Endometriosis Awareness Day: UAE women open up about how period pain affected their lives for years

Endometriosis Awareness Day: UAE women open up about how period pain affected their lives for years

Do you experience crippling pain during your menstrual cycle? Have you been diagnosed with unexplained infertility? Alleviating severe menstrual pain can be helped by ‘listening to your body’

Published: Wed 1 Mar 2023, 3:43 PM Last updated: Wed 1 Mar 2023, 4:34 PM

Every woman remembers the arrival of her first period, a girl’s coming-of-age moment that is frequently received with a wide mix of emotions, including shock, confusion and pride.

Shock, because as much a girl is prepared for the moment, it is a very different story when it hits you with its many physical and hormonal changes. Confusion, because there are just so many accoutrements to navigate; do you need regular or heavy flow sanitary pads, with wings or without? And later on, the choices widen to include tampons and menstrual cups. Pride, because there is something so special about finally knowing that you have officially hit puberty and are no longer a child. Yet on top of all that, there are a number of accompanying symptoms to deal with, which differ from woman to woman and from one month to the next.

First of all, there is no such thing as a ‘normal’ period, because every woman’s body is unique to