Teen Girls' Health

Period Problems

Dear Diary . . . continued...

If you keep your chart for several years, you might notice that your bleeding gets lighter as you age (yay!). Bleeding tends to be heavier in the first few years of your period. That’s because at first your ovaries aren’t always releasing eggs every single month. A cycle without an egg (which is called anovulation) is usually heavier and sometimes lasts longer than cycles with an egg. The good news is, anovulation usually goes away as you mature, so the bleeding gets lighter and shorter.

Occasionally anovulation and the heavy periods it produces come from a hormonal imbalance.. In any case, keeping a period diary will help you and your doctor figure out what’s going on with your body.