Core Tip: Besides avoiding excessive exertion and maintaining a cheerful spirit during your menstrual period, you should also pay attention to the following dietary recommendations.
The menstrual cycle is a normal physiological phenomenon for adult women, but it can also affect the body to some extent, such as reduced resistance and emotional fluctuations, irritability, and anxiety. Menstrual blood loss also results in a significant loss of iron in the body, especially for those with heavy periods.
Avoid sour and spicy foods, opt for light meals
Menstruation can often make you feel very tired, weaken your digestive function, and reduce your appetite. To meet your nutritional needs, your diet should be based on fresh food. Fresh food is not only delicious and easy to absorb, but it also has less nutrient loss and less contamination. During your period, your food should be prepared to be light and easy to digest. Eat less or avoid fried, sour, spicy, and other irritating foods to prevent affecting digestion and causing excessive menstrual bleeding due to spicy stimulation.
Combine meat and vegetables to prevent iron deficiency
Women typically lose about 30-50 ml of blood during each menstrual period. Each milliliter of blood contains 0.5 mg of iron, which means that each period results in a loss of 15-50 mg of iron. Iron is one of the essential elements for the human body. It not only participates in the synthesis of hemoglobin and many important enzymes but also plays a crucial role in immunity, intelligence, aging, and energy metabolism. Therefore, it is essential to supplement with iron-rich foods that are easy to digest and absorb during menstruation. Foods like fish, various animal livers, blood, lean meat, and egg yolks are rich in iron with high bioavailability and are easily absorbed and utilized by the body. In contrast, the iron in plant-based foods like soybeans and spinach is not easily absorbed by the digestive system.
Therefore, when planning your diet, it is best to combine meat and vegetables and eat more animal-based foods, especially animal blood. Animal blood is not only rich in iron but also high-quality protein, making it an inexpensive and effective health food for menstruation. You can choose to consume it to meet the special iron needs of women during their period. In summary, during menstruation, you should still follow the principle of a balanced diet, provide a reasonable diet based on the special physiological needs of the menstrual period, pay attention to dietary recommendations and taboos, and ensure your health.
Avoid raw and cold foods, opt for warm food
Traditional Chinese medicine believes that blood flows when it is warm and stagnates when it is cold. Eating raw or cold food during menstruation can, on one hand, harm the spleen and stomach and hinder digestion, and on the other hand, easily damage the body's yang energy, leading to internal cold. This cold stagnation can obstruct blood circulation, causing scanty menstrual flow and even dysmenorrhea. Even during the height of summer, it is not advisable to eat ice cream or other cold drinks during your period. A warm diet is beneficial for smooth blood circulation. In winter, you can also eat some warming foods, such as beef, chicken, longan, and goji berries.
Foods to eat more during your period
During your period, you should eat more scallions, wood ear mushrooms, peanuts, walnuts, jujubes, longan, and rose petals. If you accidentally eat cold food or can't resist eating ice during your period, you can drink brown sugar boiled with ginger to balance your body's blood circulation and promote smooth blood flow.