Case Studies, Women's Health

Managing inflammation & bleeding during peri-menopause with naturopathy

By Rupinder Kaur
August 18, 2025

Name: Preeti Singh (Name changed as per client’s wishes)
Age: 47.5 years
Never married, No children

For 6-8 months I was noticing my periods change: slight delays to misses once a month, to gushing blood, they were visibly becoming different. I had a gnawing feeling that the year 2025 was going to be my final peri-menopause year. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the persistent, excessive bleeding that continued for almost 4 months from mid-March to mid-June 2025 and how out of sync my body felt. I felt like my entire gut and especially area below the navel was inflamed, tight on pressing and bloated.

Determined to understand, I kept a daily diary and tracked every sign my body gave me.

🗓️ Tracking Bleeding Patterns

Month	Bleeding pattern
April	2-7: Full period; 13–25: Spotting; 26–30: Full period
May	15–19: Full period; 27+: Ongoing bleed
June	2–6: Full Period; 7–15: Plasma- type bleed; 16–22: Full period
July	18–22: Full period; then stabilized
Aug	13-17: Full period; No bleed between periods

My symptoms of peri-menopause

I knew I needed help, but wanted to first try the knowledge and tools I had gathered over the years around Naturopathy and Allopathic supplementation. A blood test on 8th of Apr 2025, revealed very low vitamin D, low haemoglobin, and low protein levels. I decided to first deal with these. I took the standard Allopathy Vitamin D supplements weekly and added foods & juices to tackle my anaemia & protein deficiencies.

By 10th May, a 2nd blood test revealed that my vitamin D had risen to normal range, the haemoglobin remained same. But I wasn’t feeling any better. Infact my symptoms had worsened.

Sleep: Extremely disturbed, often awake till 2 am. Eventually, I chose to work at night instead of fretting.
Digestion & Mouth: Stomach discomfort and bloating with most foods. Repeated tongue & mouth blisters.
Skin: Night time itching on legs and painful pimples on the face.
Bloating & Tightness: Constant feeling of tightness in the gut, especially below the navel.
Breathing: Nighttime episodes of constricted breathing, unclear if allergic or exercise-related.
Ears: Recurrent middle ear infections with painful discharges; sometimes black, suggesting fungal infection.
Fatigue: Persistent exhaustion. Even light exertion felt draining, despite being used to swimming, squash, and long walks.
Bleeding: Ongoing, constant bleeding throughout.

In these 4 months, I had entered the vicious cycle of anemia–> low immunity–> allergic infections–>inflammation.

Plus every time my periods came, things got worse. I also noticed certain food items & habits that made things worse. Coffee, occasionally when I drank it, mangoes and fermented food in excess made my symptoms worse. I was used to exercising but had lately increased my surya- namaskar count. These too I realised were increasing my heat and causing more bleeds.

Getting the Help: Gynaecologist to Naturopath

By early June, I was too sick and tired of doing this myself. I needed help.
My first visit was to a Gynaecologist on 3^rd June.
She was surprised I had waited so long, was worried my anemia would be worse. She noted my pulse rate and blood pressure in real time, and found them to be within normal range. I told her my Hb was holding constant between 8.8-8.5 the last few months and I had been taking a lot of fresh fruits and juices to make blood.

She wasn’t impressed with my self- reliance. Worried that I might avoid too much medication asked me to come back with an ultrasound if the bleeding did not stop after 3-4 days on the hormones. She was patient and took the time to explain to me all the scenarios that could possibly be causing the bleeding and the battery of testing I would need, if the ultrasound wasn’t normal or the bleeding did not stop.

But first, maybe it is just low progesterone. I was immediately started on a course of Progesterone for 21 days, thrice a day.
I took the medication for 3 days, felt very heavy and groggy. By day 4, my bleeding was calming down.
But having been a student of naturopathy and incorporated it into my life, I didn’t want to go down the medicine way. So, I went back to Your urban naturopath, someone I trust and had been to before.

