For many women, having missed or late period can raise many questions in their head like: “Am I pregnant? Am I the next virgin Mary? How can I tell my parents?” and whatnot. Well, don’t get so nervous about being pregnant over your off scheduled period. In actuality, there are several possible culprits behind your delayed menstrual cycle besides pregnancy, ranging from hormonal imbalances to an indication of severe medical conditions, consult your gynaecologist first for an accurate diagnosis.
Missing a period is common, and they don’t always denote serious concerns, some of the reasons for a late period include:
1. Too Much Stress
Chronic stress can modify a woman’s period, making it delayed, more painful, longer, or shorter as well as missed period. It can interfere with your brain’s hypothalamus which is responsible for controlling your menstruation. Good thing, there are many ways to solve this issue, you can take regular exercise, get sufficient sleep, avoid the cause of your stress, or speak to your gynaecologist or a counselor.
2. Extreme or Excessive Exercise
Having regular exercise daily is healthy, however, extreme exercises can affect your pituitary and thyroid hormones which control the female reproductive process. This may be known to many athletes especially those who are experiencing strenuous training leading to missed periods for several months.
3. Adjustment in your sleep schedule
Frequent shifting schedules that mess with your body clock can alter your menstrual cycle. This often happens to women with irregular working shifts ranging from days to nights. Although this may not completely cause a missed period, your flow can be relatively unpredictable causing it to arrive sooner or later than anticipated. Similarly, jet lag causes an add up or lessen a few days to your period cycle.
4. Change in your body weight (loss or gain)
A sudden and quick weight change –weight gain or weight loss can interfere with your hormone release and production resulting in missed periods. The weight changes may be due to disease, medication, or diet changes. Being obese, underweight, or having anorexia impacts a women’s menstrual cycle.
5. Breastfeeding
If you are breastfeeding after giving birth, a late period or missed period is totally normal. This is called lactational amenorrhea, a temporary postnatal infertility when a woman is fully breastfeeding, disrupting your monthly period. Your monthly cycle should return after a few months, consult a gynaecologist if not.
6. Recently started periods
Although the normal number of days for a woman’s menstruation cycle is 21 to 35 days. However, an irregular period is common and normal during 1 to 2 years for girls who had just started having periods, until the regular pattern begins. Also, for women who had missed periods for several years and starting again may not resume their regular monthly cycle right away.
7. Perimenopause and menopause
Perimenopause is the phase when your productive age is turning non-productive or the first stage of menopause. You may notice irregularities in your menstruation like infrequent, more frequent, heavy bleeding, or light bleeding. While menopause is the time in a woman’s life when her menstruation cycle stops as a normal process of aging.
8. Medications
Specific medications can result in a delayed or missed period as a side effect, which includes antidepressants, antipsychotics, thyroid medications, anticonvulsants, and some chemotherapy medications. Parallel to hormonal contraceptives, such as Depo-Provera, progesterone-only MiniPill, Mirena IUD, and Nexplanon may have the same effect on your cycle. Such cases can be worth a visit to your gynaecologist.
9. Birth control
One of the side effects of birth control pills are a missed period, which is welcome to some women. These hormones estrogen and progestin containing pills can prevent your ovaries to release eggs. Your regular cycle should return after 6 months of stopping the pill, otherwise, consult your gynaecologist. Implanted or injected contraceptives can also cause missed periods.
10. Acute Illness
Certain illnesses can lead you to a missed period, such as pneumonia, heart attack, kidney failure, or meningitis. These conditions can cause weight loss, nutritional insufficiency, and hormonal dysfunction causing you to miss your period until the illness is treated, or a few months after.
11. Diabetes and Thyroid dysfunction
Medical conditions like diabetes and overactive thyroid can also be a culprit of a missed or late period. For some reason, these diseases are the reason why ovulation is absent to women, leading to an early or late period. The causes vary depending on their medical history, consult a doctor or a gynaecologist for further testing and direct diagnosis.
12. Polycystic ovary syndromes (PCOS)
Polycystic ovary syndromes (PCOS) is a medical condition of reproductive hormonal imbalance resulting in the formation of cysts on the ovaries. PCOS causes irregular or stopped ovulation, which can mean irregular or stopped menstruation too, it is important to seek immediate attention to your gynaecologist for treatments. With PCOS, your menses may come every two weeks, every three to six months, or only once per year.
13. Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID)
Pelvic inflammatory disease is an infection to your uterus, ovaries, or fallopian tubes that affects your menstrual cycle. It develops when bacteria penetrated the vagina, which usually begins with a sexually transmitted infection, such as chlamydia or gonorrhea. If you suspect that this can be blamed for your missed or late period, call your gynaecologist.
14. Uterine fibroids
Another cause of a late period is uterine fibroids, a condition of growing abnormal but noncancerous muscle tissue on the uterus wall. This may not be fatal, but it can cause pelvic pain, irregular bleeding in the vagina, alteration in the menstrual cycle, frequent urination, and even constipation. You should bring this up to your gynaecologist for the best treatment.
15. Pituitary Tumor
In rare cases, prolactinoma (a type of pituitary tumor) secretes a high amount of prolactin which causes menstruation to get infrequent or to stop. Other symptoms of prolactinoma are headaches, vision problems, and breasts discharge even when they are not breastfeeding, consult your gynaecologist or health care provider for proper treatment.
If being pregnant is the last thing that you want to be, but you have a delayed cycle or missed period, you may breathe a sigh of relief for it may be a normal hormonal imbalance or see a gynaecologist if it’s an indication of an underlying medical condition known to gynaecology. A late period does not always mean that you’re pregnant.
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