MENSTRUAL MYTHS AND FACTS!!

Over the years, women's reproductive health has been widely misunderstood. The fact that women bleed every month has been the cause of much fear and justification for abuse and inequality. In many places in the world, this continues.

There is no scientific foundation for the social stigma women have endured as a result of their reproductive role. The road to empowerment begins with education and understanding. Let's take a look at some menstrual myths through the ages--and surprisingly, some that continue to prevail today.
Myth: Monthly periods are necessary

Fact: Monthly periods are normal,
but not necessarily necessary

While monthly periods are normal, they are not necessary. There is no medical reason to maintaining the monthly period associated with oral contraceptives. In fact, you actually don't menstruate while on hormone based oral contraceptives. Oral contraceptives were designed that way for consumer acceptance. When oral contraceptives were first introduced, marketers believed that women might be more apt to accept the Pill if it didn't eliminate their monthly period. The shedding of the endometrium (the uterine lining which builds up following ovulation to house a fertilized egg)-i.e., the monthly period-does not occur in women on an oral contraceptive since these are designed to inhibit release of an egg from the ovary. If you miss a period and are not on an oral contraceptive, consult your healthcare provider because skipped periods can be a sign of pregnancy or other medical conditions.


Myth: While on the Pill, you still menstruate

Fact: While on the Pill, you do not menstruate;
you experience withdrawal bleeding

Most women on the Pill or other hormone-based contraceptives do not ovulate, and therefore, do not build-up a thicker uterine lining which they need to shed along with an unfertilized egg--the purpose of a real menstrual period. The monthly bleeding women on the Pill experience therefore is not a real "menstrual period," but actually a "withdrawal bleed" induced by the withdrawal of hormones during the pill-free or placebo week.
In the early 1900s, women experienced approximately one-fourth the number of periods women experience today.



Myth: Menstrual periods purge negativity

Fact: The purpose of menstruation is to
release an unfertilized egg

Hippocrates introduced the false idea that a woman's period actually acted to purge her of bad moods. This idea of menstruation as having a beneficial purging effect was the foundation behind the widely-accepted medical practice of bloodletting, inadvertently causing the death of many patients, including American's first president George Washington. Bloodletting was long ago abandoned as a medical practice.


Myth: Sex with a menstruating woman is dangerous

Fact: Having sex during menstruation is
perfectly safe for both partners
In 60 A.D., the author of the first encyclopedia Natural History falsely claimed that when the sun was in full lunar eclipse, sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman could be fatal. These inaccurate assertions went unchallenged until 1492. In 1983, the World Health Organization studied the way women in 10 different countries feel about menstruation. In every country, the majority of women believed that sexual intercourse should be avoided during a woman's monthly period, although there is no factual basis for this belief.


Myth: Menstrual blood is poisonous

Fact: Menstrual blood is NOT poisonous

History's first encyclopedia also falsely claimed that menstrual blood was a deadly poison and that if menstruation were to coincide with an eclipse of the moon or sun, irreparable evils would result. As recently as 1952, Olive and George Smith of Harvard University inaccurately proposed the existence of menotoxin, a toxic substance in menstrual blood based on a study where laboratory animals injected with menstrual blood died. When the experiments were repeated by a scientist who added antibiotics to the injection, however, the animals lived, suggesting the lethal effect found by the Smiths was actually due to bacteria in the blood, not the blood itself.


To learn more about how history has impacted women's health.

Source: Coutinho EM, Segal SJ. Is Menstruation Obsolete? Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1999