Brown discharge, brown period blood? What is it? What does it mean? I will talk about when it’s normal and when it is a symptom of something abnormal. I will discuss PCOS, STIs, ovulation bleeding, end of period bleeding, and other causes. My name is Diana. I’m a Physician Assistant specializing in women’s health and gynecology.
So i had a patient that came in complaining of brown vaginal discharge for about a week she was really anxious about it because there was a really foul smell she was shocked to learn that the cause of the vaginal discharge was let’s talk about brown period blood i get asked about this a lot because people really are wondering if this is normal or if it’s a sign that
Something is wrong so in this video i’m going to talk about what normal brown period blood is and why you have it at the end however i’m going to talk about when it’s abnormal and what you should do about it so be sure to watch the end so you don’t miss anything important but first my name is diana i’m a physician assistant and i specialize in women’s health and
Gynecology you’re watching in the pink and if you’re new here in the pink means in good health and spirits so if you like being healthy and happy click subscribe because you’re in the right place so in order to answer this let’s go over what your period blood is so it’s a mixture of blood and endometrial tissue we call it menstrual flow or menstruation in your
Cycle after you’ve had a period the inside lining of your uterus called the endometrium slowly gets thicker to get ready for implantation for a fertilized egg if your egg doesn’t get fertilized it won’t implant and at the end of the cycle the endometrium and blood sloughs off and comes out in the vagina what you know as your period now imagine you accidentally
Cut your finger and it starts to bleed what color is the blood kind of a bright red right so it’s bleeding and you don’t want it to get everywhere so what do you do you put a band-aid on it next day the bleeding stop and you take off the band-aid is the blood on the band-aid bright red anymore no it’s a very dark brown the reason is because when blood touches
Oxygen it oxidizes and it turns from a normal red color to dark brown and same thing happens to you with your period blood so at first when you’re having your period the blood is new and it’s red but the last of the blood up inside the uterus gets older and it has oxidized and it turns brown and that’s it the blood is simply just older blood so it’s very common
For the blood to be dark brown at the end of your period and some women even continue to spot brown blood for a few days after their period is pretty much done now let’s talk about brown blood in the middle of your cycle so in the middle of your cycle on average around day 14 of your cycle you ovulate which means an egg is released from one of your follicles it
Travels down your fallopian tube and into the uterus where like i mentioned earlier if it’s been fertilized it will implant and if not it will come out with your endometrial lining and blood when the follicle releases the egg there can sometimes be a little bit of bleeding from the follicle itself the blood also travels down the fallopian to the uterus and then
Out through your vagina now often ovulation blood is light pink because it’s a little bit of blood mixed with vaginal discharge but if the blood takes time to come out it could be dark brown usually ovulation bleeding though is very light now let’s talk about when you need to be concerned for brown spotting but before i do if you think this video is helping you
And you want more informative videos like this let me know by hitting the like button and of course subscribe it lets me to know that you would like me to continue putting out this type of content so reasons for abnormal brown discharge first off sexually transmitted infections can cause vaginal discharge the colors could be green and they could be yellow and
Of course brown now often discharged from an sti can have other symptoms associated with it like itching burning or an odor if you’re concerned about an sti you need to get seen by your healthcare provider another option if you don’t want to do that is just order a home test kit they mail the kit to your home so you can check for an infection yourself pretty
Cool i’ll link to it in the video description down below next you can have pid which is short for pelvic inflammatory disease which is an infection of the female reproductive organs symptoms could be pelvic pain fever pain with intercourse pain with urination smelly discharge and of course brown discharge if you have these symptoms you definitely need to see
Your healthcare provider and be evaluated if they think you have pid or pelvic inflammatory disease they will want to give you antibiotics next foreign body inside your vagina most often the culprit a tampon so if a tampon accidentally gets forgotten up there and stays up there for a day or more you could definitely notice two things number one dark brown or
Blackish discharge and number two a really foul odor if this happens to you you aren’t the first i guarantee it i have taken out plenty of retained tampons from my patients over my career it can be easy to forget but try not to keeping a tampon in for more than eight hours can increase your chances of having something called toxic shock syndrome to go over it
Briefly symptoms of toxic shock syndrome are fever rash body aches lightheadedness vomiting diarrhea worsening symptoms can be confusion and seizures any symptoms like that you need to go to the er next pcos or polycystic ovarian syndrome it can cause difficulty with weight loss acne less frequent and irregular bleeding and spotting and the spotting can often
Be dark brown also an ectopic pregnancy can cause brown discharge if you’ve missed a period or if you’ve had a positive pregnancy test and you start to experience pelvic pain and brownish watery discharge you need to see your health care provider right away finally cervical cancer now if you are having brown discharge please know that it is very very unlikely
That you have cervical cancer i’m only mentioning it to be thorough but i don’t want you to get nervous thinking that you could have cancer just make sure you’re doing your routine pap test as directed by your health care provider so back to my patient that i mentioned at the beginning of the video she ended up having a retained tampon i removed it right there
At the office it took about 30 seconds we did a little something to help prevent infection and problem was solved so i hope this was helpful for you if it was hit subscribe hit the notification bell uh down here i’m gonna put my video where i talk about if it’s normal to have a vaginal discharge every day click on that video and i will see you over there but if
You have a history of yeast infections before you know what it feels like and you’re sure that what you’re having now is a yeast infection then this is a really good place to start so
Transcribed from video
Brown Period Blood | PCOS, STDs, Ovulation | Is Brown Discharge Normal? By Diana In The Pink
