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Four Top Reasons Why You May Be Missing Your Period (Besides Pregnancy)

Did you know that besides pregnancy there are many reasons why you might be late on your period? A whole bunch of things can be a cause or reason for your menstrual period to be late. And as most of us women know, unless planned, nothing strikes a woman with more surprise and maybe even fear than a missed period.

Some very simple things such as stress or an illness can actually cause for your period to either miss or be late. Stress as we all know can affect many things in our lives. It weakens your immune system and can make us sleepless, but it also makes the body produce certain hormones that can stop your periods. Both of these things are actually very temporary and when the illness subsides or you get the stress managed and start to calm down, your periods should be back without a problem.

In this category also falls a change in any medications. First of all, if you just recently switched your oral contraceptive, your cycle can be effective and until your body adjusts to the new hormone levels, you might just miss a period. Another reason here could be that your gynecologist might have written you a prescription for one of the newer contraceptives on the market that actually will completely stop your period altogether. If you just changed your contraceptive, make sure to check with your physician’s office whether it is one of these newer ones or not.

Reason number two on the list is actually your body weight. Yes, body weight can make you miss one or more periods. If you are overweight and you are carrying around a lot of weight, your hormonal cycles can actually shift. In general, you can have your periods come back if you loose some weight. This is not only a problem for overweight people; if you are underweight, you might run into a very similar kind of situation. Body fat is involved in regular periods and if you do not have enough body fat you will not have very regular periods. This issue actually has a medical term attached to it, it is called amenorrhea, and gaining some weight will help returning your period. In athletes and women that work out very hard and often and are mostly muscle and no body fat, this is a very common cause of missed periods.

Another very common cause for missing periods is miscalculation. Believe it or not, but many women start with the wrong assumptions and therefore can be up to two weeks off with their calculations. Menstrual cycles are different for every woman. The average menstrual cycle is 28 days long, but it is not 28 days for every woman. Especially if you have irregular cycles calculation might be hard. A general rule of thumb for every woman would be, if you know when you are ovulation, and then you can expect your period two weeks after that.

The other reason on the hit list for missed periods is actually menopause and or perimenopause. Both these stages go along with missed periods and at some point the complete stop of periods. Perimenopause and menopause are a stage in a woman’s life that marks the end of her ability to bear babies and give birth. Hormone levels in the woman’s body change her ability to have babies and also stop her from having periods. In the stage of perimenopause, periods might be on and off for a while and might also be on a very irregular schedule. When menopause sets in to a point when a woman has had 12 months in a row with no periods, than periods will not come back again.