Your period already comes with enough discomfort on its own. Certain habits, from what you eat to how you sleep, can quietly make cramps, bloating, and mood swings worse. Here’s what to skip (or scale back on) during your period and why it actually matters.
Loading Up on Salty or Sugary Foods
Cravings for chips, chocolate, and comfort food hit hard during your period, but giving in too freely can backfire. Refined carbs and sugary snacks cause blood sugar spikes, which trigger your kidneys to hold onto more sodium. That extra sodium pulls water into your tissues, making period bloating noticeably worse.
Salty foods do the same thing more directly. If you’re already retaining water from hormonal shifts (which most people do in the days around their period), a high-sodium meal can tip mild puffiness into genuine discomfort. You don’t need to eat perfectly, but swapping some of the ultra-processed snacks for whole foods, fruits, or nuts can take the edge off bloating without feeling like a punishment.
Drinking Too Much Coffee
Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor, meaning it narrows your blood vessels. During your period, that can restrict blood flow to the pelvic area and intensify cramps. It also revs up your central nervous system, which may increase anxiety and tension you’re already more prone to during menstruation.
There’s a less obvious problem, too. Caffeine is a diuretic, so it increases urine output and can leave you mildly dehydrated. Dehydration makes both bloating and cramping worse. If you’re a regular coffee drinker, you don’t necessarily need to quit cold turkey (a caffeine withdrawal headache on top of cramps is its own kind of misery). But cutting back to one cup or switching to tea for a few days can help.
Drinking Alcohol
Alcohol disrupts the hormonal balance that’s already shifting during your cycle. In premenopausal women, heavy drinking tends to increase estrogen levels while lowering progesterone, which can throw off your cycle’s regularity over time. Even in the short term, alcohol acts as a depressant and can amplify the sadness, irritability, or anxiety that often accompany your period.
Alcohol also dehydrates you, contributes to bloating, and can worsen fatigue the next day. If your period already leaves you feeling drained and emotionally fragile, adding alcohol to the mix typically makes both worse. A glass of wine probably won’t derail you, but heavier drinking during your period is one of the quickest ways to extend your misery.
Using Scented Period Products or Douching
Your vagina maintains its own carefully balanced ecosystem of bacteria and natural acidity. That balance protects against infections and irritation. Douching disrupts it by flushing out beneficial bacteria, which allows harmful bacteria to overgrow. Women who douche weekly are five times more likely to develop bacterial vaginosis than women who don’t, according to the U.S. Office on Women’s Health.
Scented tampons, pads, powders, and sprays pose a similar risk. The fragrances and chemicals in these products can irritate already-sensitive vaginal tissue and increase your chances of developing an infection. Your period has a natural smell. That’s normal, and trying to mask it with scented products creates more problems than it solves. Unscented pads and tampons, or a menstrual cup, are safer choices.
Leaving a Tampon in Too Long
This one matters for a serious reason: toxic shock syndrome (TSS). TSS is rare but potentially life-threatening, and it’s linked to leaving tampons in for extended periods. Cleveland Clinic recommends changing your tampon every four to eight hours and never exceeding eight hours of wear.
A few other tampon habits reduce your risk. Use the lowest absorbency you actually need rather than defaulting to “super” for convenience. And consider switching to pads at night, since it’s easy to sleep longer than eight hours without realizing it. If you tend to forget about your tampon, setting a phone reminder is a simple fix that eliminates the guesswork.
Skimping on Sleep
Poor sleep and period symptoms feed off each other in a frustrating cycle. Research from a study of 252 women found that poor sleep quality correlates with significantly more intense PMS symptoms, particularly anger, anxiety, mood swings, and fatigue. Nearly half of the participants experienced severe PMS, and sleep quality was a meaningful factor in both emotional and physical symptom severity.
Your body is already working harder during menstruation. Inflammation levels are higher, your uterus is actively contracting to shed its lining, and your hormones are in flux. Sleep is when your body does its best repair and regulation work. Staying up late scrolling, binge-watching, or pushing through with early alarms can leave you more crampy, more irritable, and more exhausted than your period alone would. Prioritizing seven to nine hours during your period, even if you’re more flexible the rest of the month, pays off quickly.
Scheduling Waxing or Tattoo Appointments
Your pain threshold drops noticeably in the days right before and during your period. Hormonal changes make your skin more sensitive, which means any procedure involving pain (waxing, tattooing, laser treatments) will feel worse than it normally would.
If you have flexibility in your schedule, the best window for waxing is around mid-cycle, roughly days 10 through 14, when hormones are more balanced and sensitivity tends to be lowest. At minimum, waiting until about five days after your period ends will give you a more comfortable experience than booking during your period itself. This isn’t about avoiding these things forever, just timing them smarter.
Pushing Through Intense Workouts
Exercise during your period is generally a good thing. Light to moderate movement can actually ease cramps by improving circulation. But your period isn’t the time to chase personal records or push through an unusually grueling workout. Energy levels are typically lower, and forcing high-intensity exercise when your body is signaling for rest can increase fatigue and stress rather than relieve it.
One common concern is whether yoga inversions (headstands, shoulder stands) are dangerous during your period. The traditional worry is that being upside down could cause menstrual blood to flow backward, potentially leading to endometriosis. Science doesn’t support this. Menstrual blood is expelled by uterine contractions, not gravity, so inversions won’t reverse the flow. That said, if inversions feel uncomfortable during your period, skipping them is perfectly reasonable. Listen to what your body is telling you rather than following rigid rules in either direction.
Dehydrating Yourself
This one ties several of the above together. Between caffeine, alcohol, saltier food choices, and the natural water retention your body is already managing, dehydration is easy to slip into during your period. And it makes nearly every symptom worse: cramps feel sharper, bloating gets puffier, headaches are more likely, and fatigue deepens.
Drinking more water than usual during your period helps your kidneys flush excess sodium, reduces water retention (counterintuitive but true), and keeps headaches at bay. Herbal tea counts. Sugary sodas and energy drinks don’t help as much, since the sugar and caffeine offset the hydration. Keeping a water bottle nearby and sipping consistently throughout the day is one of the simplest things you can do to feel noticeably better.