Late period due to stress: How stress can affect your menstrual cycle
How stress can affect your menstrual cycle
Written By: Simone Sonnier, UT Physicians | Updated: August 2, 2022
Those who menstruate have all been there — your period is a day or two late and you’re wondering why. Of course, pregnancy is the first reason that comes to mind but there could be many reasons for an irregular cycle.
Randa J. Jalloul, MD
“Stress, whether emotional, nutritional, or physical, can cause an increase in endorphins and cortisol secretion which interrupt hormone production,” explained Randa J. Jalloul, MD, OB-GYN specialist with UT Physicians. “This can lead to an abnormal menstrual cycle. It’s the body’s way of expressing unreadiness for ovulation and pregnancy.”
If the stress is short-lived, you may miss a period or be a few days late. However, if the stress is chronic, more erratic or absent menstruation can occur. Extreme weight changes and physical activity are also common culprits of a delayed cycle.
“Some studies have observed that over 70% of women experience recovery with the resumption of menses if their absent periods were associated with psychological stress or weight loss.
Women who recover typically have a higher body mass index and lower cortisol levels than those who don’t,” shared Jalloul, associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.
If you experience irregular or absent periods for longer than three to six months, Jalloul recommends seeking out medical attention — especially if an at-home pregnancy test result is negative.
“If a patient does not believe they are pregnant and still has continuous issues with their cycle, they should come in for an evaluation,” she said. “We will need to investigate the cause of their menstrual abnormality and rule out many other causes of irregular periods such as hormonal disturbances like thyroid or pituitary problems, polycystic ovaries, or chronic anovulation syndrome. Stress is a diagnosis of exclusion.”
Treatment options for irregular menstrual cycles may include simple lifestyle changes — adequate nutrition, exercise, good sleep habits, and reversing the cause of the stress if known.
If an abnormal or absent period is the result of an eating disorder, it’s imperative to establish a healthy weight by working closely with mental health experts to ensure long-term success. Often, hormone replacement therapy and contraceptives are prescribed to help re-establish a proper hormone level for good body function.
Jalloul’s advice is to listen and take care of your body: recognize the signs of stress, be active, take time to unwind and connect with loved ones, treat yourself to healthy foods, and get plenty of rest. To learn more about a healthy menstrual cycle, visit our medical conditions glossary. If you are experiencing abnormal periods and would like to schedule an appointment with one of our women’s health experts, call 832-325-7131 or schedule online.
Missed Period Due to Stress
Imagine you’re planning a dream vacation — taking a 13-hour flight to Sydney so you can swim in the Great Barrier Reef and trek through the Australian Outback. You’ve got a lot to organize and pack, and the thought of dealing with a menstrual period so far from home begins to worry you.
Will you be able to handle any uncomfortable cramps and back pain on such a long flight? If your period comes while you’re on vacation, will you still be able to snorkel among the coral?
Your Menstrual Period and the Power of Stress
Even though you may not be planning an adventure around the world, stress and anxiety can still take a toll on you – and your period. Although some stress can be good and even help us challenge ourselves, too much can negatively impact health. The body is sensitive to any unexpected disruptions. Excessive worrying can put the digestive system into overdrive, causing stress symptoms like diarrhea, frequent urination, and abdominal pain; the pulmonary system may respond with rapid breathing.
The female reproductive system can be affected, too. In fact, for some women, stress may play a role in causing irregular or missed periods. As stress levels rise, there’s a chance that your menstrual period will temporarily stop, a condition known as secondary amenorrhea.
(If you’ve been dealing with amenorrhea for a few months, however, your doctor may ask about your health history and perform various tests, including checking hormone levels. Pregnancy, cysts, tumors, hormone deficiencies, and factors other than stress can cause more than one missed period.)
How Stress May Affect Menstruation
Not much is known about the relationship between stress and periods. However, stress certainly plays a role in suppressing the functioning of the hypothalamus, which controls the pituitary gland — the body’s master gland — which, in turn, controls the thyroid and adrenal glands and the ovaries; they all work together to manage hormones.
