I’m one of the many women who can’t take estrogen due to a history of migraines. It makes things… interesting.
I use nexplanon, which gives me extremely long, heavy periods (and I am not joking: three 5-10 day periods in a row with 3 days in between) but I had a bad experience with an IUD, am bad at taking pills and the mini-pill is extremely sensitive to timing, and will probably have children within 2 years so the jab is not for me.
So what I’ve been experimenting with is two medications my doctor has given me to stop my period (only one at a time): Ponstan and Tranexamic acid. Still not sure which works better but they each seem to be pretty good at lightening and probably also shortening things. I am not sure how they’d help your dysmenorrhea though because of yours only being the first four hours, and you take the medication once bleeding starts.
FWIW I haven’t noticed productivity issues one way or the other. How do people notice this sort of thing? Like, was it obvious, or did you chart productivity vs period somehow and saw the trend?
Wow the long and heavy periods sound insane and exhausting. Yeah I have asked doctors about ways to mitigate period pain—seems like “4 hours of pretty bad cramps” was not enough for them to recommend anything beyond going on the pill.
I have not been explicitly collecting data on productivity vs period. I do track my cycle and (when I remember) my symptoms throughout the month. I have a few reasons to believe that my menstrual cycle greatly influences my productivity:
The obvious fact that I can’t do anything productive during the first 4 hours of my period.
For me, minor physical symptoms like stomach ache, headache, bloating happen during certain points of my cycle. These symptoms make me slightly worse at concentrating / socializing, which decreases my productivity.
Sometimes there are days where I am unusually productive. They never happen during or right before my period.
I think the conversations here have inspired me to track more data more reliably!
It took me like 3 doctors before one of them suggested the medications I’m trying now, and that was a doctor at a sexual health centre. This included one doctor who, when he saw I had low iron and I told him it was probably my frequent, long, heavy periods gave me a PPI (in case I had some stomach issue stopping iron absorption—because when he asked me if I had heartburn I said once every 2 or 3 months after eating like crap I have a little bit that an antacid fixes immediately), an endoscopy (in case I had, idk, a digestive issue? this required sedation, fasting, and a day off work so wasn’t exactly Fun), and finally said it probably was my period and I should probably go on a different BC (so I’d resigned myself to trying an IUD, which is its own kind of pain, and if I’d had the sexual side effects I attribute to my last IUD again I’d have to have it removed after only a month or two so FUN).
So I went to the sexual health centre to discuss options for other BC (since I was also considering the shot) and she was like “you could try this medicine?” and I was confused because the medicine while not free was cheap enough (about AU$30 per cycle, or less than an hour’s pre-tax wage for me). I went back to my original doctor to refill the prescription and asked why he didn’t recommend it to me and he said kind of dismissively “it doesn’t always work” and after that I read research on it and apparently it works 30% of the time which for me is, you know, A PRETTY GOOD SHOT.
So yeah, I don’t know how firm or insistent you’ve been with doctors, or how accessible doctors are in your country, but being very firm (“these cramps are no good and I need to do something about them! Is there something we could try?”) might help? Is going on a hormonal BC an option for you—I can’t have estrogen but if I could it would just be a case of taking “the pill” without the placebo weeks which would stop my period altogether.
But yeah, I’d take my previous long periods over a 4 hour debilitating cramp with a regular, say 3 day period, so I’d encourage you to keep asking doctors as those cramps sound so intense.
I’m one of the many women who can’t take estrogen due to a history of migraines. It makes things… interesting.
I use nexplanon, which gives me extremely long, heavy periods (and I am not joking: three 5-10 day periods in a row with 3 days in between) but I had a bad experience with an IUD, am bad at taking pills and the mini-pill is extremely sensitive to timing, and will probably have children within 2 years so the jab is not for me.
So what I’ve been experimenting with is two medications my doctor has given me to stop my period (only one at a time): Ponstan and Tranexamic acid. Still not sure which works better but they each seem to be pretty good at lightening and probably also shortening things. I am not sure how they’d help your dysmenorrhea though because of yours only being the first four hours, and you take the medication once bleeding starts.
FWIW I haven’t noticed productivity issues one way or the other. How do people notice this sort of thing? Like, was it obvious, or did you chart productivity vs period somehow and saw the trend?
Wow the long and heavy periods sound insane and exhausting. Yeah I have asked doctors about ways to mitigate period pain—seems like “4 hours of pretty bad cramps” was not enough for them to recommend anything beyond going on the pill.
I have not been explicitly collecting data on productivity vs period. I do track my cycle and (when I remember) my symptoms throughout the month. I have a few reasons to believe that my menstrual cycle greatly influences my productivity:
The obvious fact that I can’t do anything productive during the first 4 hours of my period.
For me, minor physical symptoms like stomach ache, headache, bloating happen during certain points of my cycle. These symptoms make me slightly worse at concentrating / socializing, which decreases my productivity.
Sometimes there are days where I am unusually productive. They never happen during or right before my period.
I think the conversations here have inspired me to track more data more reliably!
It took me like 3 doctors before one of them suggested the medications I’m trying now, and that was a doctor at a sexual health centre. This included one doctor who, when he saw I had low iron and I told him it was probably my frequent, long, heavy periods gave me a PPI (in case I had some stomach issue stopping iron absorption—because when he asked me if I had heartburn I said once every 2 or 3 months after eating like crap I have a little bit that an antacid fixes immediately), an endoscopy (in case I had, idk, a digestive issue? this required sedation, fasting, and a day off work so wasn’t exactly Fun), and finally said it probably was my period and I should probably go on a different BC (so I’d resigned myself to trying an IUD, which is its own kind of pain, and if I’d had the sexual side effects I attribute to my last IUD again I’d have to have it removed after only a month or two so FUN).
So I went to the sexual health centre to discuss options for other BC (since I was also considering the shot) and she was like “you could try this medicine?” and I was confused because the medicine while not free was cheap enough (about AU$30 per cycle, or less than an hour’s pre-tax wage for me). I went back to my original doctor to refill the prescription and asked why he didn’t recommend it to me and he said kind of dismissively “it doesn’t always work” and after that I read research on it and apparently it works 30% of the time which for me is, you know, A PRETTY GOOD SHOT.
So yeah, I don’t know how firm or insistent you’ve been with doctors, or how accessible doctors are in your country, but being very firm (“these cramps are no good and I need to do something about them! Is there something we could try?”) might help? Is going on a hormonal BC an option for you—I can’t have estrogen but if I could it would just be a case of taking “the pill” without the placebo weeks which would stop my period altogether.
But yeah, I’d take my previous long periods over a 4 hour debilitating cramp with a regular, say 3 day period, so I’d encourage you to keep asking doctors as those cramps sound so intense.