Lara Briden - The Period Revolutionary
Leading the change to better periods and hormones
Body literacy is learning to observe, chart, and interpret an ovulatory menstrual cycle.
With the 2019 news that women don’t need pill bleeds came the assurance that “women don’t need periods.” But is that accurate?
It’s true that women don’t need monthly pill withdrawal bleeds because they’re not periods, but women do need (or at least benefit from) monthly natural menstrual cycles because that’s how women make the hormones estradiol and progesterone.
Progesterone has been both ignored and wrongly blamed for side effects it does not cause. How did that happen?
For one thing, progesterone was discovered shortly after estrogen. Thus missing the opportunity to be part of the tidy hormone dichotomy of “testosterone for men and estrogen for women.” Also, progesterone could not (at first) be made into an oral medication, so was replaced by progestins.
The ovarian hormones estradiol and progesterone are beneficial for general health. That means natural ovulatory menstrual cycles are beneficial because ovulation is how women make those hormones.
Almost all types of hormonal birth control switch off ovarian function and, therefore, switch off the ovarian hormones estradiol, testosterone, and progesterone. Here’s a bit more about each method.