What causes your period to be delayed?

Answer 1

There can be many reasons for your period to be delayed.

The most common reasons for delayed menstruation are stress or ill-health - if you're unwell your body recognises that getting pregnant may be a bad idea so it will delay or skip ovulation, which in turn leads to your period being delayed or it will skip that cycle.

Delayed periods are also common if you're in your teens due to cycle irregularity - it takes time to reach a point where you are physically and sexually mature enough to ovulate on a regular basis, and changes to your body as you're going through puberty can have a major effect on your cycles and so result in delayed menstruation.

Sometimes periods may seem delayed when they're not - the average menstrual cycle is 28 days but everyone's cycles are different, also it's normal for there to be up to 7 days variation between your cycles, so a few days 'late' isn't really late at all.