Picture the scene. Mr. and Mrs. Stone Age man are having a cosy night in their cave in front of the fire. Then Mr. burps, which really upsets his Mrs. and with angry grunts and butts, she shoos him outside into the dark to shiver. So many tens of thousands of years of evolution…and how little has changed.
Women (and their men) all over the globe have probably put up with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) since the beginning of civilization. It’s estimated that three quarters of us still do, particularly between the ages of thirty and forty-five. Indeed to many it’s part and parcel of being female. And of course we’re well aware PMS isn’t also called premenstrual tension (PMT) for nothing.
But irritability isn’t necessarily the most overwhelming issue. PMS is a collection of physical, psychological, and emotional symptoms, which can start two weeks before your period and ease soon after its started. Bloating, headaches, tiredness, breast tenderness, abdominal and back pain, and spots are all common.
With many millions of women affected and each one unique, PMS is inevitably experienced in different ways and degrees. But experts reckon one in twenty women have symptoms which seriously affect their life.
Jayne, twenty-six, is one such lady. “Ever since I can remember, I felt incredibly sad for the last two weeks of my cycle,” she says. “There wasn’t a day when I didn’t cry, usually at the drop of a hat, over really silly things. And if I wasn’t crying, I was angry.”
When she was fifteen, Jayne’s mother took her to see their doctor. “He wanted to put me on antidepressants,” Jayne remembers. “But I didn’t want to take strong tablets like that.”
It’s not certain what causes PMS, but there are plenty of theories. It seems sensible to accept that whatever’s going on is tied into hormonal changes that happen during the menstrual cycle.
One argument is some women are extra sensitive to the hormone progesterone released in the second half of the cycle. This oversensitivity can lead to a reduced level of the feel-good chemical serotonin in the brain—which brings us back to the antidepressant remedy.
