News – Alabama NFP

How I Went from Clueless to Empowered About My Period Health

Many women feel like a marionette puppet, with their actions and health governed by their doctor or prescriptions. But they may not know that they have other options, or that their cycle doesn’t have to remain full of fears and mystery.

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Why Being Single is Actually the Best Time to Start Charting Your Cycle

Charting allows you to know what is normal for your body and will help you recognize when something is amiss with your cycle. Your charts can help detect early signs of health problems, like thyroid cancer, hormonal imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, and gynecological cancers.
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Viewing the Menstrual Cycle as the Fifth Vital Sign

Like the other four vital signs, a woman’s menstrual is a clue to her overall health. Just as high blood pressure or a fast pulse gives clues to a person’s cardiovascular health and emotional state, the various qualities of a woman’s cycle give clues to the rest of her physical, and even mental and emotional functioning.
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Busting the Four Biggest Myths about Teens and Fertility Education

The longer she charts, the more confident and self-aware a teen will become of the patterns she sees in her cycles, and in her hormone, mood, and energy shifts.It’s also incredibly useful to be able to determine whether cycle irregularity is normal in a teen girl, versus a signal that a more serious underlying issue is at play.
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Remembering the Loss in Pregnancy Loss

There can be little doubt that our complicated cultural relationships with fertility, pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, and artificial reproductive technologies make for rough waters for those navigating the storm of pregnancy loss. Although scientific evidence incontrovertibly proves that life begins at conception, it has perhaps never been more fraught or more complicated to process what, exactly, that means for those of us who have experienced pregnancy loss.
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How I Started Healing my Painful, Irregular Periods with the Switch to Fertility Awareness

I want you to know that, if you’ve seen a dozen doctors who discounted your symptoms, you deserve to work with a fertility awareness instructor who won’t. You can learn about the fertility awareness methods available to you and find an instructor who can help you learn it here. If you’ve been living with symptoms like painful, irregular periods, or other mysterious symptoms suggesting hormone imbalance, I urge you not to wait to seek help. Today could be the first step of your journey to find healing.
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When NFP is Used to Abuse

Instructors should say that each sexual encounter that a husband and wife has is unique, as it were, that there’s never a presumption of ‘yes,’ or a presumption of ‘no,’ but just a conversation about, ‘How are we both feeling tonight?’ And if there’s that freedom of ‘How are we feeling tonight?’ and also, ‘What is our family situation like?,’ I think that that will help facilitate healthier conversations between couples.In other words, sex is never a “given,” but a gift that is always freely given, each and every time.
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FAM Basics: Progesterone

Synthetic progestin can negatively affect mood and cholesterol levels, and when combined with estrogen (as in most birth control pills), synthetic progestin can counteract some of the beneficial effects of estrogen on the brain. In fact, synthetic progestin and estrogen can have “antagonistic” effects when given together.
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The 4 Most Common Mistakes Women Make When We Start Charting Our Cycles

Your fertility isn’t black and white; irregularities differ from method to method and from woman to woman. So giving yourself time and patience to learn all the ins and outs of charting is essential to success.
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What is a NaPro Doctor, and Do I Really Need to See One?

After all, many physicians see the negative effects of birth control on their patients and want to be able to offer something different, but simply don’t know that other, better options exist for treating the root causes of some of the most common reproductive issues women face.
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Fatherhood and Good Habits for Fertility Health

What was truly driving my unhealthy habits was my struggle with self-acceptance and worth. Eventually, my love for my wife and my family became my motivation for health and wellness.
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Secret Powers of Ovulation

According to Canadian endocrinology professor Jerilynn Prior, “women benefit from 35 to 40 years of ovulatory cycles, not just for fertility but also to prevent osteoporosis, stroke, dementia, heart disease, and breast cancer.” In that sense, every ovulation is like a monthly deposit into the bank account of long-term health.
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Male Fertility and Estrogenics

While estimates vary, recent data suggest that about 40 percent of infertility is due to male factors. The spinoff of this new research not only will help many couples to achieve pregnancy, but it also offers insight into other reproductive problems that affect men, from sexual desire to prostate health.
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Study Shows Connection of NPF and Odds of Divorce

New study reveals NFP use in marriage lowers risk of divorce, especially when compared to other forms of family planning.
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Tragic Joy of Adoption

“Yet that little boy did something to me, something unutterable. He broke down the last walls around my heart, the walls I had erected to protect myself from more relational hurt, the walls that had become a tomb.”
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Why Zinc Is One of my Favorite Supplements for Women’s Health

Zinc deficiency affects one in three women and is more common with a plant-based diet because plant foods are low in zinc. Zinc absorption can be impaired by alcohol, stomach medication, hypothyroidism, and hormonal birth control.
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One Flesh, Given and Received

Practical ideas to promote NFP in your parish, and, explanations of how NFP is the best family planning method to live an authentic Catholic marriage.