Ovarian dysfunction may lead to problems with estrogen production, ovulation, or other reproductive processes. Estrogen is an important hormone that helps build the uterine lining and prepares the body for pregnancy. If the ovaries aren’t working properly, side effects may involve the menstrual cycle, including missed periods or irregular periods.
Getting Back on Track
Because stress can affect the part of the brain responsible for producing hormones, it can throw hormonal levels out of whack, which can lead to changes in the frequency and duration of your menstrual period.
Reducing your level of stress or finding effective coping mechanisms may help your body revert to a normal menstrual period. Talking with a therapist or possibly taking anti-anxiety medication can lower stress and help you manage stress symptoms, eventually allowing your system to return to regularity.
It’s not possible to completely eliminate stress from your everyday life, nor would you want to. Finding healthy methods to cope with excessive stress is the best way to not let it wreak havoc on your body’s natural functioning.
Find more information in the Everyday Health PMS Center.
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Stress at the beginning of pregnancy has accelerated the growth of offspring
Stress during pregnancy in mammals can harm offspring, in particular by inhibiting their growth. However, in some cases, the growth of the offspring even outstrips the growth of the control group – it all depends on at what point in pregnancy the mother experienced stress. This was discovered by German researchers, whose work was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In mammals, maternal prenatal stress affects the development of the offspring, and, in particular, its growth, however, this effect is ambiguous even within the species: some researchers report growth retardation, others report accelerated growth. Scientists debate whether prenatal stress is an inevitable obstacle to the development of a young animal, or whether there is room for adaptive changes.
Scientists who consider prenatal stress a hindrance report low growth rates, short life cycles, and reduced reproductive success in such individuals. The small size of their body negatively affects the next generation. Supporters of the theory of adaptive change, in contrast to the first, expect higher growth rates in response to prenatal stress, and other phenotypic changes, such as reproduction at an earlier age, and support their opinion with corresponding results. Bringing all this data together and trying to explain it was undertaken by Andreas Berghänela of the University of New Mexico, along with his German colleagues. They suggested that the growth of offspring is slowed down by a decrease in the “return” of the mother during pregnancy and lactation, and then adaptive growth variability comes into force, with the relative importance of these two processes changing as the individual matures.
To test this hypothesis, the researchers collected data from 719 studies from 388 scientific publications involving 21 mammalian species.
They classified prenatal maternal stress into “early” and “late”, where early occurred at the beginning of pregnancy, and late – at its later stages. In all studies, there was a control group in which the pregnant female did not experience stress. The scientists also kept track of the type of stimulus, in particular, they studied cases in which maternal stress was provoked not by external stimuli, such as lack of food or the presence of predators, but by an artificial change in the level of glucocorticoids, which help the body fight stress. They set controls for other potentially significant factors, such as the length of the stress period and the sex of the offspring. The dependent variable was the share of works with the corresponding result.
They studied how the growth rate of offspring varies depending on the stage of their development, and found differences: the more independent of the mother an individual became, the less restrained their growth was. After the end of the breastfeeding period, the growth rate of individuals accelerated, and the proportion of studies that reported the negative effects of prenatal stress decreased.
The relative growth rates of offspring were higher in the group with early prenatal maternal stress compared to late ones. Moreover, individuals who experienced prenatal stress in the early stages were characterized by high growth rates later at all stages of maturation compared with the control group.
In cases where stress was provoked by a lack of food resources, the effect of growth suppression was aggravated, but the detected pattern persisted even when stress was provoked by a change in the level of glucocorticoids.
Growth rates after the end of the lactation period were positively correlated with the size of the individual at that time (P < 0.001), and with the size at birth (P < 0.001).
In general, the results support both theories and explain in which cases the growth of offspring is accelerated. It turns out that stress in the early stages leaves room for subsequent acceleration of growth as the effect of suppression weakens with increasing independence of the offspring from the mother.
