5 Benefits of Menstrual Cups
A menstrual cup is a silicone rubber cup that you insert in your vagina during menstruation as a natural alternative to tampons or pads.
How to use a menstrual cup:
1. Sterilize the cup by boiling in water for 3-5 minutes making sure it doesn’t touch the bottom of the pan. Additionally, wash your hands.
2. Learn where your cervix is and how high it is in your vagina. This is so that you know where to position the cup.
3. Once you know where the cup should go, it is time to insert it. First, you need to fold in the sides of the cup to make it more narrow. There are multiple ways to fold it so find a way that works best for you.
4. Insert the cup and make sure it opens up inside you. If it doesn’t open, you can use your finger to twist the bottom of the cup, or you can take it out and reinstall it.
5. Menstrual cups can be left in for 12 hours, but depending on your flow you can take it out before that. To take it out, wash your hands first and then gently wiggle on the bottom tab of the cup until you can grasp the base of the cup.
6. Dump the contents into the toilet, rinse the cup with just water and reinsert. If your cycle is over then you can just wash and resterilize and store it in its respective bag.
Here are 5 benefits of menstrual cups:
1. Get to Know Your Period Better
This is one of the great benefits of menstrual cups. You can learn a lot about period consistency, color, volume, and any variance due to hormone changes. While using a tampon or pad your blood soaks into the cotton of the product and you can not really tell the true volume, consistency, or color.
Things to note while analyzing period patterns:
A Heavy Period:
-Lasts longer than 7 days
-Losing more than 80 mL of blood per cycle (would be equivalent to16 regular tampons or pads or 2 and a half menstrual cups).
-Needing to double up on period protection products
-Having to wake up to change your tampon or pad in the night
-Planning activities around your heavy period
-Blood clots the size of a quarter or bigger
A Light Period:
-Less than 3 days
-Losing less than 20 mL of blood (one menstrual cup full).
-Period color is pinker and less red, this means your blood has a lot of cervical fluid in it which is not ideal.
You can assess if your period is considered heavy or light and use this as information to determine if you have a possible hormonal imbalance impacting your period.
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2. Zero Waste & Better for the Environment
Another one of the benefits of menstrual cups is that it has a wonderful effect on the environment and is zero waste. While using pads and tampons there is so much material that you waste. Think about it, you buy a cardboard box of tampons or pads, then you need to take it out of the wrapping, then when you are done using the tampon or pad you wrap that in toilet paper and all of that goes into the trash can. The average woman uses 240 tampons in a year and over 9,600 in a lifetime. This amounts to about 250 pounds of just tampon waste a lifetime. Though this is only .5% of our total life long waste, compare it to the waste a normal American uses in toilet paper. The average American uses 50 pounds of toilet paper in a year, so in 5 years that's 250 pounds of toilet paper waste. One lifetime of feminine product waste is equal to 5 years of toilet paper waste for the average American.
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3. No Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals or Ingredients
Certain chemicals in pads and tampons can be really harmful to the inside of your vagina and your hormone levels. This is one of the benefits of menstrual cups because they don’t contain any of those chemicals. Some of the common ingredients in conventional period products are alcohol, aluminum, parabens, and phthalates. Many of these ingredients are actually found to affect hormone balance because they are xenoestrogens. This means that they have a structure similar to estrogen and can cause hormone imbalances. The bleaching process to make the products white actually leaves behind dioxins which are a toxic side effect that can lead to fatigue, nervous system damage, and in extreme cases cancer risk. Now the silicone in the menstrual cup is not made of the same silicone that is probably in your phone case. The material is actually medical grade silicone which is FDA approved to be inserted or used in the body for medical procedures or long term use in the body. This silicone is made by having an extra sanitizing process done to it which removes the excess solvents and byproducts from the material that came from the manufacturer, in short, it is basically more pure silicone. Other uses of medical-grade silicone include scuba gear and baby bottle nipples. This is why medical grade silicone doesn’t contain any chemicals or hormone harming ingredients making it one of the benefits of menstrual cups.
4. Save Money
Saving money is one of the great benefits of menstrual cups. A box of tampons is usually $7 and contains 36 tampons inside, making each one cost $0.19. Menstrual cups cost about $30 dollars for just one cup. The difference is that a tampon lasts you at max 8 hours before it ends in the trash and a cup can last you up to 5 years. Over a lifetime, you probably spend about $240 dollars on menstrual cups and with tampons, you spend about $1862. This is calculated by taking the average number of tampons used in a year is 240 which is 7 boxes of 36 tampons that cost $7 a box, so 7 boxes x $7 each = $49 dollars a year and women typically have a period for 38 years so $49 x 38 years = $1862. Cost is a huge burden for many females who are in low socioeconomic status areas because using tampons and pads can be very inconvenient due to lack of accessibility and can be out of the monthly budget.
5. Holds More Blood than Tampons / Pads
Holding more blood than a single tampon is another one of the benefits of menstrual cups. A single cup can hold up to 30 mL of blood at a time versus a super pad that can hold 10 mL, and a super tampon which can hold up to 15 mL. Being able to hold more blood is one of the best benefits of menstrual cups because it is way less disruptive to our lifestyle and we don’t have to worry about carrying along extra pads or tampons with us at all times.
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