Soothe menstrual inflammation with this little-known holistic secret

Every woman gets their period, but very few understand it.

And while many choose to use artificial fixes like hormonal birth control to relieve period symptoms, this doesn’t actually regulate or fix the menstrual cycle — it simply shuts the menstrual cycle down.

“A natural menstrual cycle is beneficial for women, because it’s how we make hormones,” naturopathic doctor Lara Briden tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable,” explaining that to give women birth control to solve all their problems is a “reckless approach.”

And there are other solutions to issues like painful periods that aren’t birth control.

“I definitely have friends who say, ‘I just have horrible periods, they’re really heavy, I have horrible, debilitating cramps,’” Stuckey says. “A lot of doctors will say the only remedy is birth control, but you have a natural approach to that, so where should women start if they’re in any of those boats?”

“I’ll give you two examples, which are kind of my favorite ones because they can really move the needle on symptoms,” Briden says. “If young women or teenagers are having very heavy periods, painful periods, one of the things I have learned early on, and then I’ve just seen in practice again and again, is that it can improve by switching the kind of dairy cow’s dairy they’re eating.”

According to Briden, unlike “A2 milk,” certain dairy proteins can be “quite inflammatory for some people” and that inflammation “can manifest as heavier flow, or more painful flow, or premenstrual mood symptoms.”

“Another example is the nutrient zinc. A zinc supplement can relieve period pain,” she explains. “There’s been at least one clinical trial where they tested zinc in direct comparison to the pill for period pain, and they found that zinc worked as well as the pill.”

Zinc is not only cheaper than the pill, but Briden notes that it also “doesn’t shut down the menstrual cycle.”

“So it sounds like there are a lot of potential natural remedies for the menstrual issues that people have that aren’t suppressing someone’s very necessary ovulatory cycle,” Stuckey comments.

“It’s 2025, we don’t have to shut down women’s entire hormonal systems just to avoid pregnancy,” Briden agrees.

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