PMS (Premenstrual syndrome)

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a disorder that affects many women during the one to two weeks before menstruation begins. Symptoms can include any or all of the following: abdominal bloating, acne, anxiety, backache, brease swelling and tenderness, cramps, depression, food cravings, fainting spells, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, joint pain, nervousness, skin eruptions, water retention, and personality changes such as drastic mood swings, outbursts of anger, violence, and, sometimes, even thoughts of suicide. The symptoms are so numerous and various that diagnosing and treating this condition is often difficult.

While there are no hard statistics, it is estimated that as many as 80 percent of all women experience some premenstrual symptoms at one time or another. Approximately 5 percent of women have symptoms so severe as to be incapacitating, and 30 to 40 percent report symptoms severe enough to interfere with their day-to-day lives. For many years, PMS was dismissed as a psychological problem. We now know that this is a physically based problem, although it is still far from clear what causes all the symptoms. It is possible of course, that there is more than one cause of PMS and that there may be different causes of symptoms in different people. One of the reasons for PMS may be hormonal imbalance – excessive levels of oestrogen and inadequate levels of progesterone – as well as sensitivity to flactuating hormones. Diet may be an important contributing factor for some women. Unstable blood sugar levels are an important factor as well. PMS has also been linked to food allergies, changes in carbohydrate metabolism, hypoglycemia, and malabsorption.