Stress can cause irregular menstruation – Gynaecologist

Dr. Chris Agboghoroma, the Chief Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at the National Hospital, Abuja, said on Tuesday that stressed women could suffer from amenorrhoea.
Agboghoroma told the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja that stress affected parts of the brain, a situation, which he said, could affect a woman’s menstrual cycle by making it irregular.
He explained that a woman’s menstrual cycle was 28 to 30 days, saying that in a normal situation one should expect every woman to bleed for four to six days of her cycle.
He, however, said that stress-induced amenorrhoea could be reverted when the woman was taken out of the stressful environment or situation.
Wikipedia defines amenorrhœa as the absence of a menstrual period in a woman of reproductive age.
Agboghoroma said: “Stress can affect even the brain.
“There is one part of the brain we call the higher centres and hypothalamus and all those places in the brain respond to stress and they send out some chemicals from the brain that can eventually affect a woman’s menstruation and most of the time, it makes women to stop menstruating.
“They can have amenorrhoea because of stress.
“This is the type we refer to as stress-induced amenorrhoea.
“A woman, who is severely stressed, may not see her period for the next three to six months.
“She will initially think she is pregnant if she is sexually active until she does a pregnancy test and finds out that she is not.
“But the good aspect of it is that these are reversible changes.
“They are not permanent.
“By the time the causes of the stress are withdrawn or the person is withdrawn from that environment that causes the stress, their menstruation tends to return spontaneously even without taking drugs.
“So, with such people, all we do is to counsel them and let them know what the stress has done to them and the fact that their menstruation will return to them even without taking drugs and majority actually become normal.”
The gynecologist said that extreme weight loss and gain such as anorexia and obesity, respectively, could also make a woman’s menstruation irregular.
Wikipedia says anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterised by immoderate food restriction and irrational fear of gaining weight, as well as a distorted body self-perception.
Agboghoroma said that certain medical conditions predisposed women to lose a lot of weight such as, tuberculosis, HIV, cancer and severe malaria.
He said: “Chronic illnesses affect menses and one of the ways they affect the menses is through weight loss in particular.
“If you are not eating well and you lose weight, it could make your menses to cease because there is an optimal weight that you ought to achieve for your menses to be regular.
“If you lose below a particular weight, your menses will stop and on the other hand, if you gain too much weight, that is, if you are too obese, your menses can also stop.
“We also see in some women, who are athletic, people who are doing a lot of sports, you find that their menstrual cycle can be severely disrupted and that is because of the stress they face and the fact that some of them lose a lot of weight when exercising and the weight loss can be a reason for the menstrual disturbance that they experience.”
He said that irregular menstruation could also happen if the woman bleeds for too long, too short, or bleeds excessively.