Hey, this is Amanda, women's health dietitian. And I'm Emily, nutritional therapy practitioner.

And this is the RU menstrual podcast, where we help you navigate the confusing world of women's hormones

and teach you how to have healthy periods. Each week, we will be diving into a different topic on women's

health and sharing our perspective using nutrition, female physiology, and metabolic health.

Our goal is to help you wait through conflicting health information and empower you on your

healing journey. We hope you enjoy it.

To our 10th episode, where we are going to be diving into a topic that so many women can relate to,

and that's period pain. So what's funny and kind of unfortunate is that period pain used to be

considered purely psychological, and it was kind of known as a reason for women

to get out of their responsibilities, which I take as an insult. I think that's very insulting,

but it couldn't be identified by a physical or gynecological exam or it couldn't be tested for.

So those who suffered were mislabeled and just told to deal with it.

And I think that's really unfortunate because now we know that period pain is very real and it can

present itself in so many ways, ranging from, you know, cramps, back pain, breast tenderness, headaches

and migraines, and even joint and muscle pain. And while we will talk about all the

specific symptoms and get into the types of period pain in this episode, we really want you to

take away from this episode that symptoms are communication from your body, as we've talked about

before. So it is tempting to want to find a remedy or a cure for every single symptom that you experience,

but in reality, we need to understand why we have those symptoms in the first place, because

they are very helpful in learning what our body is going through and trying to communicate

to us.

And often, it comes back to metabolic health.

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