No matter what brings a woman
No matter what brings a woman to the doctor’s office, she can expect one question without fail: “When was the first day of your last menstrual period?” Dr. Alla Vash-Margita, chief of pediatric and adolescent gynecology at Yale Medicine, tells Yahoo Life that although one reason for the question is to gauge whether a woman might be pregnant, the answer can reveal much more about a woman’s health. “Gynecologists pay close attention to menses in general,” she explains. “In fact, menses has been proposed to be considered as a vital sign in people with a uterus. Regular periods ... are just as important as blood pressure, respiratory rate, temperature, heart rate.” Because periods can reveal so much about a woman’s health, says Vash-Margita, all doctors — not just gynecologists — should pay attention to women’s periods. Vash-Margita says that regular periods are “a sign of a healthy body.” She explains that periods that stop or are spaced out more than 45 days apart may be a sy...