Managing Premenstrual Syndrome or PMS

Most of the women feel some changes around their menses. These include physical changes as well as emotional disturbances. These changes or symptoms are different in different women. Also, some females are more prone to having them than others.

Premenstrual Symptoms

To list a few, these symptoms may include:

• Anxiety or stressed feeling
• Not feeling like talking to people or mixing up.
• Mood swings, you may feel like crying without any reason
• Change in appetite
• Headache
• Pain in various muscle groups of the body, like calf or thigh
• Slight increase in weight
• Breast enlargement and tenderness
• Acne flaring up and becoming painful
• Constipation

A female may have one or more of any of the following symptoms.

Why Does PMS Occur?

This is linked with fluctuations of your reproductive hormones. During menses, the female hormones change their concentrations in blood to cause the menstrual cycle.

It has been observed that symptoms occur more in women with poor eating habits, both underweight and over weight.

Also, deficiency of certain vitamins and minerals in the body makes one prone to PMS.

Management

It is suggested that you manage PMS by improving your lifestyle. Don’t opt for medications till they are absolutely necessary.

Do they following, throughout the month to have a problem free menstrual period:

• Drink plenty of water.
• Exercise regularly, throughout the month and stay active. Do whatever you feel like, light aerobics, swimming, cycling or just plain walk for about half an hour. PMS doesn’t hit girls who are active.
• Avoid all stimulants like tea, coffee etc.
• Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Avoid fried fatty stuff. Try reducing weight. It is difficult to reduce the overall diet though, you may slowly start replacing your food with more of fruits and vegetables.
• Add some edible fiber to your diet. See that you don’t have any constipation.
• Take a daily dose of a multivitamin, multi mineral pill.
• Ensure that you are having enough calcium, either by dairy products or vegetables.
• Ensure a daily good sleep at night.
• Reduce stress in your life. Stress always adds up to the symptoms.

Medications

For women who are not able to control their symptoms by lifestyle and whose symptoms are disturbing enough to affect their lives, hormonal pills are prescribed for some time to stabilize their hormonal levels.