Why Your Ob-Gyn Always Asks When Your Last Period Was
Dr. Pari was featured in the article below, originally posted for the Glamour.
When you visit your ob-gyn, there are a few things you can count on: You’ll talk about your vagina, and she’s going ask what the first date of your last period was. The period question makes sense if you’re going to the doctor because you’re pregnant or you’ve been having irregular periods, but it seems kind of irrelevant otherwise. Turns out, it’s actually not as random of a question as you might think.
“Almost everything we talk about revolves around the menstrual cycle,” says Maureen Whelihan, M.D., an ob-gyn at the Center for Sexual Health & Education. And knowing when your last menstrual cycle started helps with diagnostics, says Lauren Streicher, M.D., an associate professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and author of Sex Rx: Hormones, Health, and Your Best Sex Ever.“The number-one reason someone comes in is that something is wrong with them,” she says. “So many potential diagnoses are dependent on where someone is in their cycle.” And, of course, doctors do still want to rule out that you aren’tpregnant and figure out whether you have a regular cycle, says board-certified ob-gyn Pari Ghodsi, M.D.