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Pink Period Pain Killers

There is so much wrong with this I’m not quite sure where to begin.

I like pink but must everything created with women in mind have to be pink? I mean really did anyone in the marketing team even think about it for a nano second? It pisses me off; all it does is make us pay 10 times the price because it’s fucking pink. Australia has banned pharmaceutical companies for targeting specific pains with their painkillers, I can see why.

A packet of Neurofen period capsules will set you back £3.79 for 14 and a home brand will cost you 35p for 16. Which means one of the pills from Neurofen will cost just 8p less then the whole box of home brand and its EXACTLY the same drug in it!

So they are a complete rip off.

Dysmenorrhea which is the medical term for painful periods, the exact number of how many women have this is unclear but the bods in the know (or are they) believe it to be around 20%, I would bet my life savings it was nearer 90%.

The reason it is so vague is because we don’t talk about it, we pop our pink period pain killers and crack on with life, ignoring our bodies in the midst of work, friends, family, children, sleeping, eating, sex, socialising and anything else we might get up to. It’s also the very thing that makes all of these activities near on impossible for many women.

I believe now a days we talk more openly about a lot of things, but periods still are up there with being kept very much private and hidden away. We never speak up about how much discomfort we are in, medicating and trying our hardest to push through the few days to a couple of weeks we are feeling this way.

It can be a slow burn this build up, over many weeks months and years. Most women have no idea about what is going on her cycle generally only noting down when the bleed actually starts and sometimes when it stops. I was that women for many years, so there is no judgement here ok?!

If ONLY charting was taught to girls at school, think of all that information we would have on ourselves from the day we began bleeding!

The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain, was a study from 2001 found that while women experience “more frequent and greater pain” than men, they are likely to “be less well treated than men for their painful symptoms”.

I have seen this first hand; many of the women that I work with have been through many health care providers before they find their way to me. Mostly utterly disillusioned at how long they have been banging on doors for help, but also that they have been mocked, thought to be exaggerating or making their symptoms up. This repeated cycle of being cast aside with little respect, dignity or sympathy leaves a very deep wound in women.

The length of diagnosis for many debilitating conditions like Endometriosis, Adenomyosis, PCOS, irregular and heavy bleeding, and fibroids to name a few is nothing short of a complete disaster for many women with the average diagnosis time of around 8 years.

The answer to all of this in my mind is relatively easy, we need earlier diagnosis time. How does that happen? With better education for women and also health providers, this is a critical step in achieving change.

Women’s health needs to be completely over hauled and updated to include the many other practices such as exercise, diet, and simple lifestyle changes that have radical affects to a women’s’ hormones. Not just offering pills and surgery, in fact if it didn’t take so long in the first place those things wouldn’t be needed as much.

Women need to have a clear understanding of how their body works so that they are able to red flay any changes. Periods don’t have to be this horrific event EVRY SINGLE MONTH. We need to reclaim the knowledge of our bodies and people like myself and many others out there are tirelessly breaking down the stigmas that shroud this very normal and what could be mundane event.

It is possible to have easier periods that don’t floor you, as a holistic women’s health practitioner I work with women over many weeks to help return them to a place of balance. The relief and smiles on faces when we get there are just amazing it really opens up new doors for every women I work with in such positive ways.

So if you are reaching for the pain medication every month and feel like you would like to make a change and work on your cycle as a whole with me get in touch I’m looking forward to speaking with you.

www.thewellwomanproject.com

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