Aussie Olympian Lisa Curry's blunt response to teammates' comment speaks to wider women's health issue

Triple Australian Olympic swimmer Lisa Curry is no stranger to speaking out about her personal life, but it's never without a wider cause at heart.

"I was a late starter," Curry, 60, tells 9Honey in between speaking engagements.

No, she's not talking about her career as an athlete. That, in fact, started quite early. By the time she was 15 in 1977, she was already representing Australia.

She's talking about her period.

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On average, a person with a uterus gets their period at the age of 12. When Curry was 12, she was already considered one of the fastest swimmers in her age group in the world. But she wouldn't get her period for another six years.

For Curry, the menstrual delay was never an issue – that's "just how it was", and on the bright side, it meant she didn't have to worry about taking care of it while she was training in the pool 11 times a week.

But that doesn't mean others didn't think it was odd.

"I remember my teammates telling me I must have been pregnant," Curry recalls. "I was like, 'I can't be pregnant. I haven't had sex!'"

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When she did get it, Curry went on the pill so she could manipulate her cycles so she wasn't menstruating while she was competing.

"You don't want to race pretty much the day before you're getting your period," Curry says sagely, highlighting the common symptoms of lower back pain, cramps, and feeling "moody". "You don't want to race feeling like that."

Curry considers herself "lucky" despite the delay – she was never diagnosed with any reproductive disorders, but the six-year menstrual absence was something she never got to the bottom of.

While Curry may be OK with never having any answers, not everyone is. And while she rarely had heavy cycles or extreme pain, not everyone does – and that's something she wants to highlight.

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Curry, who hung up her cap and goggles after breaking and making several Australian and Commonwealth Records, went on to found Happy Healthy You with naturopath and women's hormone specialist Jeff Butterworth, which has recently expanded into menstrual health with Happy Period.

"There are so many girls, young women, even ladies in their reproductive ages as well, they've really never had an opportunity to talk openly about this," Curry says.

"The fact that there's so many kids who don't do swimming class at school, they don't play water polo, they don't do any sport. They sit on the sideline. They have days off school. They have days off work because they just can't get out of bed because of the pain..."

It's something she wants to speak about more openly so all genders can understand that something that is a normal part of over 12.8 million Australians' lives is often not normal in actuality.

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Her comments come amid calls for curriculum reform after research from Western Sydney University revealed in November that a majority of Australians aren't adequately educated about menstrual health.

The research, led by Menstruation Matters project lead Dr Mike Armour, revealed that only 40 per cent of Australian students can say they learned about menstrual health in their Health and Physical Education classes at school. Even then, with a focus mainly on biology theory and fertility rather than the practicalities of what having a period should look and feel like, the research found those who have abnormalities with their periods in Australia are being left behind.

"The focus is often, 'Don't have sex with your boyfriend, you'll fall pregnant and ruin your life,'" Armour told 9Honey in October.

"We've got very little on, 'OK, so this is what to expect to have your period, this is what's normal, this is what to do if you're worried and this is what to do to manage the symptoms'. Those are huge gaps because if you don't know what's normal, you don't know what's abnormal and when you need to seek help."

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Curry herself may not have been looking for help with her delay – it did, after all, for her not signify any reproductive issues, and she went on to welcome three children with her ex-husband Grant Kenny – but those with endometriosis, dysmenorrhea (severe period pain), or vulvodynia (chronic pain or discomfort around the opening of the vagina) often slip through the cracks because they believe their pain is "normal."

"The normalisation of women's pain is so pervasive and that can have real negative consequences," Armour said.

Curry doesn't want any Australian to think anyone should grin and bear period pain, and is calling for open discussions about menstrual health to bring every member of the family into the dialogue, not just women.

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"I think that being able to talk about it more openly and having people who have never experienced it and also having the male population becoming a little bit more understanding about it as well, could really help," Curry says.

"I spoke to a father not long ago. He was a cameraman who did an interview with me. He had daughters at home and a wife. And he was saying that they're all on their cycles at different times during the month. And it can be difficult for a male," she recalls.

"And then if you ask the wrong question at the wrong time, all hell can break loose in a household. Basically he didn't know what to say. He didn't know what the right questions to ask were," Curry says, noting how this man's response was then to retreat to be safe.

"And that's not what you want to do as a parent. You want to try and understand."