Let it be known, eating a lot of ANY one food isn’t a diet solution (at the very least, common sense does tell us that much).  Eating a lot of one type of food so that you lose your menstrual cycle – this is taking lack of understanding of the human body to a whole new level.  But the most disturbing part of the whole thing; (because you didn’t think I was serious, right?) to think there is a person out there spreading this message, appealing to young women (and wearing nothing more than a loin cloth) gets my adrenals going faster than a techno beat in a nightclub.  As sure as your body knows how to breathe, how to blink, how to digest, how to pump blood around and so on – it knows how to menstruate.

It’s pretty plain and simple; if we weren’t meant to menstruate, we wouldn’t.

You might be wondering who would spread such a heartbreaking message. I’m not here to point the finger.  I’m not here to do anything other than share truths and open the minds of people who want to understand their bodies better and I’m sure by now we’ve established at least this, we’ve been hanging out here for years now.  I certainly won’t give the actual source of the misguided information any traffic or attention (and therefore I won’t reveal the source of the information) and let’s be honest here, this article wasn’t the first of it’s kind and sadly It’s highly unlikely it will be the last.   But when I read about how the raw vegan diet stripped this girl of her menstrual cycle and she was so joyous about it – devastated was an understatement.  Then, what really drove it home was the profile and appeal of this girl – that young women aspired to be like her and were being lead in a direction that couldn’t have been further from how our bodies are innately programmed to work.  To learn that the message goes on to get more disturbing, sharing with those who will listen (and the following is substantial) about the time she ‘fell off the wagon’ and started eating high fat, vegan (as opposed to no fat, vegan) and to her horror, her period came back!

My my – isn’t the body clever!

I tried to justify this shock story in my own mind; surely the media had blown the message out of proportion and that surely there wasn’t somebody out there saying menstruation was unhealthy? (although that’s isn’t an original idea, seems many health care practitioners are telling us it’s perfectly safe to skip a period – shame the means to do this is by use of the oral contraceptive pill!)  Seems even for what could have been blown out of proportion perhaps, the undertone of it all was that, instincts told this person that it felt good not to have a proper period – and that the body felt balanced and as if it were ovulating which felt good to her.  The reasonable question was posed ‘If it is so unhealthy for me not to have my period then why did I feel so amazing?  Everyone was saying you look amazing, your skin, your hair, everything is just balancing out.’

But having a period isn’t about how good you look, how thin you are or how great your skin is.  Having a menstrual cycle is the crux of wellness as a woman – the most femininely innate event your body was put on this planet to perform.

This women’s intentions may be good.  The major problem lies in the fact that the message being spread is harmful, especially to young women or the confused alike.  If your period is out of whack, please work to fix it, don’t lose it – that’s your very own neon flashing sign that your body isn’t happy or health needs a tune up, immediate attention and care.  Menstruation isn’t toxicity leaving the body (her words) nor are painful periods necessarily due to ‘toxicity’ or a toxic body.  Menstruation is a gift – a sure sign your body is potentially fertile (and sure, it may need further tweaking but you’re halfway there!).  Any women who’s had it taken away from her will be the first to tell you just how precious having your cycle is.  And what’s more, as women we rely on our cycles for so much more than just menstruation.  We are cyclic beings, our whole menstrual cycle influences our moods, our creativity, our downtime, our sex drive and so much more.

Above all, please share truthful information with your loved ones and continue to collect your own information so you can always make well informed decisions to best suit your body for the many more years you have to live in your temple.  Young women need to understand themselves now more than ever – it’s hard enough being a young women and discovering yourself without foggy, untrue examples of wellness and what it means to be a real woman – menstruation and all and it’s up to us to spread information that will continue to allow us to thrive.

Of course it goes without saying but if you are super confused about your body systems, Debunking Ovulation and Debunking PCOS were created for this very reason – to educate, empower and share truthful information all women can benefit from.  This is the stuff young women can utilise to set up foundations for long term wellness to pass onto generations to come.