Prenatal stress changes the developmental trajectory of offspring, making it possible to smooth out, level out, and even compensate for the effect of growth suppression. Nevertheless, this mechanism can hardly be called a compensatory one, since it manifests itself to a lesser extent among individuals with small body sizes. The main limitation of the new study, which its authors also mention, is that the independent variable is the proportion of studies, and not quantitative measures of growth, so many of the possible subtleties of the phenomenon were not taken into account in it.
We have previously written about how paternal lack of food affects the development of offspring, and how the mother’s diet affects their taste preferences and growth rates. Weight loss has a number of consequences and has recently been linked to early menopause in women.
Anna Zinina
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how stress works and why it makes us stronger – T&P
Stress training is often used in training NASA astronauts or emergency workers – so they are taught not only to survive in difficult situations, but also to act as efficiently as possible.
Psychologists call it stress inoculation. T&P publishes an excerpt from Stanford professor Kelly McGonigal’s book Good Stress as a Way to Get Stronger and Better, in which she explains how “good” stress differs from “bad” stress.
How did stress get infamous?
Good stress as a way to get stronger and better
In 1936, the Hungarian endocrinologist Hans Selye injected laboratory rats with a hormone isolated from the ovaries of a cow. The results were very unpleasant for rodents. The rats began to develop bloody ulcers. Their adrenal glands swelled, while their thymus glands, spleens, and lymph nodes—parts of the immune system—were shrunken. They were very sad and sick rats.
But was the bovine hormone really to blame? Selye set up control experiments by injecting some rats with a saline solution, and others with a hormone from a cow’s placenta. And they showed the same symptoms. He tried using extracts from the kidneys and spleen. And those rats got sick.
No matter what he injected into the rats, they got sick, and with the same symptoms.
In the end, it dawned on Selye that the rats got sick not because of the substances they were injected with, but because of what they were experiencing. They just didn’t like being pricked with needles. Selye discovered that he could cause the same symptoms in rats by exposing them to various unpleasant influences: extreme heat or cold, incessant physical exertion, loud noises, the action of toxic substances. Within 48 hours, muscle tone dropped in rats, ulcers developed in the intestines, and suppression of the immune system began.
Then they died.
Thus the science of stress was born. Selye chose the word stress to describe the state he put rats in and their physiological response to that state (we now call it the stress response). But what does all this have to do with you? Before starting his research, Selye was a physician. Then he saw many patients whose body began to fail for no reason at all.
They showed some general symptoms – loss of appetite, fever, weakness – that could not be called characteristic of specific diseases. They just looked extremely tired of life. At that moment, Selye called this condition “the syndrome of suffering.”
How to look at life from the bright side and successfully deal with stress? Learn this in the Antifragility course.
Many years later, when Selye began to conduct his laboratory experiments, sick and dying rats reminded him of his patients. Maybe, he thought, the body is weakening from the loads that one has to cope with in difficult life situations? And here Selye made a giant leap from experiments with rats to the study of human stress. He suggested that many health problems, from allergies to heart attacks, could be the result of a process he observed in rats. This analogy for Selye remained purely theoretical; he studied laboratory animals all his life. However, this did not prevent him from building hypotheses regarding man.
And, having made this speculative logical transfer, Selye made another decision that forever changed the world’s attitude to stress. He gave it a definition that goes far beyond laboratory methods of working with rats. According to Selye, stress is the reaction of the body to any effect on it . That is, it is not just a reaction to painful injections, traumatic injuries or harsh laboratory conditions, but a response to any impact that requires response or adaptation. By defining stress in this way, Selye laid the foundation for the negative attitudes towards it that we see today.
Selye devoted his entire subsequent career to promoting his ideas about stress, was nicknamed “the grandfather of the science of stress” and was nominated ten times for the Nobel Prize. He even wrote what could be considered the first official guide to stress management. Sometimes he received research funds from unexpected admirers. For example, tobacco manufacturers paid him to write articles about the harmful effects of stress on human health.
At their request, he even gave a speech to the US Congress on how smoking helps fight the dangerous effects of stress.
But Selye’s main contribution is that he first convinced the world of the dangers of stress. If you tell a colleague, “I’m going to get an ulcer on this project,” or complain to your spouse, “This stress is killing me,” you’re paying homage to Selye’s rats.
