Briden - Period Repair Manual: Natural Treatment for Better Hormones and Better Periods

DISCLAIMER

The information contained in this book is intended to help readers make informed decisions about their health. It is not a substitute for medical treatment by a professional healthcare provider. If you have a medical problem or need medical advice, please see your doctor.

The names and details of some individuals have been changed.

Copyright 2017 Lara Briden, ND

All rights reserved

Second edition September 2017
First edition January 2015

For further information visit the author's website at
http://www.larabriden.com

to my patients

H aving worked as a clinician and scientist of womens reproductive and bone health for over 40 years, I am convinced that womens self-knowledge is empowering and healing. Let me explain why I say that.

Years ago I found that half of healthy women who had abnormal menstrual cycles or ovulation recovered to perfect cycles by the end of a one-year therapy study. At baseline, these 61 normal-weight, otherwise healthy women in their 20s and 30s had absent or far apart periods or regular cycles without egg release or with repeated short post-egg release phases related, not to a disease, but to combinations of very personal stressors. Their recovery couldnt be accounted for by the cyclic progesterone or calcium supplementation or placebo we gave during this randomized, blinded trial or to weight gain or less exercise. Therefore, these womens perfectly normal menstrual cycles and ovulation, by the end of the study, were likely due to the process of learning more about themselves required by this trial and the supportive environment of a participatory, scientific study.

Self-knowledge means awareness. For example, I know I am more critical of myself than some, and more ambitious than others. Self-knowledge also means body literacy, my educator-reporter friend Laura Wershlers term. This body literacy means appreciating, based on solid personal evidence, that my luteal phase will be short if I hike for seven days from sea-level up and over the alpine on the Chilkoot trail carrying a 65-pound pack with a companion who is not simpatico. It also means knowing that this same combination of emotional, exertional and nutritional stressors a decade earlier would have made my period go away. Lara Briden NDs book will help you attain such empowering body literacy.

My first thoughts seeing the title and before reading it, were that it would treat womens reproductive system as a rigid, inflexible machine that requires fixing by a greasy-handed, muscle-bound mechanic. I was concerned because an engine-related concept doesnt fit with my understanding of how integrative, adaptable and self-healing our reproductive system isif given a chance. My second thought was that this book would be full of orders to do this or avoid that inexplicable thing.

I was wrong. On reading this latest edition, I find that naturopathic physician, Lara Briden, shows great respect for the complexity and integrative powers of womens reproductive system. Furthermore, she takes an amazingly physiological and scientific approach to most aspects of womens menstrual cycles and their variations. She usually does a good job of explaining mysterious things and provides many and up-to-date medical journal references. I especially like that she identifies where the data are few, where medical doctors and naturopaths are likely to disagree. Even better, she prepares women to speak with their physicians from a position of self-awareness, careful observation, and record-keeping while feeling strong self-advocates.

For women everywhere, this book is an appealing, personable and empowering introduction to understanding yourself.

Jerilynn C. Prior, professor of endocrinology at the University of British Columbia, founder and scientific director of the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research (www.cemcor.ca), director of the British Columbia Centre of the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study (www.camos.org) and author of the award-winning educational fiction book Estrogens Storm Seasonstories of perimenopause (second edition, 2017).

W elcome to the second edition of Period Repair Manual. Im excited to bring you new and updated information about how to have better hormones and better periods.

With this book, Im even more passionate about period health than I was three years ago with the first edition. Why? Because the book is now part of a collective revolution in womens health. Mine is just one voice in a growing chorus of womens voices who are speaking up about periods and are reclaiming hormones and periods as an essential, integrated part of human health.

Womens health is not a niche topic. It is general health for half the humans on earth.

For too long, womens hormones have been thrown in the too-hard basket and managed with birth control. Now, I invite you to think differently about your hormones. I invite you to see them as a force for good that benefits every aspect of your mood and metabolism and physiology.

This book is my message to you that you are lucky to be in a female body and have female hormones. Its my assurance that your body is not complicated or mysterious or unruly. Quite the opposite. Your womans body is strong and vital and wise, and with the right support, it knows exactly how to be healthy and have periods.

The first half of the book is all about understanding your period. For example: Why do we have periods at all? What should your period be like? What can go wrong? In this section, I also make the case against hormonal birth control and survey alternative methods of contraception.

The second half is the treatment section. It begins with a chapter called General Maintenance, which I strongly recommend you read. General maintenance is all the different things you can do to soothe, cool, and nourish your hormonal system. Chapter 6 lays the groundwork for the treatment chapters that come later.

Please start by reading the book cover to cover because there are important topics nestled into each chapter. For example, Chapter 3 explains the , which will come in handy when youre thinking about ovulation later in the book. Chapter 5 describes estrogen metabolism or detoxification, and Chapter 6 is where youll first learn about insulin resistance. Those are important topics for understanding almost any period problem.

Throughout the book, youll see definitions, tips, patient stories, and special topics.

definition

Definition boxes provide simple explanations for any technical words. You can also find them in the .

Tips are extrabits of information you may find helpful.

Lara: Naturopathic doctor on a quest for truth

Patient stories are stories from my real patients with names and some details changed.