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 symptom of “thyroid gland disease, disordered eating, strenuous exercise, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and a few other conditions” apart from pregnancy.