Modern WaysTo Track Your Menstrual Cycle

Have you ever been in a gynecologist office feeling totally unprepared as in a high school class, when your doctor asked you, when your last period was? Well, you are not alone. Despite the fact, that every time you visit your gynecologist and your doctor handing a piece of paper to you to keep track of your periods, many women don’t, forget or loose this menstrual calendar and don’t keep track of their menstrual history throughout the year. Let’s face it. Our life is busy, we may have a full time job, kids and family to take care of, and relationships to maintain. A lot of things may and do get into our way of simply marking the days of our periods in a calendar.

However, research shows that keeping up a good history of your periods is very important. Knowing your history will tell you whether you get your periods regularly or irregularly and whether your cycle varies from time to time. When talking to your doctor, showing him your period history will help him identify any potential conditions you may have and offer advice on how to cope with some unpleasant symptoms of menstruation.

For example, premenstrual syndrome, which occurs in many females, can be dealt more successfully with, if one knows what symptoms a patient has and how often they occur. Those symptoms may include simple mood swings or sometimes more unpleasant ones such as cramps, bloating or breast tenderness. A lot of women deal with those symptoms silently throughout the year, not knowing that there may be few remedies to alleviate some of them without too much of an effort. To figure out what those remedies might be, it is, therefore, important to track symptoms associated with your menstrual cycle. You can later show this history to your gynecologist to help him figure out how frequently your symptoms occur, what might be causing them and what mode of action is best suited for your individual circumstances.

Intermenstrual bleeding is another common condition, which occurs in about 17% of women and may be caused by many different reasons, including some serious medical illnesses. This condition can be monitored successfully and effectively with a good and thorough menstrual calendar. By keeping a good history, you and your doctor will know how often this bleeding occurs and what other symptoms are accompanying it. This way your doctor will easily be able to tell whether it is caused by a simple oral contraceptive pill, irregular periods, infection, fibroids or endometrial polyps.

Ok, so how can a modern busy woman keep up with tracking all this information? The solution is actually quite easy and handy. In the modern age of technology, there are lots of ways to simplify this process. You can still keep a good paper calendar, albeit it might get lost or torn into little pieces right when you are about to go to your annual medical exam. A better solution (although not appropriate for everyone) may be tracking your menstrual history using your smart phone. In the last few years a lot of various, tiny and quite convenient apps have appeared that help you track everything right on your phone. There are many that are free and others cost less than a cup of coffee. For those who don’t have a smart phone or would also like additional protection in view that a phone may get lost or stolen, there are several good websites that help you track your menstrual history online. This way you can always check your history using your computer or send a link to your doctor to check your history for you, and sometimes save you a trip to your doctor’s office.

So, whatever your case might be, in our era of technology, every woman should be able to find a good and convenient solution to keep track of her menstrual history – a very important and critical health information.

To read more about tracking periods online, menstruation calendar and other period related questions visit our website at www.imensies.com