A regular menstrual cycle is a sign of a healthy reproductive system. However, sometimes periods can disappear unexpectedly. In this article, we explore the five most common reasons for a missing period and what you can do about it.
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Excessive testosterone
Both men and women produce testosterone. But women produce significantly lower levels than those secreted by men.
Testosterone plays an important role in regulating reproductive activities in women. It helps in growing up, strengthening the bone structure, and repairing reproductive tissues.
But one key testosterone benefit in women is initialing sex drive. Thus without this hormone, your libido would be nil, meaning you wouldn’t respond to sexual stimuli.
On the other hand, high levels of testosterone in women can cause polycystic ovary syndrome. A lot of androgen causes sacs to develop on the ovaries, which then disturbs the release of eggs promptly. This situation brings irregular periods.
One month you could experience a light discharge, the next very heavy and long periods while at sometimes, poor distribution of start and end of your menstruation.
PCOS could be the reason for a lengthy delay in your periods.
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Stress
Anxiety and panic attacks are common in our everyday lives. But when the stress level is high and constant, your body finds a way to handle it.
The body mechanism decides whether you should engage the pressure or avoid it, a situation known as fight or flight. It produces two hormones to help stabilize anxiety.
Your body releases cortisol and adrenalin. Adrenaline increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure, and increases your stamina.
Similarly, cortisol also helps to increase glucose in your blood and repair damaged tissues. These hormones help you calm your stress.
But the production of these hormones affects your ovulation. Cortisol reduces your pituitary functions. This finding is published in a 2015 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
During the ovulation process, your body needs more progesterone and human chorionic gonadotropic hormones. But under stress, your body acts to preserve itself and thus limits these secretions.
And so does your periods.
According to Women's Healthcare Associates, stress has the ability to trigger your body's fight or flight response due to our inherent wiring. When you find yourself in this mode, it exerts an influence on your hormone levels. Consequently, these hormonal changes have a direct impact on your ovulation cycle and, naturally, your menstrual patterns. This can lead to the possibility of experiencing delayed periods or, in some cases, a complete cessation of menstruation for several consecutive months.
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Pregnancy
Well, the essence of ovulation is conception. And your period happens each month when this process fails to occur.
So how do you get pregnant? Well, the menstrual cycle prepares you for conception. If it doesn’t occur, your uterus shed its lining, which is essentially the period you undergo.
Ovulation occurs in four phases. Menstruation, follicular phase, ovulation and luteal phase.
Menstruation comprises the blood and mucus from the uterus lining. It takes place for three to seven days each month.
The follicular stage occurs during the next two weeks after the start of your ovulation. Here, one follicle develops into an egg. The uterus wall also thickens in preparation.
Ovulation then occurs when the mature egg drops down the fallopian tubes to the uterus. This happens once a month.
Once the ovulation phase is complete, the ovary release progesterone so that the uterus allows the fertilized egg to attach to the uterus wall.
Once the pregnancy occurs, progesterone levels remain high, supporting the fetus and preventing periods from occurring.
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Medications
Medicines and surgical processes can also make your periods MIA. You may be taking drugs to treat depression and blood pressure and even control birth.
Antidepressants feature serotonin uptake inhibitors (SSRIs). This compound increases prolactin to saturated levels, thus inhibiting luteinizing hormones necessary for ovulation.
Similarly, blood pressure or antihypertensive medicines also increase the levels of prolactin.
Birth control pills mimic the hormonal process of ovulation. Pills stop the release of eggs from the ovary.
They thicken cervical mucus, thus making it hard for the sperm to enter the uterus. Also, contraceptives thin the uterus preventing a fertilized egg from attaching to it.
So how important is prolactin in ovulation? When the prolactin level is normal in your body, it allows the secretion of other hormones.
But when the levels exceed a certain concentration, prolactin interferes with the production of estrogen and progesterone.
And once progesterone is absent, the ovulation process is hampered. As a result, you fail to notice any menstruation.
