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| Always see a doctor for heavy periods to rule out many of the common causes of menorrhagia. There are many known causes of menorrhagia such as cancer and fibroids that need to be evaluated and treated by a doctor. |
Below I've listed the various factors and dietary considerations that I've some across in my research and experience that may be related to menorrhagia. There's probably more factors than the ones listed here, but these are the factors that I've read about or had direct experience with.
Factors often linked to high estrogen levels:
Lifestyle factors often recommended to lower estrogen levels (and possibly help menorrhagia due to high estrogen levels) include:
Female athletes who exercise excessively and eat low fat, calorie restricted diets often stop having their periods due to a lack of estrogen. This condition is called the female athlete triad. While really low estrogen levels and a lack of menstrual periods are not healthy for women and can lead to osteoporosis, the athlete triad does provide a clue that eating less and exercising more does lower estrogen levels.
Since high estrogen levels and cancer tend to go hand in hand, there are a lot of good web sites on cancer prevention diets that also tend to lower estrogen levels. Here are a couple of interesting ones:
Vitamin K deficiency is another possible cause of menorrhagia
Factors
often linked to vitamin K deficiency:
I don't know if they block vitamin K specifically, but according to one of my health magazines, the following botanicals may increase chances of bleeding:
So if you have a bleeding problem already, you may want to keep this in mind before ingesting any of the above substances.
Lifestyle factors often recommended to correct a vitamin K deficiency (and possibly help menorrhagia due to vitamin K deficiency) include:
For information on the diet changes that I made to prevent my bleeding problems from a combination of a genetic disorder and a vitamin K deficiency, see my section on Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Diet.
Factors often linked to hypothyroidism:
Lifestyle factors often recommended to treat hypothyroidism (and possibly help menorrhagia due to hypothyroidism) include:
Web sites with interesting information on hypothyroidism:
Factors often linked to connective tissue disorders:
For more information on connective tissue disorders see my Connective tissue disorder web site Even for people without a full-blown connective tissue disorder, it is interesting to note that isolated conditions such as mitral valve prolapse, hypermobility (double jointedness) and scoliosis have all been linked to bleeding tendencies. See my section on vitamin K deficiency for more on this topic, and the possible links between vitamin K deficiencies and connective tissue disorders.
For information on the diet
changes that I made to prevent my bleeding problems from a combination
of EDS and a vitamin K deficiency, see my section on Ehlers-Danlos
Syndrome Diet.
Iron deficiency anemia and menorrhagia
Iron deficiency anemia has been noted as a possible cause of menorrhagia, which is interesting because women with menorrhagia are also at high risk of iron deficiency anemia due to frequent blood loss. Iron deficiency anemia can be detected through a blood test. Here are some good web sites on iron deficiency anemia detection and correction:
At least one study has shown a correlation between iron-deficiency anemia and vitamin D deficiency in chidren. The researchers thought that iron deficiency may impair the absorption of vitamin D. So these conditions tend to occur together in children, it may be prudent to consider the possibility that these conditions may go together in adults as well.
Please note that the lists above are not meant to be exhaustive or definitive factors in menorrhagia. There has been very little research on menorrhagia and diet and other lifestyle factors. The factors listed are, however, the factors that I've either read about in some of my more credible nutrition books or had personal experience with so I thought they were worth posting to my site. It's unfortunate that there has not been more research on the role of diet in menorrhagia. I know from my personal experience dietary factors played a big role in my bleeding problems, and I suspect the same is true for other women as well.
For more information and other factors not listed here, please see my main site on Menorrhagia: Often Overlooked Dietary, Drug and Genetic Causes of Heavy Menstrual Bleeding.
Also see the following recommended link:
www.emedicine.comThere is very detailed information written up heavy menstrual bleeding on the www.emedicine.com site under their Menorrhagia section . According to the Emedicine site, menorrhagia can result from:
While it lacks a section on nutritional causes of menorrhagia, such as vitamin K deficiencies, for a conventional medicine site it is superb in its exhaustive analysis of many the possible causes of menorrhagia. The menorrhagia page on the site includes suggestions for doctors as to the kinds of patient history questions they should ask, what to look for in the clinical exam, possible lab and imaging tests and recommended treatments for menorrhagia. This site is meant mainly for emergency medicine doctors, but it still generally readable for the average patient. If I ever have problems with menorrhagia again I would print this article out and review it with my doctor, along with the a sampling of the studies from my main menorrhagia web site regarding nutritional causes of menorrhagia. Based on my experience, most doctors will pay attention to medical articles like this written by other doctors who are experts in their fields. Conventional medical doctors, with their customary 15 minute appointment times per patient, may not to have time to look up articles like this on their own, but I've found that if I print out them out and give them to my doctors, they will usually read them and often follow the advice listed. In my experience, the majority of the doctors I went to for my menorrhagia never checked me for even half of the possible causes listed on the emedicine site. The doctors I've been to were mainly interested in putting me on birth control pills to stop my bleeding, after ruling out just a few of other causes, like tumors, fibroids or cancer. However, while birth control pills often do work to control bleeding, they usually solve a symptom, not a root problem. To paraphrase a saying of Dr. Roger J. Williams, birth control pills weren't going to solve the root cause of my bleeding problems because my bleeding wasn't caused by a birth control pill deficiency. My body was bleeding because I had an inherited genetic disorder that made me predisposed to bleed easily combined with a nutritional deficiency of vitamin K. Putting me on birth control pills did nothing to treat my underlying health problems and merely masked a valuable clue as to what was really wrong with me. If you enter "menorrhagia" in the search field on the www.emedicine.com site, here's just a small sampling of some of the different disorders that pop up in the search return field: Menstruation Disorders - Conditions linked to menorrhagia include "Anovulatory dysfunctional uterine bleeding (DUB), Immature HPO axis, adolescent DUB, Hyperandrogenic chronic anovulation (e.g., polycystic ovarian syndrome, adrenal hyperplasia), Pregnancy-related complications, Sexually transmitted diseases, Chronic illnesses, Blood dyscrasia, Trauma, Drugs, Endocrine disorders, Neoplasms" Hyperviscosity Syndrome - "Hyperviscosity syndrome refers to the clinical sequelae of increased blood viscosity. Increased serum viscosity usually results from increased circulating serum immunoglobulins and can be seen in Waldenström macroglobulinemia and multiple myeloma." It would seem highly logical to have these and the other underlying causes of menorrhagia ruled out before either just learning to live with the condition or consenting to any risky or expensive treatments. Once a woman has a hysterectomy, it can't be undone. |
Visit my connective tissue disorder home page or site map to use my search feature, and see information on Vitamin K, salicylates and other topics related to menorrhagia.
| If you have bleeding problems as well as skeletal problems linked to weakened bones such as scoliosis, osteoporosis, fractures or pectus excavatum, you may find the book Preventing and Reversing Osteoporosis of interest. It has a whole chapter on vitamin K and bone health. |
See my main page on Menorrhagia: Often Overlooked Dietary, Drug and Genetic Causes of Heavy Menstrual Bleeding for more information on this subject.
These sections may be also of special interest:
Magnesium Deficiency & Menstrual Migraines - the links between headaches and nutrition.
Finding a Nutrition Oriented Physician - includes information on medical doctors, plus N.D.s, nutritionists, bodywork therapists and nutritional testing
Osteopenia and Osteoporosis - recommended books for prevention and treatment.
Nose Bleeds: Overlooked Causes of Epistaxis
Ovarian Pain from Vitamin K Deficiency
Health Links: Contains sections on vitamin K and salicylates
Health Conditions - linked to Vitamin K deficiency
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