Healthy diet during menstruation

The first is to give priority to supplementing iron and high-quality protein. The second is to completely avoid foods that will definitely cause you to experience dysmenorrhea, diarrhea, headaches and other discomforts. The third is that as long as you are comfortable eating other foods, there is no need to deliberately avoid foods, and there is no need to be kidnapped by the so-called "must eat/avoid list" during menstruation.

Let’s first talk about the “taboo rumors” that everyone is most confused about. There is really no need to treat them as imperial edicts. Take for example whether you can drink iced drinks. The view of Western medicine has always been that iced drinks will only pass through the mouth and esophagus. When they reach the stomach, they will be almost as warm as body temperature. They will not directly stimulate the uterus. As long as you don’t feel uncomfortable after drinking it, it will be fine. ； But traditional health care and the real experience of many people are here: for girls who are afraid of cold and have severe menstrual cramps, a sip of iced milk tea may hurt so much that they break into a cold sweat. Of course, there is no need to bear this. My best friend, who was born and raised in Sichuan, has always had ice powder and iced milk tea in her hands since she was a child. My aunt still nibbles popsicles with no problem. Another colleague of mine usually only drinks warm water above 40 degrees, and even a sip of cold water during menstruation will cause diarrhea. This kind of individual difference is inherently large, and it is counter-intuitive to insist on unified regulations on "can/can't drink". Oh, by the way, I stupidly believed in the rumor that "eating mangoes during menstruation will stop bleeding" for half a year. Later, I checked and found out that there are no ingredients in mangoes that affect blood coagulation. At most, people who are allergic to mangoes are prone to rashes whenever they eat them, and it has nothing to do with menstruation.

There are also questions like "Can I eat spicy food and can I drink coffee?", which is essentially the same logic. If you usually don’t like spicy food, and you haven’t experienced diarrhea or acne aggravation after eating spicy hot pot during your menstrual period, you can eat it if you want. There is no need to hold it in and get upset. ； If you are prone to diarrhea and mouth ulcers during your menstrual period, you won’t suffer any consequences if you tolerate it for a few days. The same is true for coffee. If you are not sensitive to caffeine, you can drink a cup of latte every day without feeling flustered or insomnia. You can drink it during menstruation. After all, many office workers cannot survive the morning meeting without drinking a cup in the morning. ； If you drink it and your heart beats faster and you have trouble sleeping, and you are prone to insomnia due to hormonal fluctuations during menstruation, then don’t join in the fun. Use warm, freshly squeezed corn juice instead, which is quite comfortable.

Let’s talk about nutritional supplements, which are most easily overlooked by everyone. It’s really much more useful than memorizing a bunch of taboos. The daily iron loss during menstruation is about 15-25 mg. Many girls are lazy during menstruation and like to order snail noodles and milk tea for two or three days. If they eat for two or three days in a row, their aunt will feel dizzy and look sallow after walking. It is most likely that their iron and protein have not kept up. There is no need to make any complicated blood-enhancing recipes, ordinary people live their lives, how can they have so much time to stew donkey-hide gelatin and peach gum every day? When ordering takeout at noon, you can add braised chicken legs and fried eggs. When you get hungry in the afternoon, you can take out a small handful of original beef jerky and a few steamed red dates that you put in your bag in advance. When you get home at night and don’t want to cook, cook some noodles, lay two eggs on them and blanch two handfuls of spinach. These little things that you can do easily are much more effective than buying hundreds of yuan of Internet celebrity’s blood-tonifying oral liquid. Oh, by the way, there is also the brown sugar ginger tea that everyone loves to drink, but don’t overestimate its effect. More than 96% of brown sugar is sucrose, and the iron content is pitiful. Drinking it can at most supplement some sugar to relieve the fatigue caused by hypoglycemia. If you really want to replenish blood, you have to rely on red meat, animal liver, and blood tofu, which are high in iron content and easy to absorb. ； But if you drink ginger tea and feel warm in your stomach, and your menstrual cramps can be relieved a lot, then just drink it. There is no need to endure the discomfort just because it is “useless”.

To be honest, I have been framed by various taboos for many years. I didn’t even dare to touch iced watermelon during my menstruation period in summer. Once I couldn’t stand the heat and bit into half of it. Nothing happened. Only then did I realize that all the worries I had were just because of scaring myself. Later, I only remembered two principles: first, eat at least one dish with red meat or eggs every day, and second, before eating anything, think about whether you felt uncomfortable last time you ate it, and eat without worry. On the contrary, my period has become much more comfortable in the past two years, and I no longer feel guilty for sneaking a bite of ice cream.

In fact, menstruation is a normal menstrual cycle for women. There is really no need to act like a "sick" and you can't touch this or eat that. You know your body best. Eating happily, eating comfortably, and keeping up with nutrition are more effective than any standard list.