Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Responder: Common Male Questions About Female Healath

In Elon's first reader post, he asked a few questions about women's health that surprised me. The first was that if menstrual cycles are how women get cleansed, then do obese women who do not have their menstrual cycle not get cleansed? I never thought about this problem before and realized just how serious that it is. If the uterine walls are not shed on a regular basis, they can become abnormally thick and have a higher risk for uterine cancer. Regular menstrual cycles shed the walls and reduce this risk, but if regular cycles are not an option, then medication or surgery is the best option in order to ensure the health of the woman. 
The second question was what other problems can arise from not having a regular menstrual cycle. In order to answer this, I think it's important to note what causes irregular menstrual cycles in the first place. Irregular cycles can be caused by pregnancy or breast-feeding, eating disorders, extreme weight loss, excessive eating, uterine fibroids, endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, and premature ovarian failure ( As you can see, there is a very large number of things that cause irregular cycles. All of these causes are linked to other health problems as well. Because of this, it is very hard to find out what not having regular menstrual cycles truly affects.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Bela,

    Here's the comment I just posted over at Elon's post:

    "Hi Elon,

    Hey, now this is a question I can answer! Menstruation is not about cleansing women, it's a byproduct of reproductive cycling and was quite infrequent in our ancestral past. Here's something I've written on this:"