A couple of years in the past, GWS Giants AFLW participant and Olympic gold medallist Chloe Dalton’s interval took a painful flip.
“When I was younger … it wasn’t something that would impact me very significantly. I just would get my period each month and carry on with life as if it was normal,” she instructed news.com.au.
“And then, just a few years ago, I started to notice the symptoms that were coming with the heavy menstrual bleeding that felt like they weren’t normal anymore. It wasn’t normal when all I wanted to do was lie in bed in the foetal position, and not go to work or not go to training because I didn’t really feel like I could leave the house with the extent of some of the symptoms.”
Heavy menstrual bleeding – often known as menorrhagia – is a situation characterised by abnormally heavy or extended bleeding and intervals, on prime of unintended effects like bloating, fatigue, anxiousness and a lack of management over feelings, and bodily ache.
“Because my body is used for my job, it has a huge impact on it,” Dalton stated.
“If I’m playing a game of footy and I’m experiencing the symptoms, there’s a level of adrenaline that comes where I can just push through because it’s important to just make it through the game.
“But I have felt like when my symptoms are quite bad, it has had a significant impact on my training which is often this feeling of, ‘I just have to push through and persevere through the pain.’”
It obtained to the purpose the place Dalton grew to become anxious about leaving her home when she had her interval.
“For me, there was a fear around, ‘Am I going to have significant pain, and nausea, and discomfort and not be able to find a solution for the pain to subside?’” she stated.
“Or, ‘Who am I going to be able to speak to seek help?’”
Experiences like Dalton’s are removed from extraordinary, in accordance with the January findings of “The Period Perspective Survey”. Commissioned by Bayer, it surveyed over 1000 Australians, with one in three (aged 18-60) believed to have undiagnosed heavy menstrual bleeding.
Yet consciousness round menorrhagia, obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Talat Uppal instructed news.com.au, “is less than optimal”.
“There are multiple questions we have to ask: Are women able to self-recognise that their bleeding is heavy?” she stated.
“Are they aware that this is a problem with many solutions, and quite a treatable issue? Are they able to access a suitably trained practitioner? When they do seek medical care, is a clinician proactively offering investigations and treatment options?”
Given the character of Dalton’s job, she’s obtained “quite an amazing medical team around me” who’ve helped her handle the situation “with quite a multifaceted approach”.
“The biggest barrier has been around feeling validated around other staff in a high-performance environment who you might not feel understand the impacts that some of the symptoms could have on your training and performance,” she stated.
“And that’s one thing the Giants do an amazing job of now – when they educate players [and say], ‘Hey, this is what’s normal when you’re on your period and this is what might not be normal and you should chat to the doctor.’ They actually get the male high-performance staff to come in so that they’re getting the education around it as well, and the players actually feel comfortable to speak out.”
Shame and stigma, nonetheless, proceed to play a big function in stopping different girls from taking related motion – 34 per cent of those that imagine they could endure from menorrhagia haven’t visited a healthcare skilled as a result of they really feel it’s not required or wouldn’t know tips on how to speak about it.
“Traditionally, women’s health issues tend to be normalised by society, which at times is riddled with much taboo,” Dr Uppal stated.
“Women are often constantly in ‘carer’ mode and accepting of quite significant symptoms because they are too busy to seek help. Although the culture is changing, women have often not had open conversations with their mothers and have been brought up to not speak about gynaecological concerns.”
Doctors, however, “are often time-poor and may not proactively ask or try to establish what their patient’s women’s health issues are”.
All of this implies “that these women continue to needlessly suffer from not only heavy menstrual bleeding itself, but can often also suffer from the consequences of being iron-depleted,” Dr Uppal stated.
“It also has a huge impact on productivity in society, whether it is time off school or the workplace, reduced potential output from the resultant fatigue and concerns around menstrual hygiene or the impact of bleeding. There can be many lost opportunities for a better quality of life, from a physical, emotional, social and material lens.”
Dalton stated she hopes that by chatting publicly about what can “sometimes be perceived as an uncomfortable situation … people who might be experiencing something similar can think, ‘Maybe I’m not just making it up, maybe it’s not normal and I should go chat to my doctor about what’s going on.’
“My biggest piece of advice would be to not keep persevering and feeling like you have to push through on your own,” she stated.
“And go to speak to a health professional so you can put things in place to address it in the best way possible.”
Women can take the Period Survey on My Body My Way right here – which helps facilitate the primary dialog with a well being care skilled by offering them with the knowledge they need to elevate with their physician.
Source: www.news.com.au
