Your period blood is trying to tell you something the biggest red flags to look out for

It’s a code red — but what does it mean?Knowing what’s normal when it comes to your period can be tricky.After all, women aren’t exactly chatting about the color, consistency and smell at the water cooler.But if you’re informed about what to look for, your period could be a useful tool in letting you know how your reproductive plumbing is functioning.Dr.

Hailey Puckett, a doctor of nursing practice, women’s health nurse practitioner and Kotex partner, tells The Post exactly how to read your cycle like a book.Clots are OK as long as they’re small.Bigger than the size of a quarter might indicate there could be a polyp, fibroid, endometriosis or adenomyosis.Period consistency naturally changes over the course of each cycle, so how do you differentiate slimy blood and a clot? Puckett says it’s “anything that is not of a loose consistency that would just absorb straight onto a pad or tampon.”She recommends using pads over tampons to keep an eye on the size.

When a tampon gets changed out, it’s hard to tell how big any clot might be.Color, consistency, and smell naturally change over the course of a period.First, expect dark brown or black, slimy blood with a milder smell.Then, it’ll transition into a bright red with a more metallic smell, and stay a consistent color for two to three days, Puckett says, before it tapers off.It’s also normal for people to get a light pink to the brown again or brown to the light pink.But that dark blood is oxidized, old blood, she explains, so it only should appear at the beginning or end.

“We don’t really want it through the entire time,” she said, which would indicate the woman isn’t having a regular cycle each month.“They might not be ovulating, they might be holding on to too much period.And you’re only letting out a little bit.”This could be a sign of polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), previously known as PCOS.If you’re bleeding so heavily an entire pad or tampon is saturate...