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Was he wrong? Not really. If you are in the same position as his rats – subjected to deprivation, torment and other negative influences – your body will undoubtedly pay for it. There is a lot of scientific evidence that very severe or traumatic stress can damage your health. However, Selye’s definition of stress is very broad: it includes not only injuries, violence, and abuse, but also almost everything that can happen to you . For Selye , stress was synonymous with the body’s response to life as such.
Over time, Selye realized that not all stressful experiences lead to illness.
He started talking about good stress (which he called eustress ) and bad stress ( distress ). In one of the later interviews, the scientist said: “We experience stress all the time, so the only thing you can do is try to make it useful for you and those around you.” But it was already too late. Thanks to Selye’s work, a general attitude towards stress as a very dangerous condition has taken root in society and the medical environment.
The legacy of Hans Selye has been developed in stress research with laboratory animals. To this day, much of what you hear about the negative effects of stress scientists learn from experiments on rats. But the stress that these animals experience actually has little to do with everyday human stress. If you are a guinea pig, then your day will look something like this: you will be shocked unexpectedly; thrown into a bucket of water and forced to swim until you start to sink; they will put them in a solitary cell or, conversely, in an overcrowded cage with a very small amount of food, for which they will have to fight fiercely.
It’s not stress; it’s the Hunger Games for rodents. […]
Is the stress response normal?
Hans Selye is often blamed for the bad reputation of stress, but he is not the only culprit. There is also Walter Cannon with cats and dogs. Cannon, a physiologist at Harvard Medical School, first described the fight-or-flight stress response in 1915. He studied how fear and anger affect the physiology of animals. In order to anger and frighten the test subjects, he used two methods: he pinched the mouth and nose of the cat with his fingers until her breath was disturbed, and put dogs and cats in the same room to fight.
According to Cannon, frightened animals release adrenaline and become in a state of heightened sympathetic activity. Their heart rate and breathing speed up, their muscles tense – thus they prepare for action. Digestion and other physiological functions that are not required at the moment slow down or stop. The body prepares for the fight by storing energy and mobilizing the immune system.
All these changes are automatically launched when a threat to life occurs.
The fight-or-flight instinct is not unique to dogs and cats; it is present in all animals. He often saves lives – both animals and humans. That is why it is so stable in evolution, and we should be grateful to nature for writing it into our DNA.
Walter Cannon
However, many scholars point out that close combat or hasty escape are not the best strategies for situations that modern man faces every day. How can this reaction help you survive traffic jams or the threat of being fired? What will happen if, when any difficulty arises, you simply run away from relationships, children, work? You can’t beat up a late mortgage payment and disappear every time you have a conflict at home or work.
From this point of view, you should suppress the stress response at all times, except in cases of purely physical danger, such as escaping a burning building or rescuing a drowning child.
In all other situations, this is just a senseless waste of energy that prevents successful counteraction to stress. This is evidenced by the theory of inconsistency of the stress reaction of a stressful situation: the reactions that saved our ancestors are not suitable for you and me. A stress reaction that has no adaptive value in the modern world only hinders us. […]
Let’s be clear: a reaction that supports only two survival strategies – fight or flight – really does not correspond to modern life. But it turns out that human stress responses are actually much more complex. They have evolved along with man, adapting to the changing world over time. The stress response can activate various biological systems that support various behavioral strategies. Thanks to this, you can not only run out of a burning building, but also understand problems, receive social support and learn from the experience. […]
How to look at life from the bright side and successfully deal with stress? Learn this in the Antifragility course.
There are several types of stress responses, and each has a different biological profile that motivates different strategies for coping with stress. For example, the goal-seeking response increases self-confidence, motivates action and helps to use the experience gained, while the caring and friendship response stimulates courage, generates a desire to care for others and strengthens social bonds. These responses, along with the fight-or-flight response, make up your body’s complex stress responses. To understand how stress stimulates these very different responses, let’s take a closer look at the biology of stress.
