Menstrual-cramp guide
Short-course prescription anti-inflammatory treatment for a familiar, cyclic primary-cramp pattern after pregnancy, secondary causes, and medication risks are screened out.
Start online
Primary dysmenorrhea typically starts just before or with a period and improves over the first few days. New, worsening, non-cyclic, or otherwise atypical pelvic pain may reflect endometriosis, fibroids, adenomyosis, infection, or pregnancy and needs an in-person evaluation instead.
If treatment is appropriate, your physician can send a non-controlled prescription to your pharmacy and provide portal instructions for the next step.
Quick facts
Common symptoms
May fit online care
Look for another care setting
What to have ready
What happens next
Start the request on the website, answer the fit questions, and choose the response window you want. If the concern still fits this service, a physician reviews it and sends a secure update after sign-in. When appropriate, non-controlled prescriptions can be sent to your pharmacy, and a basic work or school note can be included at physician discretion.
Your physician
Every visit is personally reviewed by Ankur Fadia, MD — board-certified, cardiology-fellowship-trained, and Alpha Omega Alpha. Licensed in Virginia and West Virginia — your care is never handed off.
Anti-inflammatory treatment works best when started just before or at the first sign of predictable cramps and taken on schedule during the painful days. Waiting until pain is severe can make it harder to control.
The usual lower-cost option is naproxen 500 mg every 12 hours with food during the painful days. Mefenamic acid is an alternative. Neither is combined with ibuprofen or another NSAID, and mefenamic acid is limited to five days per cycle.
Seek gynecology care for a new or worsening pattern, pain between periods, pain during sex, abnormal bleeding, infertility concerns, infection symptoms, or failure of both a proper scheduled NSAID trial and hormonal treatment. Severe one-sided pain with possible pregnancy, dizziness, fainting, shoulder-tip pain, or heavy bleeding is an emergency.
Hormonal birth control can reduce or suppress periods for some patients and belongs in the dedicated birth-control visit, which screens blood pressure, clot risk, migraine history, smoking, pregnancy, and medication interactions.
Read the birth-control guide