Roughly 25% of women experience period pain during the menstrual cycle: however, such a figure – which pictures a well-established situation once aged 25 – does not take into account the timeframe when dysmenorrhea is mostly experienced, namely from adolescence to young adulthood (in 15-25 age group). Some 70% of women suffers from it, more or less intensely. The incidence tends to fall during the subsequent years (owing to a number of reasons, including pregnancies), settling at around 25% of women.
Probably, very few women think about doing sports when they have period pain. Yet there are some physical exercises that actually help – as we pointed out in a recent post (“Cycle syncing” involves physical training too. Nike says so). Running on the treadmill is particularly helpful.
That’s the theory of a study published in the Contemporary Clinical Trials (Taking to the treadmill can ease period pain), which claims that this type of exercise can help reduce pain.
Several women affected by primary dysmenorrhea – the very pathology that causes period pain – underwent trials for seven months, after which the researchers were able to prove that the women who took part in the supervised treadmill exercises reported 6% less pain after only four weeks and 22% less pain after continuing the exercise for six more months.
Women aged between 18 and 43 took part in a specific aerobic training programme, three times a week. They had to begin the supervised physical exercise the day after their menstrual period ended and had to perform more exercises at home, unsupervised. The researchers compared the results with those of a control group that did not follow the same training programme.
The women who took part in the specifically designed training programme reported less pain and also an improvement in their daily functioning and quality of life, but no improvement in terms of sleep quality.
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