Stress gives you the strength to cope.
As Walter Cannon pointed out, the fight-or-flight response is triggered by the activation of your sympathetic nervous system. To make you more alert and ready for action, this system forces your entire body to mobilize all available energy resources. The liver releases fat and sugar into the blood to serve as fuel.
Breathing becomes deeper to bring more oxygen to the heart. The heart rate speeds up so that oxygen, fat and sugar reach the muscles and brain more quickly. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol help your muscles and brain use this energy more efficiently. As a result, you are ready to overcome any obstacles.
It is this response to stress that provides a person with exceptional physical abilities in special situations. You can often find reports in the news about the incredible strength that a person acquires in stressful situations – for example, the story of two teenage girls from Lebanon, Oregon, who managed to lift a 1.5-ton tractor, under which their father was trapped. “I don’t know how I was able to lift it, it was very heavy,” one of the girls told reporters. “But we just took it and raised it.” Many people experience something similar when under severe stress. When something very important is at stake, the body uses all the energy resources to do what is needed.
The energy that stress gives you not only helps the body, but also stimulates the brain. Adrenaline sharpens the senses. The pupils dilate to let in more light, and hearing becomes more acute. At the same time, the brain processes the signals coming from the sense organs faster. Unnecessary thoughts are turned off, less important tasks temporarily lose their relevance. Attention is concentrated, you absorb and process more information.
A chemical cocktail of endorphins, adrenaline, testosterone and dopamine kicks in. This is one of the reasons why some people like to experience stress – it gives them a pleasant arousal. The combination of the above substances increases your sense of self-confidence. You can act more purposefully and strive for what can give you satisfaction. Some scientists refer to this aspect of stress as “excitement and awe.” Skydivers, skydivers, and lovers also experience such sensations. If you have pleasant goosebumps running down your back from participating in a game of chance or trying to complete a difficult job on time, then you know what it is.
When it comes to true survival, these physiological changes are most pronounced, and you may have the classic fight-or-flight response. But if nothing directly threatens your life, the body and brain switch to another state – reaction of striving for the goal . Like the fight-or-flight response, this stress response empowers you and helps you perform in challenging environments. The heart rate increases, adrenaline levels soar, muscles and brain get more fuel, and “feel good hormones” are released into the bloodstream. But this reaction differs from the previous one in several important ways. You feel focused, but not fearful. The level of stress hormones is also different, in particular, the level of DHEA is increased, which helps to recover faster from stress and learn useful experiences. As a result, your Stress Response Growth Index rises—that is, there is a favorable balance of stress hormones that determines how harmful or beneficial stress will be for you.
People who are completely immersed in what they are doing and enjoy it show clear signs of a goal-seeking reaction.
Artists, athletes, surgeons, gamers, musicians, completely surrendering to their favorite pastime, experience just such a reaction to stress. The best in these fields of activity do not at all remain cold-blooded under the pressure of difficult circumstances; it would be more accurate to say that they have a stress reaction of striving for a goal. It gives them access to mental and physical resources, which, in turn, provide increased confidence, concentration, and performance.
Stress helps communication and stimulates social connections
Your stress response does more than just provide you with energy. In many situations, it also forces you to connect with other people. This side of stress is predominantly controlled by the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin has become widely known as the “love molecule” and “cuddle hormone” because it is actually produced by the pituitary gland when you hug someone. However, in reality, the functions of oxytocin are much more complex.
It is a neurohormone that fine-tunes the social instincts in your brain. Its main function is to create and strengthen social attachments, which is why it stands out during hugs, as well as during sexual intercourse and breastfeeding. Increased levels of oxytocin make you reach out to people. It generates a desire for personal contact – through touch, SMS or meeting over a glass of beer. In addition, oxytocin helps the brain better understand what other people are thinking and feeling. It enhances empathy and intuition. With high levels of oxytocin, you are more likely to trust and help the people you care about. Oxytocin makes the brain more receptive to social contact and thereby enhances the warm feeling you get when you care for others.
