Month after month, you dread the arrival of your periods because they’re far from light and simple. Instead, you’re dealing with menstrual cycles that are disruptive and uncomfortable, and you want to figure out whether there’s a better way forward.
Medically known as menorrhagia, you’re far from alone when it comes to heavy menstrual bleeding — the problem affects about one in 10 women who have periods.
To shed some light on this common problem, the team here at Beyond Women’s Care is going to tackle heavy bleeding in this month's blog post, including some of the common culprits behind the issue and how we can help.
A good place to start is to explain what constitutes heavy menstrual bleeding as you can’t exactly measure the amount of blood that comes out.
According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, heavy menstrual bleeding can have one or more of the following characteristics:
Even though heavy bleeding can be no small hassle, it can also lead to iron-deficiency anemia.
Now let’s take a look at some of the more common culprits behind heavy bleeding, which include:
Fibroids are growths in your uterus that develop in about 77% of women during their reproductive years. In 99% of cases, these growths are benign, but some can lead to complications, such as pelvic pain and heavy bleeding.
If we find that your heavy bleeding is related to fibroids, we can try to address them with hormone medications, but that won’t really help with existing fibroids. To tackle those, we offer a myomectomy — a procedure in which we surgically remove the growths.
Another road to heavy menstrual cycles is paved with ovulation disorders, with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) topping the list. With PCOS, you have a hormone imbalance — too many androgen hormones — which can disrupt ovulation and lead to side effects like heavy bleeding.
We typically treat issues like PCOS with hormone-balancing medications.
If tissues from the lining of your uterus grow into the walls of the organ, your uterus can grow much thicker and larger, which can lead to heavy menstrual bleeding.
Though we don’t know what causes adenomyosis, we do know that it typically develops in women between the ages of 40 and 50 and women who’ve given birth.
To treat adenomyosis, we usually start with hormone medications. If these fail to provide relief, we can look at surgical solutions, such as a procedure to remove the tissues or a hysterectomy in which we remove your uterus entirely.
We want to highlight an important point about heavy bleeding — sometimes there is no readily identifiable cause. That said, it doesn’t mean you’re without solutions.
If you’ve been struggling with heavy periods for years, for no apparent reason, and you’ve tried hormone medications to no avail, an endometrial ablation is a great option. During this quick procedure, we destroy the lining of your uterus, which will make future periods much lighter and sometimes eliminate them entirely.
Although there are more issues that can lead to heavy bleeding, such as certain medications and reproductive cancers, the above are our most common findings.
For expert treatment of heavy menstrual bleeding, please call our office in Rochester Hills, Michigan, at 248-284-4859, or you can contact us through our website.
