Can you stop your period? Every woman I know has asked herself what life would be like if she didn’t have a period at all. Don’t get me wrong. There are lots of completely legit reasons that you’d want to turn it back on, but there are times where you just wish your little monthly visitor, would just stay home.
You’re probably tired of having cramps, or the discomfort from bloating, or just the inconvenience of having to adjust your life a little when it would be much easier to live without her (your period).
Besides menopause, what can you do to stop having your period, permanently? Let’s simmer on that thought for a moment. Permanent is a long, long time. Is it possible to take a break from periods or to reduce the number or frequency of having periods in a typical year? Yes.
Will Your Period Build up Inside You?
This is not an uncommon question, but the answer is, “no.” Your period isn’t getting backed up, and you won’t have multiple periods all at once to catch up if you “turn it off” or at least “turn it down” for a while.
A Note of Caution
If you are probably too young to be experiencing menopause, then remember that your period “is”an entirely normal process and you should have them regularly. If you are not, you should seek medical advice to understand what’s happening in your body.
Use Hormonal Birth Control to Stop Having Periods
Ordinary oral contraceptives (the Pill) are designed to keep you from getting for as long as you are on the medication. One of the birth control side effects are that they help you manage your period. The way most of them work is that they have three weeks that have the active ingredient (hormones) and then one week of pills that are placebo. If you are on monophasic contraception, all you have to do is just skip the placebo week and start on another packet. You can do this for multiple packets at a time, effectively gaining complete control over your period. There are also other types of birth control that intentionally limit your periods to about 4 a year (two commonly known ones are Seasonale and Seasonique).
The risk in using this method to completely stop your period is that, because of the way the birth control works, your uterine lining builds up over time, and can cause complications further down the road, including cancer and infertility. If you want to limit your period to only a couple of times a year, you should talk to your doctor and see if your body would react well to certain kinds of birth control. Talk to your doctor if you want to permanently stop your period, because doctors have access to certain resources that might make it a viable possibility. Just be aware that any methods that will completely stop your period will also stop you from being able to have children in the future.
Lifestyle (Diet, Exercise)
It’s a simple fact of life that eventually you will go through menopause and your periods will stop forever. However, in the meanwhile, you can make some lifestyle choices that have the potential to naturally reduce or even stop your periods. For example, it’s relatively well-documented that consistent, rigorous exercise can seriously reduce your period, even to the point of stopping it. However, unless you’re an athlete, it’s unlikely that you will be able or have enough time to exercise enough to stop it.
You can also add and subtract certain foods from your diet to reduce (and in some cases, stop) your period. Try to avoid spices such as garlic, ginger, or sesame, and foods like peppers and papayas. There are also certain herbs that you can make into tea that ancient Chinese doctors used to prescribe to help with menstruation problems, such as angelica root, raspberry leaves, garden sage (lady mantle) and shepherd’s purse. These herbs are scientifically known to stop heavy menstrual bleeding, and depending on your body, may completely stop your periods.
Having Periods after Hysterectomy
The only way outside of menopause to completely, utterly stop you from ever having another period again is getting a hysterectomy, or having a surgery that removes some (or all) of your sexual organs (specifically the cervix, fallopian tubes, ovaries and uterus). There are a couple of different kinds of hysterectomies that remove varying amounts of your organs, but they will all effectively end your period forever, because without them, your body has no need to shed your uterine lining, because it would be impossible for you to have a baby without any of those organs. There are a lot of risks and side effects of having a hysterectomy, which may be why most of the hysterectomies that take place are in women that have gotten cancer on their organs.
Periods are a natural part of being a woman, and as painful and inconvenient as they can be, their presence show that you are basically healthy. The most effective way to control your periods is through birth control, the most effective way to end your periods is through a hysterectomy. The best thing is just to struggle through your periods. If you are looking for some other options or are serious about stopping your periods, you should talk to your doctor or at least get a doctor’s opinion.
