And another Ahem. Despite my lifelong addiction to allopathic medicine, I would like to report that for immediate short-lived relief of a particular pang, acupressure can be quite effective.
Here’s how it was explained to me before I knew words like “sacral foramina”. Feel your lower back as it morphs down into your butt. You will feel an upside-down arrowhead of bone (the sacrum as it joins the pelvis). Feel along the outside of this arrowhead. At its edges, during a period cramp, you will find five to six spots that are sort of sore to the touch, and yet they really REALLY want to be pressed with fingertip pressure. In fact you may run out of hands to press them, and have to resort to your dad.
While you are pressing them, you get a temporary about 50% decrease in the pain.
Let up every now and then, massage the spot where you were pressing lightly, and press again.
The main problem with acupressure is it’s so very temporary. Ibies work much better on a longterm basis. But acupressure has two very helpful benefits. One, while you’re waiting for the antiprostaglandins to work, it gives you some immediate relief. Two, and this can be very important to a teenaged girl, it turns you from a passive victim of pain into an active intervener in your own health. It gives you something you can do, in other words. Something you can in the most literal manner take into your own hands.
I want Whynot to come in here and see me being all alternative medicine-y.
). I continue until the third day of my period (after the third day, I rarely feel pain).
