Excessively Heavy Menstrual Bleeding


Menorrhagia or excessive menstrual bleeding, should always be checked by a gynecologist. While its cause may be as innocuous as stress, it can also be caused by such disorders as infection, miscarriage, hormonal imbalance, thyroid disease, or cervical cancers. In most cases, no treatment is needed, other than caution and watching for loss of large blood clots. If cramping accompanies menorrhagia, aspirin should NOT be taken, as it thins the blood and may cause further bleeding. Useful Supplements will be Iron, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E. Iron deficiency is often found in teenagers with menorrhagia. However low iron levels cause increased bleeding, or that the increased bleeding causes a decrease of iron. In either case, iron supplementation often will help slow menstrual flow as prescribed by the doctor.

Other causes include uterine polyps and uterine fibroids, a congenital bleeding disorder, Excessive dieting, Excessive exercise, Miscarriage, Pelvic infections, Infected IUD, Endometriosis, Uterine polyps, Fibroids, Thyroid disease, Clotting disorders, Bleeding disorders, Cervix cancer and Uterine cancer

Almost all teenage girls and women, at some time in their reproductive life, experience heavy bleeding during a period. What amount of blood loss to be considered severe enough to be defined as menorrhagia. Some females might have menorrhagia, but think it is normal. Such women are likely to have a family history of bleeding disorders and so believe that a heavy period is natural. With normal menstruation women lose about 2 ounces (60 ml) of blood or less.

Dysfunctional uterine bleeding (DUB) is a general term for abnormal bleeding caused by hormonal abnormalities and is one of the primary causes of menorrhagia. In many cases, DUB occurs either when a girl just starting to menstruate or as women approach menopause, but it can occur at any time in during a woman's reproductive life. About 90% of DUB events occur when ovulation is not occurring (anovulatory DUB). In such cases, women do not properly develop and release a mature egg. When this happens, the corpus luteum, which is a mound of tissue that produces progesterone, does not form. As a result, estrogen is produced continuously, causing an overgrowth of the uterus lining. The period is delayed in such cases, and when it occurs menstruation can be very heavy and prolonged. Sometimes anovulatory DUB is due to a delay in the full maturation of the reproductive system in teenagers. Ovulatory DUB in the other 10% of cases occur in women who are ovulating, but progesterone secretion is prolonged because estrogen levels are low. This causes irregular shedding of the uterine lining and break-through bleeding. Some evidence has associated ovulatory DUB with more fragile blood vessels in the uterus.

By Adolescence Educator