10 Things You Likely Didn’t Know About Your Period

Even though
most women in their childbearing years
menstruate every month, chances are
still a few things about your period that
you didn’t know.
Here are ten facts you likely didn’t
know when it comes to your monthly
menstrual cycle…
1. Girls Are Getting Their Periods
Younger
It seems that where the average
menstrual age for girls used to be 13 or
14 years old, girls are getting their
periods younger. In 2014, the average
female begins menstruation at age 12,
which may be caused by a combination
of changing diets, environmental stress,
and earlier rates of puberty. However,
if you’re like me, I was surprised at age
10 by my period; whereas I had friends
who waited until the age of 18 to
menstruate for the first time.
2. Period Irregularity
Just like various factors cause the
beginning of menstruation, the
regularity of your period is equally
different for every woman, at various
times of life. Irregular menstruation
can result in spotting, a late period, a
lengthy period, or missing a period
altogether. And it can be spurred by
everything from stress and diet to
weight loss/gain or taking certain
medications.
3. How Much Blood?
During the average period duration, a
woman will commonly emit 2 to 4
tablespoons of blood in total. While it
may seem like much more due to water
retention, most women do not actually
suffer excess loss of blood because of
“heavy flow.”
4. Aunt Flo Is Visiting…Again!
Menstruation gets dubbed some pretty
creative monikers. You may choose an
alternative name to save your coworkers
or your spouse embarrassment without
meaning to come up with such hilarious
code names.
5. The Period Taboo
If you think women are bashful about
their periods, consider what it’s like to
have your period in other countries or
under other faiths. Menstruation is
considered somewhat ritually unclean in
certain (I said certain, not all) Hindu,
Jewish, and Islamic cultures, and
women are not permitted to perform
certain religious duties (i.e., fasting or
prayer) during menstruation.
6. There Are Plenty of Eggs in Your
Basket
When it comes to counting the eggs in
your preverbal basket—believe me, you
are born with more than you’ll need.
The average female is born with roughly
2-million, eggs at her disposal. By the
time she hits puberty that number
decreases to around 40,000. However,
you’ll only ever release 500 eggs in a
lifetime so don’t fear a shortage.
7. You’re Sexier When You Ovulate
True fact; men find ovulating women
more attractive! One study from the
Psychological Science journal discovered
that men’s testosterone levels soared
when they caught a whiff of clothing
worn by ovulating women vs.
experiencing lower levels of testosterone
when sniffing the clothes of non-
ovulating women. This suggests a male
biological urge to mate with women at
their most fertile.
8. The Mythical Alfa Chick
If you’re a woman who works or lives
with other women you know what I mean
by the term “Alfa chick”—it refers to
the woman who synchs up all other
women to the same period start time so
all women in the group menstruate at
the same time. So is the Alfa chick real
or myth? Even though research is still
inconclusive, if you get your period at
the same time as your sister or BFF it
certainly seems real.
9. s*x During Mensuration
Did you know that women are most
fertile directly before a period? The
reason is ovulation, which is the release
of an egg from your ovary. Ovulation is
what couples trying to conceive will
track using an ovulation calculator to
predict optimal times to have
intercourse in order to successfully get
pregnant. This means if you have
unprotected s*x during your periods,
you could get pregnant.
10. s*x Drive During Menstruation
One more factor in favor of intercourse
during a period is caused by hormone
fluxions. During menstruation,
progesterone (the libido diminishing
hormone) is at it’s lowest, so it’s quite
common to be amorous and crave
intimacy during this timeframe
Source: activebeat.com