How Your Menstrual Works: The Natural Way Your Body Prevents Irregular Periods

Anovulation is the failure of the ovary to
release eggs (or “ovium”) over a period
of time, usually exceeding three

months. One of the major signs of
anovulation is irregular or absent
menstrual periods. For non-pregnant
women of a reproductive age (between
about ages 15–40), anovulation is
abnormal and thought to be the main
cause of infertility in about 30 percent
of fertility patients. Oligomenorrhea is
another term for irregular but not totally
absent periods, which is defined as
more than 36 days between menstrual
cycles or fewer than eight cycles per
year.

This predictable pattern of a woman’s
ovulation and menstruation is regulated
by a cycle of change in certain sex
hormones, especially estrogen. There
are many kinds of estrogens present in
a female body. The three main ones
are estradiol, estriol and estrone.
Estradiol is produced in the ovaries and
in the adrenal glands. It’s considered
the most potent of the three main
estrogens and is highly related to
menstruation, while the other types of
estrogen are more related to
pregnancy. After about the age of 50,
the ovaries produce less estrogen, and
it becomes the job of the adrenal
glands to supply estrogen or provide
the biochemical precursors used to
synthesize estrogen. This is why
women naturally go through
menopause and stop having their
periods after their normal reproductive
years.

For many women who are of
reproductive age, low estrogen can
cause missed or irregular periods. In
fact, amenorrhea in young women is
one of the best clinical indicators for
estrogen deficiency. With all the
sources of abnormal estrogen
dominance in the modern world, thanks
to things like toxins and a poor diet, it
might be hard to imagine that we could
ever have a shortage of estrogen. But
some women do.
It’s believed that low estrogen is
caused not only by the failure to
produce enough sex hormones due to
hereditary hormonal problems, but a lot
of the time because of the effects of
high levels of stress hormones on the
body. You need to figure out a way to
bust stress if you’re having irregular
periods because sex hormones can
really be negatively impacted by
metabolic, physical or psychological
stressors.
Stress hormones can become dominant
because of many factors — a low-
quality diet and chronic emotional
stressors being two of the biggest. We
need to have our stress hormones
released in quick spurts when there’s
truly an emergency in order to help us
get out of life-or-death situations, but
these days many women are
facing ongoing stress that is
considered “low level” and often
ignored, even though it’s, in fact, strong
enough to have an impact on overall
health.