During generations, the message has been the same: menstrual pain is normal, a “girls” to endure. But the reality is that a pain of great draft never It is something that should have been normalized. Now, a Longitudinal study Published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe comes to disassemble this myth and to give an alarm voice: Have painful periods In adolescence it is linked to health problems in the future.
A public health problem. The methodology of this study has been based on the monitoring of more than a thousand participants in the United Kingdom for decades. In this way, not only has it been confirmed, it has been concluded that the more severe the menstrual pain at age 15, the greater the probability of developing chronic pain a decade later, at 26. In this way, menstrual pain goes from being normalized to a serious public health problem.
A methodology with long -term views. To get to this conclusion, the researchers They used data of the Longitudinal Avon Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), An ambitious project that has followed the lives of thousands of people since birth in the 90s. They analyzed the information of 1,157 participants, evaluating the severity of their menstrual pain at 15 years classified as null, mild, moderate or severe.
Subsequently, once these participants were already 26 years old, an analysis of their health status was carried out by asking if They suffered some kind of chronic pain. Something that was defined as a pain that lasted at least three months.
Worrying figures. After adjusting the data to rule out the influence of other factors such as BMIthe socioeconomic level or previous mental health problems, the results were clear. The first of all, is that adolescents with moderate dysmenorrhea, that is, with strong enough pain to not be able to ignore it, they had an extra 65% probability of suffering chronic pain in the adult stage compared to those without menstrual pain.
In the case of the most severe dysmenorrhea, which prevent normal activities, the risk is triggered up to 76% of suffering chronic pain in the future.
These data translate into an increase in absolute risk of 12.7 and 16.2 percentage points, respectively. It is a difference too big to be ignored. The study also revealed how common this problem is: almost 60% of adolescents in the sample reported moderate to severe menstrual pain.
A problem that extends through the body. One of the most interesting findings in the study is that the association is not limited to the classic abdominal or lumbar pain, which could be considered an extension menstrual pain. What happens in this case is that adolescents with severe dysmenorrhea show a greater risk of chronic head pain, back, knees, dolls, hips and thighs.
Because? The authors of the study suggest that behind all this is a central sensitivity. To understand it, we must bear in mind that in adolescence there is a great neuroplasticity, where the nervous system is especially moldable. The repeated experience of intense and poorly managed pain, such as dysmenorrhea, can “train” the nervous system so that it becomes hypersensitive.
In essence, the brain and spinal cord learns to be in a constant alert state, which increases vulnerability to develop other types of pain in the future, even in those areas that are not at all related.
For Dr. Rachel Reid-McCann, principal researcher, “It is possible that the experience of moderate or severe menstrual pain can alter the structure of the brain and how it works in response to painful stimuli, making chronic pain more likely in the future.”.
It is not a purely psychological. In the study itself, researchers have seen a relationship between dysmenorrhea and a subsequent increased symptoms related to anxiety and depression. But these factors only explained a small part of the connection with chronic pain and this reinforces the idea that the main cause is a physiological mechanism, and not simply that “pain is in the head.”
You have to stop normalizing pain. The conclusion of the study is a call to action for father, educators and, above all, for the health system. Normalize menstrual pain and dispatch it as “is normal” has great long -term consequences. And that will go to the health system.
The researchers point out that menstrual stigma and the lack of education on menstrual health cause many young people not to seek help, or that when they do, their complaints are minimized. In this way, it is believed that early identification and good control of dysmenorrhea can be key to improving the immediate well -being of adolescents and preventing the appearance of serious health problems in the future.
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