Infertility is caused by "uterine cold"? It turns out that everyone has misunderstood...

The recent hit TV series "The World" has come to its finale. Seeing that everyone has lived a good life at the end, I feel warm in my heart, but I feel sorry for the eldest sister-in-law Hao Dongmei: she has no children and lost her husband in her old age. Fortunately, Zhou Bingkun and Zheng Juan thought thoughtfully and let the triplets from their son's family call her grandma, so she will not be lonely and boring for the rest of her life, and she will have grandchildren to accompany her.

But being unable to have children has always been a thorn in Hao Dongmei's heart.

When she was young and went to the countryside as an educated youth, Hao Dongmei fell into an icy well during her menstrual period and became ill.

Netizens said: My sister-in-law can’t give birth because she is cold and has a cold uterus!

So what exactly is uterine cold? Is it really because of uterine cold that Hao Dongmei can't have children? Is the widely circulated uterine cold saying true? With these questions, I carefully looked it up and found that most people have always misunderstood the meaning of "uterine cold"!

The term "uterine cold" is well-known in China, but no one seems to be able to clearly explain what the disease is, and many symptoms have been attributed to it:

Cold hands and feet? Cold uterus!

Irregular menstruation, abdominal pain during menstruation? Cold uterus!

Can't get pregnant? Cold uterus!

Even if your baby has a blue spot on his body or a hernia, someone will jump out and say: It was because of the cold uterus during pregnancy that you gave the baby the disease.

In fact, there is no such disease as uterine cold in Western medicine clinical practice.

In the scope of traditional Chinese medicine, uterine cold is not a specific disease. It can be explained by breaking down the text and interpreting the characters.

"Palace" in Western medicine refers to the uterus, while in traditional Chinese medicine, it refers to the "Baogong", which refers to the female internal reproductive organs, including the uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and other organs and their functions;

"Cold" is more of a symptom, just like "dampness and heat", it can be regarded as a causative factor of some diseases.

In layman's terms, you can also understand uterine cold as: some dialectical reasons cause your reproductive system to be not very strong, so you will have gynecological diseases such as dysmenorrhea, irregular menstruation, amenorrhea, and infertility.

However, the reason why uterine cold is misinterpreted and abused is that many people simply and crudely understand "cold" as "low temperature".

But if you think about it from a physiological point of view, you will understand why the above statement is unscientific. As an internal organ of the human body, the uterus, like other organs, always maintains a constant temperature. If the uterus really cools down, the whole person will also cool down.

Therefore, the reason why Hao Dongmei is unable to have children in the play is speculated to be that she fell into an icy well during her menstrual period. In addition, the personal hygiene and environmental sanitation conditions of that era were relatively poor, and there were no showers. The various pathogens in the water could easily invade the female reproductive tract. At the same time, menstrual blood also provided an environment for the bacteria to reproduce, further retrogradely invading and infecting the cervix, endometrium, fallopian tubes, ovaries, etc., inducing some gynecological diseases and leading to difficulty in having children after marriage (but the quality of the man’s sperm is still unclear), rather than simply the uterus being "frozen". [1]

There was a dating show where the male guest’s mother claimed to be a national senior nutritionist. Her only requirement for her son in finding a wife was: girls with cold hands and feet cannot be married!

She explained: Cold hands and feet indicate a cold uterus, and people with a cold uterus will suffer from small intestinal hernia if they give birth to a boy, and malnutrition if they give birth to a girl.

Please, the uterus is only responsible for childbirth and has no right to decide the temperature of hands, feet and body.

The body temperature is controlled by the hypothalamus, which maintains a constant body temperature through blood circulation. When the weather is cold, the hypothalamus will "command" the capillaries to contract, reduce blood flow, reduce heat dissipation, and allow blood to flow to important organs such as the heart and lungs first. Therefore, cold hands and feet in cold weather are due to the body's self-protection mechanism.

Some fairies who are thin and have low blood sugar and blood pressure are more likely to have cold hands and feet, which can be alleviated by adjusting diet and exercising regularly.

Abdominal pain during menstruation is caused by the shedding of the endometrium, which produces prostaglandins, which cause the uterus to contract, making people feel pain similar to that during childbirth, and causing nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, headache and bloating.

This is also the reason why more than 90% of women suffer from dysmenorrhea, also known as primary dysmenorrhea (i.e., there is no organic lesion). Another type of dysmenorrhea is secondary dysmenorrhea, which may be related to gynecological diseases such as endometriosis and adenomyosis. It can only be relieved after targeted treatment in the hospital.

Some girls may ask, why does the stomach hurt when eating cold food during menstruation? That is because the cold can cause blood vessels to contract, produce prostaglandins, and cause uterine contraction, so it hurts. On the contrary, applying a warm patch can relieve the pain.

Of course not. The color of menstrual blood is mainly related to the menstrual period time, bleeding amount, bleeding speed, and the amount of endometrial exfoliation, and has nothing to do with whether the uterus is cold or not.

When menstruation begins, the endometrium is shed in small amounts, the amount of bleeding is small, the bleeding speed is slow, and the blood will be pink;

On the 2nd or 3rd day of the menstrual period, the endometrium is shed in pieces, the amount of bleeding increases, the bleeding speed accelerates, and the blood turns bright red;

When menstruation is about to end, the endometrium stops shedding and the blood becomes coffee-colored or brown.

Therefore, don’t associate any discomfort during your menstrual period with uterine cold. Those who are currently promoting “uterine cold” are always trying to achieve their own small goals by confusing the concepts in real traditional Chinese medicine.

After all, they first fool you with the "uterine cold" and then sell you a "uterine warming package" or "traditional massage and maintenance package"... isn't it natural to empty your wallet?

So, ladies, when you feel any discomfort, go to the hospital for a check-up immediately. Don't be fooled by the big scammers in some beauty salons, foot massage shops, and WeChat business circles.

References:

[1] Yangtze Evening News: Falling into a well in winter, catching a cold once and becoming infertile? Theoretically possible. 2022.2.4.

Source: Youlai Healthy Life