We now understand menopause as a whole-body reset, involving immune, metabolic, and cellular shifts. What happens during these years may determine whether a woman develops osteoporosis at 60, has a heart attack at 65 or begins to lose cognitive sharpness at 70”
(full article attached at end of this post)

Starting the Naturopathy Treatment

Food as medicine

I was immediately put on a diet of soft Pears (babugosha) and Ridge Gourd/ Tori. The pears were eaten in large quantities with rind and this helped clear my stomach and intestines considerably. It also cooled the heat and build up acidity in my gut. I was given ridge gourd/ Tori as a raw green juice without adding anything. I was made to eat the same tori as vegetable continuously in cooked form too. It was cooked without oil and spices (only coriander and some onion). Later overnight soaked and well-cooked red rice was introduced that I could eat with the tori.

A combination of 1-2 of the following juices were given daily:

Pomegranate juice – helped blood clot and make new blood
Cucumber + Tomato+ pudina juice – cooled the stomach
Cucumber+ beetroot+ lime: cooling/hydration and flushed the organs
Carrot+ a few tomatoes: to increase vitamin A and make plasma
Pineapples: ate as slices. Helped claer upper respiratory track infections/constrictions
Raw coconut: as slices and also 1-2 teaspoon of oil was used especially when inflammation got too bad.

I realised why I was used to feel worse after eating idlis and uttapams( fermented foods made of rice & lentil). Fermentation should happen in the intestines, not in the stomach. Over-fermented foods acted like internal heat bombs and when my stomach was already inflamed, causing extreme heat and acidity. I also realised that dairy products (which my body was already rejecting), tofu and excessive use of fennel were all increasing estrogen in my body, making the balance between progesterone and estrogen skewed and leading to excessive bleeding

Hydro baths

A combination of Neem enemas and neem water to drink was introduced to tackle the itching and repeated bacterial infections I was getting in my ear.
On days that my bleeding was rested, I took Cold hip & spinal baths.
For a few days vaginal neem douches were also given, but these were soon discontinued and not needed.

These baths along with the food cure greatly reduced my pelvic inflammation

Sleep & Mood

My mood had surprisingly remained calm all through this 4-month ordeal. I did not feel much variation in my emotional states either. Neither was my body temperature fluctuating, so I never experienced the ‘hot flashes’. I understood later that this was because my electrolyte balance and especially potassium was always well maintained because of my habitual fresh juice drinking.

But my sleep disturbances were troublesome, making me stay awake sometimes till as late as 2 am. I knew such disturbed sleep would itself disbalance my hormones. Working with the naturopath, sleep habits were reinstated:

I was made to put the phone away 1-2 hours before bedtime. I switched to watching content on the TV rather than the small/closely held phone screen
Reading in print and not on screens at night was mandatory now and there were nights that I read & read myself to sleep.
Since this was all happening in peak summer months, I was recommended cold showers at night.

Sleep got better. It wasn’t and still isn’t all constant but 4 out of 7 days I sleep long and well. Even on days that I sleep shorter hours, it is deeper with no dreams.

The big win: stopping of excessive bleeding & return of the monthly cycle

My big relief came when 2 weeks after starting the full naturopathy treatments, the excessive/abnormal bleeding stopped. For 3 months now: June, July and August, I have had bleeding only during the monthly period time. No spotting or bleeds in-between.

The big learning: Systemic inflammation

For 4 months, I kept wondering whether I was having food allergies, viral infections or was it just my ovaries that were inflamed. I often felt tight under my navel, bloated in my stomach, swollen in my legs & arms and constricted in my breathing!

And anything and everything was triggering inflammation: the rainy weather & excess of pollen, a large meal, but sometime even an empty stomach was making me gasp for air. I found my lips get swollen with sweet-lime rind, which had never happened before.

I learned during my naturopathy treatment that dying ovaries and hormonal changes can trigger ‘systemic inflammation’. It was as if my inflamed ovaries were producing chemicals that the body’s immune system was fighting as invaders and going on an overdrive.

The inflammation has taken longer to settle but is 80% better. I now only experience it when my periods come and that too with lowered intensity (dying ovaries, I would like to believe!).

Recent research from the Vellore Institute of Technology, published in journal of Ovarian Research, also highlights the role of exosomes-tiny vesicles released by aging ovarian cells-which carry inflammatory signals throughout the body”
(article attached below)

Have you tried natural ways to balance your hormones or heal irregular periods? Share your experience in the comments!