Also, the London Gynaecology blog informs us that, the use of steroid medications like prednisolone can disrupt menstrual cycles, causing irregularities, prolonged durations, and occasionally heavier flow. These effects are commonly observed after extended periods of steroid usage. Additionally, alternative forms of contraceptives apart from oral pills can also exert an impact on the regularity of the menstrual cycle.
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Strenuous exercise
Moderate exercises are good for reproductive health. They prime your body and make ovulation a breeze, while also increasing estrogen production.
But when you regularly engage in strenuous physical activities, estrogen levels dwindle, as sex hormone binding globin (SHBG) glues to free estrogen in a serum.
This situation has been clinically studied and published in the Public Health Science Division of the April 15 release of Cancer Research.
It states that estrogen levels decline by 19% in premenopausal women who engage in five-hour weekly aerobic exercise.
It further states that cardio exercises disintegrate estrogen structure in estrogen-sensitive tissues of the breast, and flush away any surplus. This happens through sweating.
This is important and beneficial when dealing with tissues that are susceptible to breast cancer. But it harms ovulation and menstruation.
Straining accelerates the loss of body fat and destroys a lot of cells. When this occurs, your body prioritizes the repair of essential cells over initiating ovulation.
According to the Office on Women's Health, excessive exercise can result in skipped menstrual periods or even a complete cessation of periods. Irregular or absent periods are frequently observed in athletes and women who engage in rigorous training on a consistent basis. However, if you've been inactive for an extended period and then suddenly embark on an intense fitness regimen, your menstrual cycle might also become irregular or come to a halt.
In conclusion, irregular periods are more common than you think, but periods suddenly being MIA from your life can be alarming. The mentioned reasons can help you understand your menstrual cycle and seek solutions for your issue.
Libido Enhancers To Enhance The Low Female Libido
Most of the women quite often tend to carry an enormous amount of guilt related to sexual issues. Low Female Libido may be caused by various significant driving forces but one of them is their guilt and also the careless approach to sexual relationships. When a woman senses inadequate about her sexual performance, she loses the sexual drive within the short span of time.
Women who have the Low Female Libido or experience it very soon in the sexual relationship generally claim that they are bored and unappealing. Hence, the only option that most of the women choose to enhance it is to start with a new relationship. As a consequence of which, women tend to have several relationships; none of them last for too long.
In fact, Low Female Libido is not generally caused by boredom, while indulging into any physical relationship; it runs on different scales. Resolving such complications typically requires two basic features i.e. Self-awareness and the other is the willingness to learn. The former refers to a certain pattern of behavior while the latter refers to the beginning when the pattern will repeat itself.
In most of the cases, the low level of libido can be enhanced when healthy sexual relationships become more and more prominent. It is much easier for a woman to search for a right partner and indulge in a trustworthy sexual relationship than to suffer from any type of sexual dysfunction.
Reasons for Low Female Libido
Libido is referred to as the sexual desire, or more specifically, a woman’s urge to indulge in the sexual relationship. The level of Libido depends on several physical and psychological factors. Depression, anxiety about the sexual performance and loss of interest to involve in sexual activity the partner is the major physical factors that result in the Low Female Libido.
The physical factors for the low levels of Libido include endocrine illness, body weight, painful intercourse, pregnancy, anemia, and low testosterone levels. The endocrine glands serve the functions of generating the hormones which are vital the living beings. Diseases like diabetes and hyperprolactinemia result in the low level of hormones generation and ultimately resulting in a low level of Libido.
Being malnourished or underweight can cause a severe decrease in the level of Libido because it will lead to hormone imbalance. The painful intercourse may also be one of the reasons which will cause a woman to avoid involving in any sexual activity. Several reasons like lack of estrogen, vaginal infections may be responsible for the painful intercourse.
Facts about Low Female Libido
Women always try to put the other desires and needs first and hence they don’t get much time for themselves. The brain is the storehouse of sexuality for all women. The sexuality is not just important for your partner, but also to your own health. Your emotions will play a lead role in deciding the level of your Libido. Some women may think, Low Female Libido is a shame but it’s not like that.