dvsness, dedication and desire

Okay guys, I know you love reading about the topic of menstruation so here goes!  “Dysmenorrheal” is a condition which causes extremely painful menstrual periods which affects millions of women.  In an effort to find “natural” treatments to this condition, researchers took 116 women and gave them either a daily supplement of pine bark extract a.k.a. Pycnogenol (60 mg per day) or a placebo.

The Results

Researchers found that women who normally experience “low to moderate” levels of pain during their cycles, experienced no noticeable reduction in pain when given Pycnogenol.  However, women with “severe” pain during their menstrual cycles noticed a significant decrease in pain.  But what’s really interesting is that the number of days that they normally experience this pain for was reduced by almost 50% (2 days of pain vs. 1 day of pain).

“The analgesic-sparing effect of Pycnogenol increases with duration of supplementation and benefits persist even after discontinuation,” concluded the researchers.

Pycnogenol is normally used to increase blood flow and is included in many Nitric Oxide supplements to give bodybuilders the sought after muscle “pump”.  It’s also one of the base ingredients used in herbal sex pills as it increases blood flow to many regions of the body (no I don’t know this from experience!).  Could this reduction in pain be caused by the analgesic (numbing) properties of Pycnogenol or from it’s ability to improve blood flow? Further research will need to be done to determine this.

SOURCE:

Journal of Reproductive Medicine May 2008, Volume 53, Pages 338-346

Credit:  SupplementGenius.com

Pycnogenol products available here:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/pycnoserv.html

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Supplements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.