The Female Reproductive Cycle - Period Cramps | Part 1

so where do babies come from that's a question that every single one of us has asked at some point in our lives maybe you were the lucky one to even try to explain the details of that process now we have a pretty good idea on the activity that creates babies but what's really going on inside the human body to allow for this amazing process to occur so we're going to talk about the first half of the story or in other words where half of our genetic material comes from with the female reproductive cycle now when we first decided to film this we were going to do it in one shot one take but we decided that we should break it down into four separate videos and that's because to be honest the female reproductive cycle can be a little bit daunting and complex so today's video we're going to start with the beginning of the cycle which starts with period cramps then we're going to move on to ovulation fourth third video will be fertilization and our fourth video will put everything together in a tight little package to hopefully put all the pieces together and answer any questions that may be confusing about this so yes we are going to go on a journey of anatomical awesomeness with the cadavers but this is going to be a journey that includes period cramps mood swings ovulation and prepping a uterus for baby time let's get to this [Music] welcome back to the anatomy lab everyone i'm jonathan benion i'm excited to go over the female reproductive cycle with you today yes we're going to see some really cool anatomical structures in the cadavers like a uterus we'll see ovaries even brain structures that contribute to the female reproductive cycle now most women don't refer to it as the female reproductive cycle most women say monthly periods monthly cycle menstrual cycle but the commonality between all those different names is there's this idea of a cycle something that tends to repeat itself once every month or so let's narrow down that timeline a little bit more specifically the range is actually from 24 to 35 days depending on the female that's the typical range for the female reproductive cycle but we're going to stick with 28 days just to give us a framework to start with so now that we've established this 28-day time period that we're going to be dealing with let's also go a little bit further and talk about the two main goals that i want you to think about throughout the duration of this video one of the goals of this cycle is to successfully release an egg from the ovary or in other words have ovulation occur the second goal i want you to think about is to prepare the inside lining of the uterus for a potential egg that gets fertilized so it can implant successfully into the lining of the uterus and a placenta can develop and baby time happens and all this magic and you know the rest of the story for the most part but those are our two main goals and to go a little bit further with that remember we had 28 days the first goal tends to occur in the first 14 days so day one to 14 is where we're really focusing on getting an egg ready to ovulate or come out of the ovary that's referred to as the follicular phase day 1 through 14. the second goal remember we said prepare the inside lining of the uterus that's referred to as the luteal phase and that goes from about day 15 to day 28. so let's go into a little bit more detail about that follicular phase the follicular phase starts with day one and that starts with the period and so essentially women experience menstrual bleeding and typically they experience cramping and this occurs in the uterus and why is this occurring it's essentially the uterus is saying well we didn't get pregnant so we need to start the whole cycle over again so take a look down here at the cadaver here this is a sagittal cut so right through the midline of the body so you can see inside to the pelvic cavity here now this is the vaginal canal right there you can see the uterus here and what i'm probing specifically here is the myometrium of the uterus myo just means muscle so this is the smooth muscle of the uterus in here is the inside lining of the uterus that we refer to as the endometrium this is the layer that sloughs off during a period and actually will move out and move down the vaginal canal and that's responsible for the bleeding that women will experience during their period but let's go into a little bit more detail of why this occurred again pregnancy didn't occur during the previous cycle and if pregnancy doesn't occur during the previous cycle estrogen and progesterone levels tend to go down at the end of the previous cycle and because of that that creates this release of these other chemicals called prostaglandins prostaglandins do a couple of things prostaglandins cause vasoconstriction of the blood vessels that are going to the uterus and if you vasoconstrict blood vessels going to the inside lining of the uterus those cells that those blood vessels were feeding don't get a great blood supply and they start to die off and that's the flaking or the sloughing of the inside lining of the uterus that's occurring during the period now another thing that prostaglandins do not so much fun is they stimulate smooth muscle contractions go back to this cadaver dissection all of this tissue that i'm probing here is essentially the smooth muscle of the uterus and now it's getting stimulated to contract and squeeze which helps propel the sloughing cells out of the uterus through the vaginal canal but it also causes pain so not so fun now the average range for period cramps or menstruation to occur is about three to five days yes there are women who experience less and women who experience more but we're going with that average about three to five days one thing that i want you to take a look at is this graphical representation of the inside lining of the uterus or the thickness of the inside lining of the uterus if you look at that red line over those first three to five days you can see the line goes down signifying that essentially the inside lining of the uterus is getting thinner but then you can see it's going to start to build back up over that 28 day cycle and we'll talk about some of the reasons why that occurs but before we go into any more of those details of the inside lining of the uterus building up over the cycle we're going to digest all the information that we learned on this first video so thank you guys for watching if you're new to us please subscribe ring the bell you guys can see in the background on one of these sides here on the white board there's some pictures of codex anatomica they're an affiliate of ours if you guys like anatomical artwork go ahead and check them out if you like snazzy ioha t-shirts we like them i wear it i have like five of them i wear them over and over again anyway if you're equipped with female reproductive anatomy i wish you uteri the best until the next video or is it uteruses uteri uteruses who knows let's talk about that in the comments and figure it out [Music] you

Channel: Institute of Human Anatomy

Views: 494,022

Rating: 4.9677615 out of 5

Keywords: menstrual cycle, female reproductive cycle, womens health, menstrual cycle explained, menstrual cycle hormones, female reproductive cycle video, menstrual cycle explained in simple terms, menstrual cycle explained video, period cramps, menstrual cramps, institute of human anatomy, womens health care, institute of human anatomy tiktok, institute of human anatomy - youtube, menstrual cramps explained, period cramps explained, female reproductive cycle ovulation

Id: 3_pZFKfika0

Length: 7min 18sec (438 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020