Why Is My Period Irregular Or Absent?

Irregular and absent periods, as well as the many unpleasant symptoms that can occur leading up to and during your period, are surprisingly commonplace. An explanation for why this occurs is to do with triage theory, a concept developed by Dr Bruce Ames.

Triage theory looks at how certain functions of micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and amino acids) are restricted during shortage and that short-term survival takes precedence over functions that are less essential.

For example, if you look at all the known functions of vitamin K, you can break this list down into “functions that immediately keep us alive” and “functions that lead to better health”.

If vitamin K is then restricted, all the functions that lead to better health are essentially shut off to prioritise the functions that keep us alive.

While triage theory is looking at this through the lens of specific micronutrients, the same is true for how your body thinks at the macro level. It has functions that are essential to life and other functions that are about long-term health.

Digestion is an interesting example.

On the surface, we would think that digestion is essential to survival, and it is. But if your body thinks you are in a life or death situation, digestion isn’t actually that important. It will instead make do with whatever energy it can find in your body until the emergency is over.

Now, you could have a situation that isn’t life or death, but your body still feels unsafe, which is often the case with more chronic stress. In a scenario like this, digestion isn’t shut off but is impaired.

Your body sees the importance of digestion, but it’s also wary with how much of its resources (or energy) it wants to spend on this function. So rather than giving digestion everything it needs to function properly, it gives it a skeleton staff and a meager budget, and hopes they can pull it off.

Reproduction is even further down on the pecking order.

For a female, if they ovulate and get pregnant, they are looking at somewhere in the order of 50,000 extra calories for a healthy pregnancy. This is something the body inherently recognises and doesn’t take lightly.

Under life or death situations, menstruation often ceases completely. Or if it doesn’t cease, very often a woman will have anovulatory cycles. This is a cycle where a bleed still happens, but no ovulation occurred. So there is no chance of pregnancy.

When out of a life or death situation, but still under what the body considers an unsafe environment, reproduction is haphazard. Unlike digestion, it’s not essential to survival in the same way.

Sure, reproductive hormones have many benefits outside of reproduction, like helping mood and bone health. But these are very much “nice-to-haves”, not prerequisites for day-to-day survival. Kind of like if the house is on fire, it’s not important to mow the lawn.

Now as humans, our survival isn’t just about us, it’s also about passing on copies of our genes to the next generation. Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” wasn’t about creating humans (or any other animals) that lived the longest amount of time. It was about creating adaptations that lead to an increased chance of reproductive success and producing offspring.

So while reproduction on the surface might not matter for our individual survival, if we take a longer-term view of survival and also include our progeny, then it is in your body’s interest to have reproduction work.

And this is why women can have such a cacophony of symptoms related to their cycle. There’s this tug-of-war going on between your body trying to help you personally survive, but also wanting to give you a chance to procreate.

So if you are asking yourself why is my period irregular, it’s likely to do with the state the body is in.

Now, there are many reasons why this can be happening and why the body feels it’s unsafe and isn’t sure about prioritising reproduction. (I actually talk about this in great length on this podcast). But for today, I just want to mention two reasons.

The first is that someone isn’t eating enough.

I know, not what most people expect to hear. It comes as a shock to many, especially given the climate we live in where everything you read about health is about “weight loss” or the “obesity epidemic”.

But with the clients I work with who are having irregular cycles or have even had their period cease completely when I look at what they are eating, nearly everyone is consuming too little.

This could be specific macronutrients. Like they are keeping carbs low because in their mind “carbs are bad”. Or unintentionally they aren’t eating enough protein, they just haven’t realised it.

But often it’s calories in total that are too low. They aren’t eating enough for what the body needs and so reproduction’s importance falls by the wayside. Irregular periods are because of not enough food. 

The second reason is something called “cognitive dietary restraint”.

This is a fancy way of saying dieting, but is more about the psychological changes that happen when someone intentionally wants to restrict their calories to lose or maintain a certain weight.

The interesting thing with cognitive dietary restraint is it’s not about what actually happens, but what the person intends to have happen.

For example, someone wants to lose weight so they have a strong desire to restrict their food. They start out the day eating very little but by lunch things are falling apart. They end up eating lots more food than they originally intended and finish up the day feeling shameful and with the resolve for tomorrow to be a better day.

You then take a second person and they have no desire to lose weight. They go about their day and eat in a normal manner. They aren’t preoccupied with food, they simply eat at meal times when they are hungry and move on.

Now, when we look at what these two people consumed, we discover that they’ve actually eaten the exact same foods and the exact same amount of food.

So on the surface, if they’ve eaten the same things, the outcome should be the same. But this is where cognitive dietary restraint rears its head. Because as I said earlier, it’s not about what actually happens, but the intention to restrict.

What we find is that person one has worse health outcomes, despite eating the exact same foods as person two.

This is what I see in practice with women who have irregular cycles or periods that have ceased completely. Not only is it about what they are eating, but about how they think about what they are eating. Because simply making food changes isn’t enough if the mind doesn’t also shift.

(And just so you know, this isn’t some new-age positive thinking nonsense, there has been much research done on cognitive dietary restraint, something I cover in this podcast and this podcast).  

At the core of what I’m helping clients with is making changes to physiology and psychology, through  food, lifestyle changes, and altering thoughts and beliefs, so that the body can interpret all of this as “I’m safe”. Because when this happens, reproduction becomes important again.

(Note: As I mentioned earlier, there are many reasons for absent or irregular periods, not just the two I have covered here. To hear about many more reasons, you can check out this podcast)

No longer asking why is my period irregular

The best part with all this is you now understand why. You understand why your period was so irregular or absent, that it isn’t some black box or mystery. And you see that when you make changes that support your body, it responds accordingly. Reproduction becomes important and a priority again because your body has the resources to spend on it.

If irregular or absent periods are something you are dealing with, I’d love to help. This is something I work on very regularly with clients, which you can hear about here.

I’m a leading expert and advocate for full recovery. I’ve been working with clients for over 15 years and understand what needs to happen to recover.

I truly believe that you can reach a place where the eating disorder is a thing of the past and I want to help you get there. If you want to fully recover and drastically increase the quality of your life, I’d love to help.

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