You are bound to worry if you’ve missed your period or your pregnancy test still says that you are not pregnant. However, don’t stress yourself yet, because your late period could be due to a number of reasons that have nothing to do with pregnancy.
So, here are nine things that could make your period late by 1 week or even more:
1. Stress and worry
Stress can cause a number of changes in your body, which could be delaying your menstrual cycle. The probability of stress stalling your cycle is quite high so maybe you should calm down, relax and de-stress.
2. Travelling wahala
If you’ve constantly been on the go, then you may skip your period one month or have it show up late, but that’s just because the schedule change is affecting your routine for day and sleep time. Don’t worry, as soon as your inner clock gets back to normal your menstrual cycle will too.
3. Change in lifestyle
A shift in your daily routine can affect your ovulation and delay your period. So if you’ve been working for longer hours and skipping meals, don’t be surprised it could result in delayed periods.
4. Sickness
Feeling sick or just recovering from sickness? Yes, illness can actually result in a delayed period. So a cold or fever or good old-fashioned malaria could even result in no flow. Don’t get worked up, it’ll show up as soon as you get better.
5. Weight changes
Have you lost or gained significant weight recently? This sudden change could be messing around with your cycle. So don’t sweat it out; just wait for your body systems to catch up and get used to your new body
6. Hormonal contraceptives
The emergency contraceptive pill might delay your menses by up to a week while some contraceptives like the contraceptive injection might delay your period for longer (as long as 3months to even 1 year). The thing about the late period caused by contraceptives is that even though you are no longer using the injection and not seeing your period, it should not come as a surprise if you get pregnant before your period returns. This is because ovulation comes before menstruation. Also, don’t fret if it seems like it is taking too long, relax and enjoy your period-free life knowing that your period will return eventually and you will miss these good old, no-period days.
7. Excessive exercise
In some women, working out too much, especially when your body is not used to it, can stop the production of estrogen in your body thereby affecting your menstrual cycle.
8. Medication overload
Taking a lot of medicines increases the chemical processes going on in your body and the likelihood is high that one of these medicines could result in delayed periods, by stopping your body from ovulating.
9. Thyroid problems
The thyroid gland plays an important role in your body’s metabolism and affects the menstrual cycle as well. So an overactive thyroid gland (when your thyroid gland produces too much of the hormone thyroxine), could result in delayed periods. This is usually combined with other symptoms like weight loss.
If you want to discuss your late periods with a doctor, go to the Whispa app. Buy WHISPA sessions at your preferred plan and you can start a WHISPA chat now.
