome to Zoë Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're tackling menstruation. Despite affecting half the world's population for a significant part of their lives, menstruation remains clouded by taboo. This lack of open conversation can leave women without the knowledge they need to address pain, discomfort or irregularities associated with their period. So what signs should raise concerns when it comes to menstruation and how can we manage

symptoms effectively? I'm joined by Professor Sarah Berry and Dr. Jen Gunter to break the silence around menstruation. Jen starts by outlining the signs of a heavy period. If you are soaking through your menstrual products onto your clothes, if you're having to change pads or tampons every one to two hours for more than just kind of once, so if you happen to do that, or if when you stand up, you have a feeling of gushing.

So all of those things can be signs of heavy periods. Sometimes they're not, but you don't know, but those would be all the signs that would say, you should probably see your doctor and be investigated. And the reason this is so critical is if you look at the incidence of iron deficiency, it is very high amongst young women. And in the United States,

the study I'm referencing is from the US, so I don't know if the data is the same in other countries. 40% of women ages 22 and younger are iron deficient. It's similar prevalence in the UK. 40% under 22, do you say, are iron deficient. That's extraordinary. It is, and it's often dismissed because people can have iron deficiency and not have anemia. And often people are told if they don't have anemia, don't need to worry about it but that is incorrect and iron deficiency itself is a medical condition with consequences. So how many mils on average, as a

scientist I always like data, how many mils on average would a person's menstruating lose during a menstrual period? So it's about 80 milliliters which doesn't seem that much. Wow. Yeah. It doesn't. But there's also cervical discharge and vaginal discharge.

And so the amount that comes out may actually be larger. There's also the decidua, which is kind of the line, which isn't counted in that. So the actual blood comes from tests where they do radio labeled stuff and to see how much blood has been lost. So the actual blood itself is 80 milliliters, but it may seem like more than that. Okay, so you might have double the amount actually coming out, but it's mixed with, you know, other fluids and other issues. Yeah, so all the studies that look at the actual

volume of blood, they're not, they're either weighing pads, or they're actually doing these sort of radio labeledlabeled blood samples to try and figure out how much has been lost. And so we say 80 milliliters, understanding that for some people that might look, it may be more than that based on the amount of discharge and other things that are going on. So, Jen, having explained that really well, and thank you, and I've already learned a lot, and it sounds like Sarah's learned something as well already. What's the biggest misconception that you find people have about menstruation?

One is that having heavy bleeding is normal. It's something that people should just suck up or suffer. And again, we have this sort of epidemic of iron deficiency amongst young people, which is really not acceptable. You know, I think that if you have a lot of pain, that that's normal and you should suck it up. And, you know, there's sort of this dichotomy of either people saying, oh, women are able to tolerate more pain or they're complainers. Like, you know, it's sort of like, I always say being a woman is like walking on the edge of a knife. You're either too much in one or

too much in the other, right? You know exactly what I mean. So there's that. And so people who have terribly painful periods get untreated and they don't get investigated. Lots of pain is not just normal for everyone to have to experience? Well, I always tell people that if the pain is interfering with your activities of daily living,

then it should be evaluated. I think that there are some people who have minimal cramping and don't have much and there's other people who are at the other end of the spectrum and there's people everywhere in between. And unfortunately pain is a byproduct of menstruation. That's how, you know, it takes uterine contractions to get the blood out. It takes uterine contractions to stop the bleeding. And so that is part of it. But for some people it can be very painful. And Jen, just to understand that actually, I just wanna make sure I'm saying,

is that what is causing the pain around the time of your period? So yeah, so the uterine contractions are a big part of it. They can be quite intense, as we sort of talked about in the rapid fire, the intensity of the pressure can be the same as in the second stage of labor, which is when you're pushing.

You know, you're talking 120 millimeters of mercury, it's a lot of pressure. Like, you know, when you blow up a blood pressure cuff, you're blowing it up more than 120 millimeters of mercury, sort of for that. You know, and that's quite uncomfortable, right? When you're getting your blood pressure checked and then it goes down and you're like, okay, that's better.

And this is, why is your body doing this? Well, one, to get the lining of the uterus out. So the contractions help move things along. Also to squeeze blood vessels, right? So, you know, when you're bleeding, you put pressure on something, so it's actually applying pressure. So your body is both, it's a bit like you're saying there,

for this is a little bit like delivering a baby, like it's squeezing this out. Yeah, yeah, it's pushing things out. And then it's compressed, it's doing its own sort of tourniquet on the inside to shut down the bleeding. Yeah, and then that reduces blood flow to the uterus. So there also is probably pain related to ischemia, low blood flow.

Prostaglandins, which are released, which are hormones that are sort of produced locally at the site of injury or inflammation, those cause pain. And so there's other inflammatory chemicals that are also probably contributing as well. And some people who have more pain, you know, they may have stronger contractions. They may have uncoordinated contractions. So that might be more painful and you know, or they may have heavier bleeding and that can be part of it or they could have a medical condition that's you know contributing to pain like endometriosis. There are people who have you know, very minimal cramps and like yeah, it's a nuisance,

but you know, but I can deal with it. There's people who are really debilitated. So you said some people have them as strong as if you're actually having birth contractions. Yeah. What can we do to counterbalance that? So ibuprofen, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, naproxen, and even starting them a day before, like if you have an idea when your period is going to start, so they can be very effective at reducing menstrual cramps. I think it's important to point out that

if those don't work, it could be because you have something else going on like endometriosis, which is a condition where tissue very similar to the lining of the uterus is growing outside in the pelvic cavity. But also, I think it's about 10% of people that these drugs just don't work for them. So it's just kind of they don't help. Then all of the hormonal methods of birth control can be very effective. And so a hormonal IUD, the birth control pill, the Nexplanon implants, the Depo-pervera injection,

those are all very effective ways. And they work by one, the implant, the injection, and the pills work because they stop ovulation, but also there's a hormone in them called progestin, which is a synthetic form of progesterone. And progestin keeps the lining of the uterus very, very thin. So when there's less lining to come out, there tends to also be less cramping. So, and you can take these medications every single day so you don't even get a period. So that's also an advantage.

