Paying attention to your menstrual cycle and to that mucus that stains your panties is a good way to keep track of whether or not you are a victim of anovulation or prone to be one. This will go a long way to help you when planning for a baby with your partner, since you have to ovulate to be pregnant.
A woman’s menstrual cycle involves a phase where she ovulates. Sometimes, a case of anovulation might occur due to a disruption of the hormonal levels that enhance ovulation or due to a damaged ovary or even production of immature eggs. When anovulation occurs, you might still think that your bleeding was as a result of your menstrual cycle but if you had already experienced an anovulatory cycle then you haven’t had a period.
For a woman who is still in her child-bearing age, an anovulatory cycle isn’t a great thing if she intends to get pregnant. If this is your case, you should understand why you have an anovulatory cycle and seek possible ways to alleviate your problem.
What is an Anovulatory Cycle
Literally speaking, an anovulatory cycle is a menstrual cycle without ovulation. For every normal woman, ovulation is a phase or time of a woman’s menstrual cycle when her ovaries release eggs but sometimes these eggs might not come due to different underlying issues or are produced but are immature. When this occurs, anovulation is experienced.
Experiencing an anovulatory cycle by a woman of child bearing age is not totally an uncommon issue so you don’t have to fret a lot if you are a victim. There’s a possibility that some women who think they have a normal and perfect menstrual cycle might have experienced it once or twice but did not even notice. This is so because the fact still remains that when an anovulatory cycle happens, a woman might still seem to be menstruating normally. Why is this so you may ask. Here’s your answer.
The process of ovulation occurs due to the production of eggs. When they are released, they stimulate the production of a particular hormone known as progesterone. It is this progesterone that ensures that the female body maintains regular periods. It might happen that when anovulation occurs, this hormone is produced in insufficient quantities and this can cause the woman to bleed heavily. This heavy bleeding might be mistaken for actual menstruation.
This sort of heavy bleeding can also occur as a result of an accumulation on the endometrium which is the lining of the uterus. When this accumulation can no longer hold, it gives up and comes off as a heavy bleeding.
This heavy bleeding which may seem as an actual period might as well be due to a sudden drop in estrogen levels of the female body.
Reasons for an Anovulatory Cycle
A lot of women might want to know what exactly can lead to the occurrence of an anovulatory cycle. Well, it would interest you to know that an anovulatory cycle is majorly common in two different groups of females.
- Female who had recently experienced their menarche – that is their first menstruation. At that time in a female’s life, the menstrual cycle is found to be very irregular and trying to adjust.
- The second group of females are women who are closing in on menopause. As women get to that stage in their life, they find out that their cycle becomes irregular and hormonal changes occur causing an anovulatory cycle.
Now other causes of an anovulatory cycle might include
- Increased stress levels
- Abnormal body weight
- Abnormal eating habits.
If you happen to be a victim of an anovulatory cycle, make an appointment with your healthcare provider to seek the remedy. He or she is in the best position to give you a hormone regulating treatment that suits the underlying cause of your anovulatory cycle.