146.2 Walking Helped My Period Cramps

I am 48 years old, and yesterday I finally discovered the secret to making period cramps go away: go for a walk. I have been walking daily for a year now, but until yesterday I let my tradition of taking it easy during my period prevail. What a ninny I have been all my life, taking it easy during my period when all along, exercise was the key to relieving those awful menstrual cramps.

I had walked about a third of a mile when I noticed that my cramps were going away. My husband announced he was heading home. In wonder, I explained I wanted to stay out walking, because it was helping my cramps go away. I finished out a mile and my cramps were gone. They stayed gone for a few hours, but they did come back. Still, a few hours of relief is all I ever get from taking Midol or any other form of acetaminophen plus caffeine.

Walking Helped My Period Cramps Poster

I wish I could afford to make this picture into a poster and donate it to every middle school teacher in the world to display in her classroom so that other women wouldn't have to wait their entire lives to be in on this amazing form of period cramp relief. I am sure my mom tried to tell me that walking would help, but who listens to their mom when they're a teenager?

If you can afford to make this into a poster you have my blessing and urging to do so if you will hang it where even one teen girl will see it every day. A poster that a teen girl sees every day is pretty much the only thing she is going to listen to. Well, that and advertisements in fashion and cosmetic magazines, but they are all trying to get her money, not really to help her.

Medical Doctor Opinions and My Responses

 

Gina Shaw at WebMD confirms that cardiovascular exercise is the best relief for those awful cramps we get while we are on our periods. She calls it aerobic exercise, and explains this is anything that gets your heart rate up -- walking, biking, swimming or even ice skating. Shaw goes on to explain how and why exercise makes period cramps go away. Something about endorphins and burning the prostaglandins that cause muscle contractions. It's a good read.

Shaw suggests that regular exercise will prevent menstrual cramps, but this has not been my experience. I have been walking at least a mile a day for a year and I still get cramps during my period. However, exercise that relieves cramps while they are happening is worth it, in my opinion!

The Mayo Clinic suggests soaking in a hot bath or using a heating pad on the lower abdomen, to relieve menstrual cramps. Again in my experience, the heating pad never gets deep enough and all soaking in a hot bath or taking a hot shower or getting in the hot tub does is make my period heavier, with more blood. In fact, in that little "growing up" class they gave us girls in forth grade they told us to avoid hot baths during menstruation, because it would increase the flow of blood.

All I have to do is take a walk, and the cramps will go away! I feel like I have a new lease on life. Of course, I am only going to be getting my period for another few years, but that is a subject for another day.
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My Daily Weight Loss Post

I lost 2.6 pounds yesterday. I am betting most of it was water retention weight from all the sodium in the full can of chili I ate on Sunday. Probably some of it was fat from all that birthday cake. Like I said earlier, I walked a mile yesterday. Here is everything I ate:

Small bowl of Special K and organic soy milk with iced coffee and organic soy milk
Raw baby carrots with 2 tablespoons Parmesan spinach dip
Vanilla cupcake minus the frosting (free in the teacher's lounge)
Beef and bean burrito with salsa
Piece of chocolate birthday cake minus the frosting