But the functions of oxytocin are not limited to the social sphere. It is also the hormone of courage. Oxytocin suppresses the fear response in the brain, the instinct that makes you freeze in place or run. Not only does this hormone urge you to seek out hugs; he makes you brave.
Oxytocin is as much a part of the stress response as adrenaline, which makes your heart race. During times of stress, the pituitary gland releases oxytocin to stimulate social bonding. This means that stress makes you a better person without additional investment in personal growth and socialization training.
Hans Selye
Released during the stress response, oxytocin causes you to turn to those who can support you. It also strengthens the connections that matter most to you, making you more responsive. Scientists call this the care and friendship response . Unlike the fight-or-flight response, which is primarily about self-preservation, this response forces you to protect those you care about. And most importantly, it gives you courage.
When you feel like talking to a friend or loved one, this stress response prompts you to seek support. If something bad happens and you immediately think of your children, pets, relatives or friends, this stress reaction motivates you to protect your “tribe”.
When someone is dishonest and you rush to stand up for your team, your company, or your community, it’s all part of the prosocial stress response.
Oxytocin has another amazing quality: this so-called love hormone has a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular system. The heart has special receptors for oxytocin, which promotes the regeneration of heart muscle cells after microtrauma. If your stress response involves the release of oxytocin, stress literally strengthens your heart. We usually hear that stress can cause a heart attack! Yes, stress-induced heart attacks indeed sometimes happen, and they are usually caused by a sharp release of adrenaline, but not every stress reaction causes damage to your heart. I found one study that showed that when rats are stressed and then chemically attacked, they exhibit a very significant resistance to heart injury. However, when rats were given an oxytocin-blocking substance, stress no longer had such a beneficial effect on them.
This study reveals to us one of the most surprising aspects of stress. It turns out that the stress response is our innate stability mechanism that makes us care for others, but also strengthens our heart.
Stress helps you learn and grow
The last stage of any stress response is recovery, bringing your body and mind back to a state of calm. The body needs stress hormones to recover. For example, cortisol and oxytocin fight inflammatory reactions and support the work of the autonomic nervous system. DHEA and Neuronal Growth Factor (NGF) increase neuroplasticity so your brain can learn from stressful experiences. You may feel like your body needs to repair itself after exposure to stress hormones, but in fact the opposite is true – it is these hormones that have a restorative function. People who produce more of these hormones during times of stress tend to recover much faster and with minimal consequences.
Recovering from stress does not happen instantly – it is a process that takes time.
In the first few hours after a strong stress reaction, the brain rewires, remembering and assimilating the experience. At this time, the activity of stress hormones increases in those areas of the brain that are responsible for learning and memory. The brain processes the experience, which is why you can’t stop thinking about what happened. You may want to discuss this with someone. If everything ended well, you replay what happened in your head, remembering everything you did and what it led to. If the result was not very successful, you try to understand what happened, imagine what would have happened if you had acted differently, and mentally construct a positive outcome.
During the recovery process, a person often experiences strong emotions. There is still energy in him, and he is too excited to immediately calm down. After stress, you may experience fear, shock, anger, guilt, or sadness. But you can also feel relief, joy or gratitude. Moreover, these emotions can fill you at the same time – this is part of the process of understanding the experience with the brain.
They encourage reflection and learning from experience, which in turn helps prepare for future stresses. In addition, thanks to emotions, you better remember what happened. These emotions are driven by chemical changes that make the brain more flexible—it can rewire itself based on experience. Thus, the emotions that accompany the recovery process from stress help you learn and find meaning in what is happening.
Based on all the above processes, the brain and body are trained to cope with stress. It leaves an imprint in your mind that will help you know how to behave next time. It doesn’t happen with every little adversity, but if you face a really difficult task, your brain and body will definitely learn from it. Psychologists in such cases say that a person receives a stress inoculation . This is a kind of “vaccination” for the brain. That is why stress training is one of the key training methods for NASA astronauts, emergency workers, professional athletes and representatives of other specialties who need to learn not only to survive in stressful situations, but also to act as efficiently as possible.