Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health
Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS)

What is premenstrual syndrome (PMS) / premenstrual tension (PMT)?

Symptoms of PMS

Explanation

Risk Factors for PMS

Prevention / remedies / treatment for PMS

References

What is premenstrual syndrome (PMS) / premenstrual tension (PMT)?

PMS is a collection of physical, psychological and emotional symptoms related to the hormonal changes in a woman's menstrual cycle. These symptoms normally start 8-10 days before menstruation (during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle), and cease just before or shortly after the start of menstrual blood flow.

Premenstrual symptoms vary between different women, but can be of sufficient severity to interfere with some aspects of their lives. PMS does not affect all women, nor is it confined to certain age groups. Any woman who is still menstruating can suffer from PMS. It can vary from mildly disturbing to a severe and debilitating condition that greatly affects a woman's quality of life for nearly two weeks every month, for many years.

Most women experience at least one symptom that could be related to PMS, but their severity and disruption depends upon how stringently they are defined. Between 3% and 25% of women may experience mood changes and other symptoms that affect the functioning of their lives each month.

The symptoms tend to decrease in peri-menopausal women, and disappear at menopause.

See also menstruation problems.

Symptoms of PMS

People who have never lived with someone suffering from mood swings and other severe PMS symptoms often have little empathy or understanding of the condition. Partners and families of PMS sufferers don't know what to do. Mainstream medicine offers little in the way of effective treatment because pharmaceutical companies have not publicised the effectiveness of natural progesterone in treating the condition, and the pivotal role that progesterone plays.

Explanation

In a normal healthy woman of reproductive age, the stimulatory effects of estrogen are checked and balanced by the hormone progesterone. Progesterone is produced when ovulation takes place at around day 12 of the menstrual cycle. After the egg is released from the follicle on the surface of the ovary, the follicle changes into what is called the corpus luteum. The corpus luteum makes the progesterone. Without ovulation there is no production of progesterone. Estrogen and progesterone levels peak around day 22. Just before menstruation the level of both hormones plummets and the uterine lining sheds. Then the period commences.

A cause of PMS is insufficient progesterone. Women who experience PMS don't produce enough progesterone or fail to ovulate regularly. Without sufficient progesterone, the estrogen in her body dominates and causes premenstrual symptoms.

Cholesterol is the building material for all steroidal hormones. Cholesterol is an essential and healthy material rather than a danger as previously thought. A deficiency of cholesterol is the root cause of many menstrual and menopause problems.

Risk Factors for PMS

Prevention / remedies / treatment for PMS

References

1. Katherina Dalton. Once a Month: The Original Premenstrual Syndrome Handbook. 1978