I haven't had a period in over 5 years

Many people see periods as being this scary stage in life and they don’t know what to expect from it. Basically, when everyone is growing up the body changes. For girls, when they hit the end of puberty the uterus releases blood throughout the vagina. This usually starts around the age of twelve but every girl’s body has their own schedule.  

Have you ever wondered why you get a period once a month? Well, here’s the answer! Hormones cause the lining of the womb to build up and this usually takes around a month to happen then after that has happened each month it breaks down gradually to restart the process. The period usually lasts for around five days but like I stated before it all depends on the woman’s body process. 

If you guys follow our articles monthly and follow us on social media you should be familiar with the members of TWE. Getting to know their background stories and what they have experienced in life too if you could relate in any way and have a few questions for them to answer to maybe help you in the near future. 
 
I’m going to be continuing part of my story from the bulimia side of it, how the mental illness actually stopped me from having periods. 

At the start, I didn’t think anything of it no danger or any harm to come to my body but I was wrong. All of my friends would have conversations about period pains and other stuff relating to that subject but I would feel so clueless because I hadn’t experienced them for a few years so I had forgotten how it felt. This got me thinking “was I an outcast to everyone else?” So, that afternoon I spent my time researching about the whole situation. Why was I experiencing this? After a few hours of writing down facts and clues to maybe why I was not having periods, I came across someone else who shared their exact same experience online. She explained that she had stopped eating because she was getting bullied and she wanted to lose weight but what she didn’t realise was what harm that would cause to her body.

Now like I said a few lines back I also suffered from an eating disorder but it took me a good few years to come to terms with that. This was the start of my journey to get help! 
I read on in detail about what this girl had experienced and found that I could relate to so much of what she had said. She explained that at first, she felt like not having a period was another weight lifted off her shoulders not having to worry about leaking blood whilst out having fun. But, then she went into detail how over a few months of not having periods that her body started to change and give her pains where she usually didn’t get them. When I was reading this I could understand what she was talking about and how it didn’t seem natural for the body to have pains like that, it was just so unreal! After reading more, I decided that I had to go and see a specialist and get their opinion on what to do next. 

I got in touch with a specialist and they wanted me to come in for tests, so then they can assist me further on what to do and how to go about solving it. I went for the tests and I received the results back a week later… amenorrhea. 

At first, I had never heard of it but like I did before I went home and did some research into it what it was and how it affected the body. Amenorrhea occurs when the body is in a state of ‘energy insufficiency’ which in other words, when you eat food you intake calories which help function and program your body to move and take every day. But, without this power of the food, you will have no fuel to help you live your everyday life. So, once you stop the calorie intake the body slowly begins to feed on other parts of your body that it shouldn’t because it has nowhere else to turn and you are focusing your body to do activities without the energy it needs to go ahead and do it. 
​
So from this, the body begins to slowly shut down. Parts of your body begin to change as I mentioned before and you start to damage your body. This damage can be fixed but the longer you leave it the more toxic it becomes and you will have less chance of recovering. 

-Mel