Can psychological stress cause delayed menstruation?

High psychological stress may indeed lead to delayed menstruation, but this effect is not absolute and individual differences are very large. Our menstrual cycle is regulated by the endocrine system of the hypothalamus-pituitary-ovary axis, which is like a precise relay assembly line. The hypothalamus is the upstream master scheduler. If you are under high pressure and anxious for a long time, the schedule will be messed up. The signal for gonadotropin release will be wrong. The ovulation time will be delayed or even ovulation will not occur temporarily. Menstruation will naturally be delayed.

When I helped the teacher organize cases in the gynecology clinic, I met a girl who was taking the public exam. She spent more than three months before the exam and spent every day in the library, eating bread casually. She started to suffer from insomnia a week before the exam. The cycle was always about 30 days, but it was postponed for 21 days. I took three pregnancy tests at home and all were negative. I registered in a panic, but the teacher asked her to go back and sleep for a week without taking medicine. As a result, on the day when her test results came out, her period came before she had slept for a week.

Of course, not all people who are stressed will have delayed menstruation. I have also seen a girl who works as an emergency nurse working three shifts all year round and facing the pressure of life and death every day, but her period must come on the same day every month. I have seen a clinical statistics before, which shows that less than 30% of women will have obvious cycle disorders under high pressure. The rest will have minor premenstrual chest pain and irritability at most, and their cycles will not fluctuate much. Moreover, there are currently differences in the impact of stress types in the academic community. Some studies believe that sudden acute stress, such as the death of a loved one or sudden unemployment, has a greater impact on menstruation. Others believe that chronic stress caused by staying up late for a long time and working at a high workload is more likely to slowly disrupt endocrine system. There is no completely unified conclusion yet.

The most common people I encounter during daily consultations are office workers who have just finished a big project, or girls who have just had a fight with their partner for half a month. They come to ask their aunt if there is a problem with the delay. In fact, pregnancy is often ruled out. If you think about whether you have stayed up until two or three o'clock every day recently, and your mind is full of KPIs, you can basically guess seven or eight points.

However, don’t rely on stress for all postponements. If the postponement lasts for more than 10 days, or two or three consecutive cycles are chaotic, even if you know that you are under a lot of stress recently, it is best to go for a basic hormone and ultrasound examination, so as not to miss the real problem. If it's just an occasional postponement and there's no other discomfort, just put aside what you're doing, get a couple of solid nights' sleep, and eat a couple of your favorite hot meals, and maybe your aunt will come quietly.~