The participants were investigated for 6 consecutive menstrual cycles, during which all of them were asked to use pads of the same type, provided by the researchers. During the first 3 control cycles, they recorded the amount of their bleeding on the Pictorial Blood Assessment Chart (PBAC) to confirm that they had heavy bleeding. The PBAC was developed in 1990 by Higham et al. to evaluate menstrual bleeding, which is scored according to the visual appearance of stained towels, tampons and the presence of clots12]