Women left stunned after only just realising how to correctly use a period pad

Periods can be a major inconvenience at the best of times and a total nightmare at the worst, with many of us constantly eager to figure out new ways to make things a little less of an ordeal each month (or whatever your personal cycle length is!).

As if skin breakouts, mood swings, back pain, tender breasts, constant cravings, relentless bloating and a nosedived sex drive weren't bad enough - there's also always the inevitable faff of dealing with sanitary products, pads in particular.

Picture this: you've had an exhausting day of work after a horrible night's sleep, you've run out of painkillers, your hot water's not on, you've got no food in and you go to change your pad to ensure you don't leak all over your clothes and/or sofa, only to find the wings have fused together in a freakishly strong grip that just won't give up.

Not ideal.

Well, turns out the reason this age-old torture is actually completely avoidable - and it's all to do with us putting pads on wrong our whole lives!

Now, as we know, pads come in two options; with wings and without.

The idea of the pads with wings is to help stop it moving about in your underwear, allowing for a more comfy wear.

However, it's proven to be a right pain when the sticky adhesive of the pads ends up sticking together - making it near impossible to remove from your pants without ripping the entire thing apart.

Well, as we say, there's actually a remedy to this problem, as someone took to X to share a how-to demonstration video of how to put on a pad to avoid that whole fiasco in the first place.

Once you've opened up your pad from its wrapper, be sure to keep that little piece of paper covering the adhesive of the wings and, get ready for this - you can use it once the pad is on to secure the wings in place.

Simply whack the piece of paper in the gusset area on the outside of your pants before pressing down the wings so they stick on the paper instead of directly onto your underwear.

Although it's not been officially determined that is what the paper's purpose is for, many have rushed in to share their amazement upon catching light of the hack on social media.

One X user confessed: "Oh.. so I’ve done it wrongly all my life?? Oh."

A second revealed: "Me after watching this video. Been doing it wrong all along."

"Wait, that paper is for that? Wow," quipped a third, while a fourth poetically penned: "The bulb of realization going off in my brain right now is like nut crackers."

A fifth echoed: "Over 10 years of experience, and I get to know I was doing it wrong."

And a final X user resolved: "At this point why are these companies not letting us know how to use their products."

You really do learn something new every day, huh?