Yeah, and it's interesting because the hot topics amongst many of my friends who are in their late 40s is either menopause or thinking about their children who are having quite extreme symptoms, some of them. And something I know they would be desperate for me to ask you while you're talking about this is, is it safe from a young age for someone who's 14, 15, 16 to go on to some of these contraceptive pills in order to alleviate these symptoms, these kind of cramps? Yeah, so we do think it is safe and I think that unfortunately hormonal contraception gets a very bad rap on social media because

fear sells. And if you think about the risk to you medically of having untreated painful periods, so people just think about, oh, well, you're missing school. But we know that people who have very severe period pain are more likely to develop other pain conditions in their life, and that we think that early exposure to severe pain can prime the nervous system in a way to actually heighten the pain experience, meaning it makes you more likely

to develop other pain conditions. So could we be setting somebody up for more likely getting migraines later in life? Could we be setting them up for other medical conditions by under treating their pain? Never mind if they have to miss two days of school a cycle, then that could affect their academic performance, which could affect getting into the university they want to go, could affect their job performance, could affect their career.

So it's really important for people to think about this, not just as, well, it hurts, but which is important itself to treat, because people deserve to have their pain treated. But what are the ramifications of untreated pain, right? So then you think about it from that standpoint, that the birth control pill, the IUD, the Nexplan, they would all be a net positive.

And so, yeah, so we think that they're very safe to be on. There is some conflicting data on the risk of depression related to starting hormonal contraception. And the data is very conflicting. And there are some studies that show that there could be an association for some people and some studies that show that it isn't. If we say maybe it could be, if we err on that side of caution, then the incidence of depression associated with the pill for teenagers might be one in 200. But that's not certain.

It absolutely could be less than that. And I think one of the problems with the data is, so people start the birth control pill because of something. They don't just like, I'm totally fine and I don't have a new partner and I'm just going to go on the pill because. So teens can be in domestic violence situations, right? So starting the pill could, that could be part of that. They could be in a relationship that's having an impact. They could be starting the pill because they have PMS, which is associated with mood disturbances. And maybe they actually have depression and not PMS and it's been misdiagnosed. So they're not getting their depression treated. Polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a reason many people go on the pill,

is associated with a higher risk of depression and suicide. So it's very difficult to study. It's an active area of research, but I think that people always have to look at the reason you're going on and there is a massive impact of untreated pain. And you know the idea then, so then what are we supposed to do? Just let kids curl up in the corner and like you know that that's not a solution. Jen we're we're running short of time but I do want to pick up on this comment that you talked about earlier about the iron deficiency, because you described something like 40% of girls under 22, which sounds huge.

It is, yeah. And I've also got Sarah as well. So both of you here, I really wanna make sure we follow up. That sounds like very actionable advice. Like, what can you do about this? Yeah, so if you are someone who menstruates and you have symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, hair loss, you just don't feel right, you need, you know,

and you get a period. So if you're somebody who hasn't had a period for five years because you've got on a hormonal IUD, then you know, you could have iron deficiency for another reason, but most of the younger ones are related to menstrual. You need to not just get a blood count to check for anemia. You need to also get a ferritin level because a ferritin is a reflection

of the iron stores in the body because you don't want to be brushed off. You can have a normal blood count and not have anemia and still have severe iron deficiency. I diagnose that maybe every single day in my practice because iron deficiency is associated with a lot of other symptoms. So I'm often testing people because of those other symptoms. And the number of women that I identify every week, you know, who have iron deficiency is pretty staggering, which fits with the data that we see. And so I think people need to get their ferritin level checked. And if their ferritin level is low, they shouldn't accept that that's normal, that that's okay.

It needs treatment. And if oral iron's not working, then there's intravenous iron, which is actually really very safe intravenous iron now. And also, the reason for the iron deficiency needs to be investigated. So someone needs to ask you about your periods and if you're soaking pads, if all these things, because there's treatment for heavy periods as well and their investigations may need to happen too. You talked about oral supplements of iron and there's some fascinating research coming out now to show the benefits of if you are taking iron supplements of having them every other

day, there's a particular chemical increases when you have an iron supplement that actually prevents you absorbing too much of the iron. Because again, our body's really clever mechanisms to make sure we don't iron overload. And so actually, if you can miss out a day means that you'll then absorb it, you know, 48 hours later. Yet if you're having it every day, this particular chemical that stops the absorption is at its peak and then blocks the absorption. I hope you found the information in this week's episode useful. If you're interested in improving your gut health, you might want to download our free Gut Guide. It's packed with recipes and science-backed information to help you on your journey towards

better health. Go to zoe.com slash gut guide to download it for free. Or if you're looking for another podcast to listen to, we have a lot more in our back catalogue. Would you like to know how to reduce your risk of dementia or how to make the most of coffee's hidden health benefits? Search for these episodes on your favorite podcast player.