If you are over-fat and growing fatter every day, this unhealthful condition will stop your menses. I don’t mean a plump, jolly, happy amount of fat,――this is a good state for a growing girl,――but I mean an overplus of fat with white cheeks, flabby flesh, swollen ankles and big stomach. Such a condition indicates some disease.
There are many diseases which leave you in a condition of suppressed or irregular menstruation; such as typhoid fever, kidney affections, chlorosis――lack of red blood――consumption, scarlet fever. If you have gone through any one of these illnesses and your periods are irregular or scanty, don’t worry; time will put this matter right as you recover from the general effects of the disease. If you have reason to fear consumption, be grateful that Nature is preserving your blood to help you get well; for, as you know, you can get well――can completely recover from consumption――if you WILL EAT AND SLEEP IN THE OPEN AIR――LIVE IN THE OPEN AIR.
Most of the causes for irregularities and scanty flows are due to your unhygienic methods of living and playing. Sleeping in rooms where fresh air only gets in through a crack, insufficient and improper food and too much tea and coffee, will soon cause irregularities and other menstrual troubles. Catching cold or getting wet feet, damp skirts flapping around thinly-clad ankles just before or during the time of your monthlies, will also bring you to some womb trouble.
Then the influence of the mind upon all these matters plays a very important part in your health. Evil suggestions from girls or youths, seeing plays which you ought not to see, reading all that rotten stuff put out for young women and girls to read and dream over――I don’t mean the nasty ones, but all those which unduly excite the imagination and throw a false light upon life――the Duke, the Prince and Villain kind――the virtuous blonde maiden and the hard-working hero stuff, you all know what I mean. There is plenty of good literature, exciting stories, to be read without reading a lot of cheap tinsel and ready-made romances which have no more to do with real life than a mask has to do with the human features.
You can over-exercise, become too much excited over contests in the gymnasium, use up force to such an extent that your growing womanly functions become weakened and sometimes dried up. No girl of a nervous temperament should go into any athletic contest, team or personal. Such a girl should not play basketball, attempt any stunts on horizontal bars or flying rings; nothing, in fact, which calls for a strain upon the nervous system. The function of the womb, as well as of all the sex organs, are directly affected by the nervous system. You can never be a strong woman, complete in all that belongs to a woman and her career, if you, as a young woman, over-strain the nervous system.