Dr Susan Evans, University of Adelaide
This project recognised that a woman’s experience of period pain may involve many more symptoms than just uterine cramps. Using information generously provided by women with period pain attending a pelvic pain clinic, it looked at how common other symptoms were: bowel symptoms, stabbing pains, bladder symptoms, food intolerance, fatigue, poor sleep, headache and migraine, anxiety, low mood, nausea, dizziness, sweating, pain with sexual activity and vulval pain. The research results were published in the Journal of Pain Research in December 2018. You can read the full paper by clicking on the link below.
To Summarise:
- Only 0.6% of women had dysmenorrhea (period pain) alone. All other women had additional symptoms
- Each woman had an average of 8.5 symptoms
- Women with more severe dysmenorrhea tended to have more days per month of pain, were more likely to have migraine headaches, and were more likely to report stabbing pains.
- Women with and without endometriosis had similar symptom profiles
- Women with a history of distressing sexual events reported more pain symptoms than other women, but multiple symptoms were common in both groups
Thank you again to the many women who allowed us to use their information in the study.
